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Devlog #7 - World Building
Towards the end of last month I started designing the 4th region, where things are a bit colder.
At the start of this month I finished up that area, spending some time to make the snow look pretty, or add some details like the player breathing or skating around on the ice. I then decided the colors and plants for the 'dream' version, I wanted to keep the more turqoise color and boost the saturation, and then make the ice more of a lilac color to match the dream "white" i use a lot already.
The main mechanics of this area (apart from yeeting around on the ice) is using heaters and coolers - heaters so you can melt frozen paths or objects (or frogs), and coolers so you can create new ice. As you might have noticed in the screenshots above, the deeper water has ice too, which normally isn't passable by the player. By freezing the deeper water you can then cross over to areas you couldn't access before and find all sorts of places and secrets!
There'll be a few puzzles to work out using the heaters/coolers, but they also affect the nearby environment, allowing you to make the extreme ends of temperature for your mushrooms to find some new species. This means I can 'gate' off a few types of mushrooms and trait modifications until you've come to this region and gained access to the machines.
I also wanted a way to let the player turn on/off weather, as it does have some uses and although you can sleep until the next day for a different weather pattern, I like to give players full control over stuff like that as they progress. It also fits within the theme of the region, which is very much like a sort of 'climate control' type area - plus the idea of changing weather fits with the existing climate control machines. I tried to design the machines to be similar, but still have their own unique style.
I finished up some other bits and bobs and then that area was good to go! Now it was time to move onto what I thought would be the last area... [hr][/hr]
After getting past the 'tutorial' region of the Spawning Pools, you end up in a large central area that leads to all other areas, and it's where your main goal of the game is that you have to come back to. I wanted this one to be more unique and stand out to the other areas, and seem much more important (because it is!), so I went with a more purple palette to emulate some feelings of it being more 'connected' with the dream world.
I've tried to make all regions have some unique characteristics but I wanted some extra stuff with this region, hence the large purple lilypads and special pink trees, and the light pink pollen falling over the area. This is also the area that will have the large central 'temple', that is a giant version of the smaller gates you use in the game - will take me a while to finish drawing it, I reckon it'll probably still be one of the last things I'm tinkering with right down to release...
[hr][/hr]
I thought I was done at this point with adding regions and was relieved as there's a lot of setup involved in getting everything in and working - there is a 6th area but it felt like an extension of the central region at the time so I thought I'd use the same region style. However at the same time of doing all this I was also working on designing the full map for the game, and realised that this area would actually be a bit bigger than I thought initially, and also connects with the starting area so I wanted to make sure it had a different style to make it clearer that its not just part of the central area.
This region has a lot of different research labs, and is focused more in the dream area with lots of 'dream' research being done - there's a few different machines for this area but I don't want to spoil them too much so I'll just show their designs instead.
There's also quite a few big important lore things here, so you can't actually access it right away and instead have to come back later when you've progressed enough. With this region done I did some last little tests with each of the regions to make sure I was happy with how they looked - this is how my "developer" map looked by the end of it:
With that done I was about halfway through the month - now it was time for the biggest task of the entire game's development, actually designing the full world map. [hr][/hr]
Trying to start tackling this was definitely one of the harder parts of making this game for me - I had all the pieces, the mechanics were all done, I knew roughly what each area would have and do, but trying to put that alltogether in a giant interconnected world is very daunting. I decided to do this all on paper first so it'd be quicker to iterate, starting with really rough sketches of each region and the things that should be there guiding me on what the structure should roughly be like.
I then taped together a bunch of grid paper so I could have one 'main' map rather than keep swapping between what was already like 7-8 sheets of sketches, and started to pencil out the first couple regions together. After sketching I then started to color in the areas, which was some nice screenbreak time but also let me think more about the regions and how the player would progress through them all.
As a final step I then went over the area with a pen to mark some key stuff - where lilypad crossings would be, gates, doors to rooms etc. I could then use this later for mapping the actual content or paths. I didn't really need to color in all the darker water for most regions, but tbh it was just fun to do and baby ellraiser used to draw custom rayman 1 overworld maps when they were young so who am I to deny my inner child!
It took me about 8 days but eventially I had the final map! Technically it's still not the final map as there's a couple areas I didn't want to put on the map for spoiler reasons and I knew I'd be taking photos of it and posting it around. However its good enough to keep me on the right track and remind me of what goes where - I'm also really happy with some of the routing of the areas, I think it should be really fun to explore and unlock and backtrack!
With that done I could start plugging it into Tiled - I tried to not be too strict with blocking out the areas, at first I was doing like exact square by square, at great eye-straining cost, but then I realised really I just needed to make sure the regions were roughly where I expected them to be and got a bit more loose with some island shapes. Just this blocking stage along took some time, as I was first just blocking in the islands and water, then I was going and doing the 'proper' tiles, then the stone tiles and the grass/mud on top - this was so I could stop having to keep looking at the bigger map all the time.
Blocking out all the other regions took me all the way to pretty much the end of the month, on paper (lol) it doesnt sound like much to have a 500x400 map, but after actually drawing it all I can say it really is!
With all that done there was still lots to be done - for each region I need to add all the stone + grass "decor" (cracks, bricks, grass patches, posters etc). Then I need to add the actual flora objects to the islands (grass, shrubs, trees), then add all the water plants for both the shallow and deeper areas, add all the world decoration, and then block out all the rooms! Then I need to do the collision layers for the bottom and top floors...
It took me about 2-3 days to go from the blocked out version of the first area, to a 'finished' area (that still needs a few last bits added to it) - to give an idea on the scale, there's about 15,000 objects in the screenshot below, including all the plants and grass and decoration, all placed by hand. I'm not going to do every single decoration and scenery piece for every other region right now, as thats something that can be done later - the main thing is making sure it all fits together and is walkable and all the doors lead to the right places.
Adding all the extra decoration and scenery is something I can do quickly at the end while doing playtesting/qa/localisation, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I wanted to get at least the first area fully finished off so that it's clear what each area will look like when finished up! [hr][/hr] Big old month really! I'm a lot further ahead in my rough plan than I expected to be, I was thinking I'd be deciding the last 3 region designs in November and had expected to do all the final designing in December - but with this approach I'm finishing an entire area at a time and the first one is nearly done now, so I'm feeling a bit less stressed than I was, just a 'normal' level of stress now :') Next I'll be going through the other regions, roughly placing some of the scenery (but not all), and just focus on the actual gameplay and the routes the player will take so that I can start doing some internal playtesting! ~ Ell
[ 2024-11-01 12:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends! Another month whizzing by, but I managed to get a lot done for Mudborne - here's what I've been up to. [hr][/hr]
Cold As Ice
Towards the end of last month I started designing the 4th region, where things are a bit colder.
At the start of this month I finished up that area, spending some time to make the snow look pretty, or add some details like the player breathing or skating around on the ice. I then decided the colors and plants for the 'dream' version, I wanted to keep the more turqoise color and boost the saturation, and then make the ice more of a lilac color to match the dream "white" i use a lot already.
The main mechanics of this area (apart from yeeting around on the ice) is using heaters and coolers - heaters so you can melt frozen paths or objects (or frogs), and coolers so you can create new ice. As you might have noticed in the screenshots above, the deeper water has ice too, which normally isn't passable by the player. By freezing the deeper water you can then cross over to areas you couldn't access before and find all sorts of places and secrets!
There'll be a few puzzles to work out using the heaters/coolers, but they also affect the nearby environment, allowing you to make the extreme ends of temperature for your mushrooms to find some new species. This means I can 'gate' off a few types of mushrooms and trait modifications until you've come to this region and gained access to the machines.
I also wanted a way to let the player turn on/off weather, as it does have some uses and although you can sleep until the next day for a different weather pattern, I like to give players full control over stuff like that as they progress. It also fits within the theme of the region, which is very much like a sort of 'climate control' type area - plus the idea of changing weather fits with the existing climate control machines. I tried to design the machines to be similar, but still have their own unique style.
I finished up some other bits and bobs and then that area was good to go! Now it was time to move onto what I thought would be the last area... [hr][/hr]
Central Hub
After getting past the 'tutorial' region of the Spawning Pools, you end up in a large central area that leads to all other areas, and it's where your main goal of the game is that you have to come back to. I wanted this one to be more unique and stand out to the other areas, and seem much more important (because it is!), so I went with a more purple palette to emulate some feelings of it being more 'connected' with the dream world.
I've tried to make all regions have some unique characteristics but I wanted some extra stuff with this region, hence the large purple lilypads and special pink trees, and the light pink pollen falling over the area. This is also the area that will have the large central 'temple', that is a giant version of the smaller gates you use in the game - will take me a while to finish drawing it, I reckon it'll probably still be one of the last things I'm tinkering with right down to release...
[hr][/hr]
Yet Another Region
I thought I was done at this point with adding regions and was relieved as there's a lot of setup involved in getting everything in and working - there is a 6th area but it felt like an extension of the central region at the time so I thought I'd use the same region style. However at the same time of doing all this I was also working on designing the full map for the game, and realised that this area would actually be a bit bigger than I thought initially, and also connects with the starting area so I wanted to make sure it had a different style to make it clearer that its not just part of the central area.
This region has a lot of different research labs, and is focused more in the dream area with lots of 'dream' research being done - there's a few different machines for this area but I don't want to spoil them too much so I'll just show their designs instead.
There's also quite a few big important lore things here, so you can't actually access it right away and instead have to come back later when you've progressed enough. With this region done I did some last little tests with each of the regions to make sure I was happy with how they looked - this is how my "developer" map looked by the end of it:
With that done I was about halfway through the month - now it was time for the biggest task of the entire game's development, actually designing the full world map. [hr][/hr]
Game Cartography
Trying to start tackling this was definitely one of the harder parts of making this game for me - I had all the pieces, the mechanics were all done, I knew roughly what each area would have and do, but trying to put that alltogether in a giant interconnected world is very daunting. I decided to do this all on paper first so it'd be quicker to iterate, starting with really rough sketches of each region and the things that should be there guiding me on what the structure should roughly be like.
I then taped together a bunch of grid paper so I could have one 'main' map rather than keep swapping between what was already like 7-8 sheets of sketches, and started to pencil out the first couple regions together. After sketching I then started to color in the areas, which was some nice screenbreak time but also let me think more about the regions and how the player would progress through them all.
As a final step I then went over the area with a pen to mark some key stuff - where lilypad crossings would be, gates, doors to rooms etc. I could then use this later for mapping the actual content or paths. I didn't really need to color in all the darker water for most regions, but tbh it was just fun to do and baby ellraiser used to draw custom rayman 1 overworld maps when they were young so who am I to deny my inner child!
It took me about 8 days but eventially I had the final map! Technically it's still not the final map as there's a couple areas I didn't want to put on the map for spoiler reasons and I knew I'd be taking photos of it and posting it around. However its good enough to keep me on the right track and remind me of what goes where - I'm also really happy with some of the routing of the areas, I think it should be really fun to explore and unlock and backtrack!
With that done I could start plugging it into Tiled - I tried to not be too strict with blocking out the areas, at first I was doing like exact square by square, at great eye-straining cost, but then I realised really I just needed to make sure the regions were roughly where I expected them to be and got a bit more loose with some island shapes. Just this blocking stage along took some time, as I was first just blocking in the islands and water, then I was going and doing the 'proper' tiles, then the stone tiles and the grass/mud on top - this was so I could stop having to keep looking at the bigger map all the time.
Blocking out all the other regions took me all the way to pretty much the end of the month, on paper (lol) it doesnt sound like much to have a 500x400 map, but after actually drawing it all I can say it really is!
With all that done there was still lots to be done - for each region I need to add all the stone + grass "decor" (cracks, bricks, grass patches, posters etc). Then I need to add the actual flora objects to the islands (grass, shrubs, trees), then add all the water plants for both the shallow and deeper areas, add all the world decoration, and then block out all the rooms! Then I need to do the collision layers for the bottom and top floors...
It took me about 2-3 days to go from the blocked out version of the first area, to a 'finished' area (that still needs a few last bits added to it) - to give an idea on the scale, there's about 15,000 objects in the screenshot below, including all the plants and grass and decoration, all placed by hand. I'm not going to do every single decoration and scenery piece for every other region right now, as thats something that can be done later - the main thing is making sure it all fits together and is walkable and all the doors lead to the right places.
Adding all the extra decoration and scenery is something I can do quickly at the end while doing playtesting/qa/localisation, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I wanted to get at least the first area fully finished off so that it's clear what each area will look like when finished up! [hr][/hr] Big old month really! I'm a lot further ahead in my rough plan than I expected to be, I was thinking I'd be deciding the last 3 region designs in November and had expected to do all the final designing in December - but with this approach I'm finishing an entire area at a time and the first one is nearly done now, so I'm feeling a bit less stressed than I was, just a 'normal' level of stress now :') Next I'll be going through the other regions, roughly placing some of the scenery (but not all), and just focus on the actual gameplay and the routes the player will take so that I can start doing some internal playtesting! ~ Ell
[ 2024-11-01 12:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]
Devlog #6 - Garden Variety
After finishing the designs for all of the mechanics, I also spent some time trying to design how each of the 5 main regions would look and feel.
Originally when doing the overworld design I didn't think much more than what the waking vs dream world, but now I knew roughly the size of the world and the areas in it I knew I couldn't get away with just using the same "biome" style throughout the game - sure I could do a few different flora/fauna and setpieces to match the utility of that area in-game, but I wanted to make each of the regions more unique and interesting. I went through a lot of different styles before settling, here's a few of them! 1. Initial idea, blue/greens for waking and then more vibrant for the dream
2. More detailed flora + grass that you can see in the first two green areas, can also start to see more interesting tree designs + stone decoration for the islands
3. Settling on the third "residential" area and the dream counterparts for the first three regions, plus starting to narrow down the snowy + central region styles
4. The current designs, with the first 4 regions implemented while I still tinker with the final central region
Lots of the color changes were tweaked slightly over time too - the first concept was drawn towards the start of september, the fourth one is what is currently used in-game (although still working on the 5th one)
The main thing I wanted was to have lots of variety and interesting plants and flora to make each region feel more unique outside of just palette changes - some areas also go a step further with some larger unique stuff, like the algae in the swamps or the flooded rooms in the residential district.
As I was designing them I changed the grass style to be an actual texture - darker blades that are part of the tiles themselves, and then lighter blades that I actually individually place. I think this was a nice middle ground as I can get some unique grass patterns that are not tiled and dont look too repetitive. I also added a lot more stone tile decoration stuff, like the bricks or the vines - just to help make those sections more interesting as in contrast to the water they were very flat and empty. For comparison this is what the demo had for a standards building:
And here is a normal building in the full game with the newer designs:
It's a bit more work to create the levels now as I have a lot more stuff to place manually - but I think the end result is worth it and let's me have much more interesting and pretty areas to explore, which is important for a game where I want players to explore and find all the secrets. [hr][/hr]
While working on and off on the actual world style, I started to work on implementing some of the new mechanics for the full game - the main one not really covered by the demo in any way is spore printing and hybrid mushrooms. As it stands in the demo you farm mushrooms, each with a special effect to modify traits. You can then combine 3 of these together into 1 "magic mud" to modify your frogspawn.
With hybrid mushrooms the idea is that you can combine any two standard mushrooms together to make 1 mushroom with the effects of both - this means you could have up to 6 modifications within one generation! To do this you collect spores from either natural spawns or your farms, and then you make 'prints' of the spores to paper, which lets you print two different mushrooms to the same piece of spore paper.
You can then use this paper in your farms - so instead of waiting for spores to form naturally you can just set the spores you want. You wouldn't even need to use a hybrid spore paper for this either, so it's a bit more control on exactly the spores you're farming. Once the mushrooms bloom (as hybrids either mushroom's conditions can be met), you gather them as normal and grind them into powder as normal - but they are now a hybrid mushroom/powder with both effects applying to them when used.
This will get a bit complex, but it will be useful for a bunch of reasons - you can counteract 'bad' modifications you don't want into one mushroom, you can do more changes quickly in less generations, and then the main reason to solve more complex genetic puzzles. It also gives the player a lot more options to approach making a genetic key, as there will be more than 1 'correct' answer or combination to meet the trait changes required across generations. [hr][/hr]
In the demo you're just in an area based off the 'Spawning Pools'. In the full-game, after leaving this area to a central hub region, one of the first main regions you can go to is the Kindergarten.
This is the region where frogspawn+tadpoles are raised at the pond, as well as where mushrooms and bugs are farmed for resources and food. Because of that the gameplay focus of this area is on learning about hybrid mushrooms, getting some better farming options, and upgrading the bug collection mechanics to make it easier to get bugs en-masse - like the bug traps that let you use extra-stinky frogs to attract and catch bugs automatically while you're away.
It also introduces the first overworld "obstacle" (not counting the puzzles like the gates or the pressure pads or lilypads) - algae blooms.
These deadly blooms can't be crossed, so you need to clear them. Luckily you have a whole hoard of frogs at your disposal, and by boosting the "Edacity" trait you can make some very hungry frogs that'll eat anything not nailed down. Placing them in filters will slowly clear the algae nearby and let you pass through to the areas they're blocking off.
When you come to this region you'll get to learn about how to handle algae and given the tools to clear it - but you would of already come across some smaller blooms in other regions. So once you have the machines and the frogs from this region you can go back and explore those other areas. I also wanted some stagnant water pools to this area as it seemed fitting with the theme that certain areas would be blocked off to make stagnant pools for certain bugs or flora to grow in - not entirely sure what I'll use these for yet but it's nice to have some stuff open ended for when I come to the actual real world design and playtesting to tie everything together.
While testing all of this I've been using a "dev" map - which is just a bunch of different regions slapped together each with a mini-island.
It's helping me visualise the look+feel of each region and means I've already implemented the gruntwork for adding that region - when it comes to designing the map of the full game I won't have to do much more work outside of just creating the areas, the rest is ready to go. [hr][/hr]
Moving onto the next main area, the residential district - this focus on two main things, Saturation, and Croakwork. Saturation is one of the frog traits, the higher the trait the wetter the frog, the lower the trait the dryer the frog. This is taken to extremes in this region, as you will get the ability to make a 1S frog that is so dry it absorbs water, and a 7S frog that is so wet is seemingly makes more water. Together this frogs can be used with a Dehumidifer + a Hydrator to effect the nearby environment.
This is hinted at in the demo with the standard cultivators - that there'll be mushrooms that require the extremes of moisture and temperature, and this is the first region to cover those extremes. Using these machines lets you make the environment a lot wetter and dryer than it should be - for example making extremely damp indoors regions, or extremely dry water (has science gone too far?).
An even more extreme use of this trait comes in with "croakwork" machines - automated machines powered by the sound of frogs, created by the Engineer. The first of these machines is the Drainer - a powerful croakwork machine that uses minimum saturation frogs to drain the flooded rooms of the residential district.
You can enter these rooms at first, however you can't interact with any of the flooded objects until you drain the room - revealing the objects plus anything else that might have been hiding under the water... By draining the rooms you're helping to restore the region ready for the hibernating frogs to return, as well as uncovering some pathways to get around the area and find other secret places or basements.
Other croakwork machines introduced here include the "Masher" - an automated grinder upgrade, and the "Harvester" - an automated machine that will harvest nearby blooming mushrooms and renewables automatically.
There's not a lot in Mudborne that needs to be automated, so there's not too many machines, but there's a few that should be useful and as I play more I'll be able to spot any processes that might need an upgrade that can be added to the Engineer's stock. [hr][/hr]
While implementing these two regions I was also messing around with some flooring designs. Both the algae and the flooded room water are types of flooring, so I was already having to implement that system and the auto-tiling stuff, so it was easy enough to then start adding more decorative flooring. These will go alongside a whole host of decorative items and furniture to allow you to make any area you're own.
I tried to give both the wooded flooring and wooden piers a bit more interesting textures to them too rather than being perfect repetitive planks, as the original texture (ripped from APICO) no longer matched with all the new design stuff I'd done with the environment.
I had to do some messing around with the flora in the water and the new grass, as due to how I render the order of certain things the flora would be on top - so when placing tiles you temporarily disable any flora underneath so it's not causing issues. This is similar to how the algae disables any plants underneath it, meaning that you can't get bugs or mushrooms on any areas of water covered in algae - and also what I'd use with ice to decide whether to show a frozen/snow covered variant of the sprite instead of the default one. [hr][/hr]
After finishing up those two areas and all the mechanics in them, towards the end of this month I started working on the icy region, Cold Storage. This is where the residents of the research pool store their food and genetic materials, using the cold to keep things preserved. This area introduces temperature extremes (hot+cold), as well as ice that can be thawed out - or created to allow you to cross deeper water by freezing it.
I've only just now started to get the region loaded into the game - there was a lot of design stuff I was doing first. However now it's here I can work on the new machines that utilise the temperature and let you freeze water or melt ice. There'll be other things to unfreeze too - frogs, gates, and NPC...
As it's the region themed around storage you'll also get a whole bunch of new storage themed upgrades and advancements, like a big box to store all your frogs and search them easily, or an upgraded cauldron that can store all of your powders inside. [hr][/hr] While doing all of this there was a few other odd bits and bobs I was working on, like polyps which are growable jellyfish for the dream world - or huge mangroves which will have a special use in the dream.
I was hoping to have done all the mechanics this month and implement them all, but I ended up not getting through them because I was sidetracked by adding the actual regions themselves - I didn't need to for most of the mechanics (and even flooding/ice I could of tested without the region itself), but I think it helped me see how the region would look and tweak things with the mechanics to fit better into the world that I wouldn't of done otherwise. Over October I'll be finishing up the cold region and the central region, and getting through the last lot of machines to implement (orange, purple and brown sections below)
With that done I'll then be able to leave the developer map behind and start designing the actual world itself - which is going to be most of the game development time I think! ~ Ell
[ 2024-09-30 15:10:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends! The last month I was able to work on Mudborne pretty much full-time, so I got a whole lot designed and implemented - let's get into it all. [hr][/hr]
Biodiversity
After finishing the designs for all of the mechanics, I also spent some time trying to design how each of the 5 main regions would look and feel.
Originally when doing the overworld design I didn't think much more than what the waking vs dream world, but now I knew roughly the size of the world and the areas in it I knew I couldn't get away with just using the same "biome" style throughout the game - sure I could do a few different flora/fauna and setpieces to match the utility of that area in-game, but I wanted to make each of the regions more unique and interesting. I went through a lot of different styles before settling, here's a few of them! 1. Initial idea, blue/greens for waking and then more vibrant for the dream
2. More detailed flora + grass that you can see in the first two green areas, can also start to see more interesting tree designs + stone decoration for the islands
3. Settling on the third "residential" area and the dream counterparts for the first three regions, plus starting to narrow down the snowy + central region styles
4. The current designs, with the first 4 regions implemented while I still tinker with the final central region
Lots of the color changes were tweaked slightly over time too - the first concept was drawn towards the start of september, the fourth one is what is currently used in-game (although still working on the 5th one)
The main thing I wanted was to have lots of variety and interesting plants and flora to make each region feel more unique outside of just palette changes - some areas also go a step further with some larger unique stuff, like the algae in the swamps or the flooded rooms in the residential district.
As I was designing them I changed the grass style to be an actual texture - darker blades that are part of the tiles themselves, and then lighter blades that I actually individually place. I think this was a nice middle ground as I can get some unique grass patterns that are not tiled and dont look too repetitive. I also added a lot more stone tile decoration stuff, like the bricks or the vines - just to help make those sections more interesting as in contrast to the water they were very flat and empty. For comparison this is what the demo had for a standards building:
And here is a normal building in the full game with the newer designs:
It's a bit more work to create the levels now as I have a lot more stuff to place manually - but I think the end result is worth it and let's me have much more interesting and pretty areas to explore, which is important for a game where I want players to explore and find all the secrets. [hr][/hr]
Spore Printing
While working on and off on the actual world style, I started to work on implementing some of the new mechanics for the full game - the main one not really covered by the demo in any way is spore printing and hybrid mushrooms. As it stands in the demo you farm mushrooms, each with a special effect to modify traits. You can then combine 3 of these together into 1 "magic mud" to modify your frogspawn.
With hybrid mushrooms the idea is that you can combine any two standard mushrooms together to make 1 mushroom with the effects of both - this means you could have up to 6 modifications within one generation! To do this you collect spores from either natural spawns or your farms, and then you make 'prints' of the spores to paper, which lets you print two different mushrooms to the same piece of spore paper.
You can then use this paper in your farms - so instead of waiting for spores to form naturally you can just set the spores you want. You wouldn't even need to use a hybrid spore paper for this either, so it's a bit more control on exactly the spores you're farming. Once the mushrooms bloom (as hybrids either mushroom's conditions can be met), you gather them as normal and grind them into powder as normal - but they are now a hybrid mushroom/powder with both effects applying to them when used.
This will get a bit complex, but it will be useful for a bunch of reasons - you can counteract 'bad' modifications you don't want into one mushroom, you can do more changes quickly in less generations, and then the main reason to solve more complex genetic puzzles. It also gives the player a lot more options to approach making a genetic key, as there will be more than 1 'correct' answer or combination to meet the trait changes required across generations. [hr][/hr]
The Kindergarten
In the demo you're just in an area based off the 'Spawning Pools'. In the full-game, after leaving this area to a central hub region, one of the first main regions you can go to is the Kindergarten.
This is the region where frogspawn+tadpoles are raised at the pond, as well as where mushrooms and bugs are farmed for resources and food. Because of that the gameplay focus of this area is on learning about hybrid mushrooms, getting some better farming options, and upgrading the bug collection mechanics to make it easier to get bugs en-masse - like the bug traps that let you use extra-stinky frogs to attract and catch bugs automatically while you're away.
It also introduces the first overworld "obstacle" (not counting the puzzles like the gates or the pressure pads or lilypads) - algae blooms.
These deadly blooms can't be crossed, so you need to clear them. Luckily you have a whole hoard of frogs at your disposal, and by boosting the "Edacity" trait you can make some very hungry frogs that'll eat anything not nailed down. Placing them in filters will slowly clear the algae nearby and let you pass through to the areas they're blocking off.
When you come to this region you'll get to learn about how to handle algae and given the tools to clear it - but you would of already come across some smaller blooms in other regions. So once you have the machines and the frogs from this region you can go back and explore those other areas. I also wanted some stagnant water pools to this area as it seemed fitting with the theme that certain areas would be blocked off to make stagnant pools for certain bugs or flora to grow in - not entirely sure what I'll use these for yet but it's nice to have some stuff open ended for when I come to the actual real world design and playtesting to tie everything together.
While testing all of this I've been using a "dev" map - which is just a bunch of different regions slapped together each with a mini-island.
It's helping me visualise the look+feel of each region and means I've already implemented the gruntwork for adding that region - when it comes to designing the map of the full game I won't have to do much more work outside of just creating the areas, the rest is ready to go. [hr][/hr]
Residential District
Moving onto the next main area, the residential district - this focus on two main things, Saturation, and Croakwork. Saturation is one of the frog traits, the higher the trait the wetter the frog, the lower the trait the dryer the frog. This is taken to extremes in this region, as you will get the ability to make a 1S frog that is so dry it absorbs water, and a 7S frog that is so wet is seemingly makes more water. Together this frogs can be used with a Dehumidifer + a Hydrator to effect the nearby environment.
This is hinted at in the demo with the standard cultivators - that there'll be mushrooms that require the extremes of moisture and temperature, and this is the first region to cover those extremes. Using these machines lets you make the environment a lot wetter and dryer than it should be - for example making extremely damp indoors regions, or extremely dry water (has science gone too far?).
An even more extreme use of this trait comes in with "croakwork" machines - automated machines powered by the sound of frogs, created by the Engineer. The first of these machines is the Drainer - a powerful croakwork machine that uses minimum saturation frogs to drain the flooded rooms of the residential district.
You can enter these rooms at first, however you can't interact with any of the flooded objects until you drain the room - revealing the objects plus anything else that might have been hiding under the water... By draining the rooms you're helping to restore the region ready for the hibernating frogs to return, as well as uncovering some pathways to get around the area and find other secret places or basements.
Other croakwork machines introduced here include the "Masher" - an automated grinder upgrade, and the "Harvester" - an automated machine that will harvest nearby blooming mushrooms and renewables automatically.
There's not a lot in Mudborne that needs to be automated, so there's not too many machines, but there's a few that should be useful and as I play more I'll be able to spot any processes that might need an upgrade that can be added to the Engineer's stock. [hr][/hr]
Fancy Flooring
While implementing these two regions I was also messing around with some flooring designs. Both the algae and the flooded room water are types of flooring, so I was already having to implement that system and the auto-tiling stuff, so it was easy enough to then start adding more decorative flooring. These will go alongside a whole host of decorative items and furniture to allow you to make any area you're own.
I tried to give both the wooded flooring and wooden piers a bit more interesting textures to them too rather than being perfect repetitive planks, as the original texture (ripped from APICO) no longer matched with all the new design stuff I'd done with the environment.
I had to do some messing around with the flora in the water and the new grass, as due to how I render the order of certain things the flora would be on top - so when placing tiles you temporarily disable any flora underneath so it's not causing issues. This is similar to how the algae disables any plants underneath it, meaning that you can't get bugs or mushrooms on any areas of water covered in algae - and also what I'd use with ice to decide whether to show a frozen/snow covered variant of the sprite instead of the default one. [hr][/hr]
Ice Frog Cometh
After finishing up those two areas and all the mechanics in them, towards the end of this month I started working on the icy region, Cold Storage. This is where the residents of the research pool store their food and genetic materials, using the cold to keep things preserved. This area introduces temperature extremes (hot+cold), as well as ice that can be thawed out - or created to allow you to cross deeper water by freezing it.
I've only just now started to get the region loaded into the game - there was a lot of design stuff I was doing first. However now it's here I can work on the new machines that utilise the temperature and let you freeze water or melt ice. There'll be other things to unfreeze too - frogs, gates, and NPC...
As it's the region themed around storage you'll also get a whole bunch of new storage themed upgrades and advancements, like a big box to store all your frogs and search them easily, or an upgraded cauldron that can store all of your powders inside. [hr][/hr] While doing all of this there was a few other odd bits and bobs I was working on, like polyps which are growable jellyfish for the dream world - or huge mangroves which will have a special use in the dream.
I was hoping to have done all the mechanics this month and implement them all, but I ended up not getting through them because I was sidetracked by adding the actual regions themselves - I didn't need to for most of the mechanics (and even flooding/ice I could of tested without the region itself), but I think it helped me see how the region would look and tweak things with the mechanics to fit better into the world that I wouldn't of done otherwise. Over October I'll be finishing up the cold region and the central region, and getting through the last lot of machines to implement (orange, purple and brown sections below)
With that done I'll then be able to leave the developer map behind and start designing the actual world itself - which is going to be most of the game development time I think! ~ Ell
[ 2024-09-30 15:10:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.2.0
[ 2024-09-30 11:48:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes - Increased stack size from 99 to 999 - Updated some sprites (mainly overworld grass) to keep in line with the full game's style changes Bug Fixes - Fixed genetics tooltip not refreshing with correct data on same-species frogs - Fixed water wading sound fx missing - Fixed particles initial position being wrong (more noticeable on jelly pfx)
[ 2024-09-30 11:48:15 CET ] [ Original post ]
Devlog #5 - The Long Road Ahead
It's a bit daunting having to just sit down and make the rest of the game, and hard to know roughly where to start. I spent a few days just picking at random areas, and trying to combine various notes that I'd written while making the demo - both physical ones and random ones on my phone when ideas hit me. After getting nowhere with that approach apart from some bigger, slightly more organised lists, I decided I'd start with trying to plan out the world map, and the regions inside it. I thought this might help me narrow down the journey the player will take, and the different mechanics/frogs/npcs/story that would tie into that region.
For each region I narrowed down the details seperately to give me a rough starting point, as well as a list of the items/machines the player would find there.
From here I could then plot out all the new items + machines as well as their related mechanics, and start drawing them all out. This helped me a lot as I could focus on one specific region and worry about the whole picture later. I made little sections in aseprite for each region, and drew out all the machines for each one, as well as any other items. While some of the machines will probably change a lot when I actually implement them and start playing with them properly in-game, it gave me a good starting point - as well as letting me make sure all the machines were consistent with each other with the different concepts + layouts introduced.
Each of the coloured regions in both the scribbled map and the aseprite image above represents an area of the game, which will introduce the player to certain concepts... [hr][/hr]
The demo is loosely based on this area, will be a few less quest introduced as i needed to pack more into the demo, so will be a bit more chill in the real game, but still take you through the basics of getting new frogs + making magic mud.
There'll be a few tweaks to some of the machines that exist in the demo, like the cultivator having a seperate output bucket slot, and a few new bits too, like a new "breeder" machine for making lots of frogspawn/tadpoles for a given species.
(Sidenote: the bright green outlines in the larger screenshot of all regions isn't part of the game - it's actually just to help me keep track of what I've implemented/changed so I can quickly see what I still need to do!) [hr][/hr]
This will be a central temple area with a GIANT version of the little gates you see (like you're standing on a huge platform thats the tiny little stone step of the normal pools).
This is the "goal" of the game to open to help bring back the Pondmother and all the frogs in hibernation, with one really big genetic lock to open, but you have to go do a bunch of stuff in three "key" areas to open the path first - will be one of the salvage team here to speak to and teach some advanced stuff like ancestry (which I introduce a bit "earlier" in the demo just to show where things are going) For the most part the "machines" here are like the reflection gates, specific one-off structures with their own fancy interface and requirements - I won't get into details here and let you try and interpret the designs yourself!
[hr][/hr]
The first "key" area, kindergarten, mentioned in the demo - this is where you meet the botanist and learn about mushroom hybrids, also where you come across deadly algae blooms you need to remove by using v. hungry frogs (edacity/energy trait), and get some improved bug stuff, like bug traps to gather more bugs quickly using stinky frogs.
The algae blooms are a physical thing that prevent you moving past them as well as stop any growth or bug spawns, nasty stuff! But once you get the mushrooms of this area and boost your frogs you'll be able to eat it up in no time, and also go remove some of the algae you find in other areas that you might have already come across.
Hybrids essentially let you combine any two standard mushrooms, meaning 1 powder can have 2 effects (so up to 6 effects in one magic mud!) - lots of brain melting in your future I'm afraid :D
[hr][/hr]
This is where you meet the engineer and have to help fix the flooded houses with min. saturation frogs to help "drain" them - unflooding the houses then leads to other areas you couldnt access and some lore stuff.
There'll be some other uses too, by mastering saturation you'll be able to provide extremely dry and extremely wet environments for your cultivators, giving you access to some new mushrooms you couldn't get before.
This is also the region you'll be introduced to "croakwork" machines - some lite automation machines powered by ribbets that remove a bunch of the "manual" labour from the game (harvest mushrooms, grind mushrooms, chop trees etc).
[hr][/hr]
Cold storage is the region where the pond stores their food and resources, as well as where the caretakers have their own special residence. Things here have gone a bit haywire without anything looking after stuff, and so you'll be met with a much colder environment that usual.
By mastering the "Umbrage" trait, you'll be able to produce some very angry frogs that give off so much heat you can start to thaw the region, and access stuff that's been frozen over for a while now.
You'll also be able to access the climate extreme mushrooms (1/7 temp), plus better storage upgrades thanks to the blueprints in this area.
[hr][/hr]
A sort of dream "skunkworks" lab area with some interesting prototype machines, and some more exploration of the dream world and it's properties. You'll need to have got the mushrooms/machines from at least 2 of the key areas to access - this will have some more useful stuff like the predictor/analyser type machines of the demo, cloning machines, generation reversal etc
By this point you'll have also come across "forgotten" sections of the dream, places where the memories of the hibernating frogs have failed. You'll be able to restore these regions with memory fragments, allowing you access to stuff that's been forgotten, or repressed...
I haven't 100% narrowed down exactly how this mechanic works yet, but I don't need to right now - I just know there'll be these "barriers" to restore and you'll have a few tools to do so. Whatever it ends up being I'm sure there'll be some puzzle elements/maths involved, as you know I love to do!
[hr][/hr]
While those are the main "areas" there'll be plenty of other smaller locations and set pieces to visit, and the mechanics introduced by each region are not limited to that area - so there'll be lots of places to explore and unlock by revisiting an area once you've got access to new machines or frogs (frogvania? frogtroidvania?)
There's also a story to follow along and history to uncover, so exploring will reward you in not only new stuff but new secrets too! It'll be a lot to design but it'll be worth it in the end.
It's also not 100% set in stone, I'm sure a lot of stuff will change, like who you meet and where, or how certain machines work, or how some of the mechanics might work - but in general this is roughly what I'm thinking right now. Once I start implementing stuff it's easy to see what's wrong/missing, so I'm not too worried that I don't have it all nailed down!
I also have a list of like 100 odd misc. stuff, like decoration or your own house or fast travel or pets or fancier frog furniture which all has to go somewhere too, but that's a future ell problem :D
[hr][/hr] For the next month or so I'll just be working solidly on implementing all the machines + items to cover the mechanics I've talked about above - by the end I should be able to make a new map with all the new mechanics so I can playtest them all properly together, and then can go from there! ~ Ell
[ 2024-09-02 11:12:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Mudborne's new demo is finally out, and it's been lovely to see how much you've all been enjoying it <3 Now that the dust has settled and the demo is stable enough for the time being, I can get started on actually building the full game - no pressure me! [hr][/hr]
World Building
It's a bit daunting having to just sit down and make the rest of the game, and hard to know roughly where to start. I spent a few days just picking at random areas, and trying to combine various notes that I'd written while making the demo - both physical ones and random ones on my phone when ideas hit me. After getting nowhere with that approach apart from some bigger, slightly more organised lists, I decided I'd start with trying to plan out the world map, and the regions inside it. I thought this might help me narrow down the journey the player will take, and the different mechanics/frogs/npcs/story that would tie into that region.
For each region I narrowed down the details seperately to give me a rough starting point, as well as a list of the items/machines the player would find there.
From here I could then plot out all the new items + machines as well as their related mechanics, and start drawing them all out. This helped me a lot as I could focus on one specific region and worry about the whole picture later. I made little sections in aseprite for each region, and drew out all the machines for each one, as well as any other items. While some of the machines will probably change a lot when I actually implement them and start playing with them properly in-game, it gave me a good starting point - as well as letting me make sure all the machines were consistent with each other with the different concepts + layouts introduced.
Each of the coloured regions in both the scribbled map and the aseprite image above represents an area of the game, which will introduce the player to certain concepts... [hr][/hr]
Spawning Pools (Light Green)
The demo is loosely based on this area, will be a few less quest introduced as i needed to pack more into the demo, so will be a bit more chill in the real game, but still take you through the basics of getting new frogs + making magic mud.
There'll be a few tweaks to some of the machines that exist in the demo, like the cultivator having a seperate output bucket slot, and a few new bits too, like a new "breeder" machine for making lots of frogspawn/tadpoles for a given species.
(Sidenote: the bright green outlines in the larger screenshot of all regions isn't part of the game - it's actually just to help me keep track of what I've implemented/changed so I can quickly see what I still need to do!) [hr][/hr]
Grand Gate (Brown)
This will be a central temple area with a GIANT version of the little gates you see (like you're standing on a huge platform thats the tiny little stone step of the normal pools).
This is the "goal" of the game to open to help bring back the Pondmother and all the frogs in hibernation, with one really big genetic lock to open, but you have to go do a bunch of stuff in three "key" areas to open the path first - will be one of the salvage team here to speak to and teach some advanced stuff like ancestry (which I introduce a bit "earlier" in the demo just to show where things are going) For the most part the "machines" here are like the reflection gates, specific one-off structures with their own fancy interface and requirements - I won't get into details here and let you try and interpret the designs yourself!
[hr][/hr]
Kindergarten (Green)
The first "key" area, kindergarten, mentioned in the demo - this is where you meet the botanist and learn about mushroom hybrids, also where you come across deadly algae blooms you need to remove by using v. hungry frogs (edacity/energy trait), and get some improved bug stuff, like bug traps to gather more bugs quickly using stinky frogs.
The algae blooms are a physical thing that prevent you moving past them as well as stop any growth or bug spawns, nasty stuff! But once you get the mushrooms of this area and boost your frogs you'll be able to eat it up in no time, and also go remove some of the algae you find in other areas that you might have already come across.
Hybrids essentially let you combine any two standard mushrooms, meaning 1 powder can have 2 effects (so up to 6 effects in one magic mud!) - lots of brain melting in your future I'm afraid :D
[hr][/hr]
Residential District (Blue)
This is where you meet the engineer and have to help fix the flooded houses with min. saturation frogs to help "drain" them - unflooding the houses then leads to other areas you couldnt access and some lore stuff.
There'll be some other uses too, by mastering saturation you'll be able to provide extremely dry and extremely wet environments for your cultivators, giving you access to some new mushrooms you couldn't get before.
This is also the region you'll be introduced to "croakwork" machines - some lite automation machines powered by ribbets that remove a bunch of the "manual" labour from the game (harvest mushrooms, grind mushrooms, chop trees etc).
[hr][/hr]
Cold Storage (Yellow)
Cold storage is the region where the pond stores their food and resources, as well as where the caretakers have their own special residence. Things here have gone a bit haywire without anything looking after stuff, and so you'll be met with a much colder environment that usual.
By mastering the "Umbrage" trait, you'll be able to produce some very angry frogs that give off so much heat you can start to thaw the region, and access stuff that's been frozen over for a while now.
You'll also be able to access the climate extreme mushrooms (1/7 temp), plus better storage upgrades thanks to the blueprints in this area.
[hr][/hr]
Dream Lab (Purple)
A sort of dream "skunkworks" lab area with some interesting prototype machines, and some more exploration of the dream world and it's properties. You'll need to have got the mushrooms/machines from at least 2 of the key areas to access - this will have some more useful stuff like the predictor/analyser type machines of the demo, cloning machines, generation reversal etc
By this point you'll have also come across "forgotten" sections of the dream, places where the memories of the hibernating frogs have failed. You'll be able to restore these regions with memory fragments, allowing you access to stuff that's been forgotten, or repressed...
I haven't 100% narrowed down exactly how this mechanic works yet, but I don't need to right now - I just know there'll be these "barriers" to restore and you'll have a few tools to do so. Whatever it ends up being I'm sure there'll be some puzzle elements/maths involved, as you know I love to do!
[hr][/hr]
Everything Else
While those are the main "areas" there'll be plenty of other smaller locations and set pieces to visit, and the mechanics introduced by each region are not limited to that area - so there'll be lots of places to explore and unlock by revisiting an area once you've got access to new machines or frogs (frogvania? frogtroidvania?)
There's also a story to follow along and history to uncover, so exploring will reward you in not only new stuff but new secrets too! It'll be a lot to design but it'll be worth it in the end.
It's also not 100% set in stone, I'm sure a lot of stuff will change, like who you meet and where, or how certain machines work, or how some of the mechanics might work - but in general this is roughly what I'm thinking right now. Once I start implementing stuff it's easy to see what's wrong/missing, so I'm not too worried that I don't have it all nailed down!
I also have a list of like 100 odd misc. stuff, like decoration or your own house or fast travel or pets or fancier frog furniture which all has to go somewhere too, but that's a future ell problem :D
[hr][/hr] For the next month or so I'll just be working solidly on implementing all the machines + items to cover the mechanics I've talked about above - by the end I should be able to make a new map with all the new mechanics so I can playtest them all properly together, and then can go from there! ~ Ell
[ 2024-09-02 11:12:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.1.1
[ 2024-08-23 09:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes - Fixed crash with some fx being created OOB - Fixed name entry crashing when using backspace while empty
[ 2024-08-23 09:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.1.0
[ 2024-08-22 18:06:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes - Added a respawn button for emergencies (hold R for 5s) - Added pin buttons for menus, toggling these on will keep the menu pinned to it's last position when re-opening - Turned off auto-pausing when window loses focus as mostly complaints about this (i thought it'd be nice soz) Bug Fixes - Fixed cultivators in the opposite world making PFX visible in your current one - Fixed frogs spawning from a feeder not being in the same world as the feeder - Fixed absorbant compost given by quest book being infinite - Fixed Saltgrove acorns being placeable in the dream world - Fixed incorrect bounding boxes on tree saplings
[ 2024-08-22 18:06:47 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.0.3
[ 2024-08-16 14:19:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes - Updated natural spore quest+tooltip to make things clearer Fixes - Fixed issue with some dream frogs/flowers bleeding into the waking world + vice-versa - Fixed issue with jellyfish duplication when swapping world a bunch - Fixed composter giving 2 compost per cycle, no free buckets for you this isnt a charity - Fixed progress bars growing wider than the sprite size - Fixed hotbar slot sort putting items in the first hand slot - Fixed spawner/nursery pfx showing in the opposite world
[ 2024-08-16 14:19:28 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.0.2
[ 2024-08-15 08:53:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Changes - Increased book text contrast Fixes - Fixed crafted Progenitor items being infinitely placeable - Fixed z-index of highlight arrow for frogs in decor - Fixed bbox of smaller spas making it hard to highlight frogs inside - Fixed gate progress persisting from an old save to a new save - Fixed some special characters causing a crash in name entry
[ 2024-08-15 08:53:09 CET ] [ Original post ]
Demo 1.0.1
[ 2024-08-15 07:41:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Bug Fixes - Fixed chapter icons having no tooltip title - Fixed not being able to bind controls properly on non-QWERTY keyboards - Fixed not being able to bind arrow keys to movement - Fixed trashing empty slot counting for quest progress - Fixed pillars disappearing near camera boundary - Fixed backpack menu showing ontop of the pause menu - Fixed issue with opening book after multiple notifications
[ 2024-08-15 07:41:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
New Demo Out Now!
[ 2024-08-15 07:40:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello Mud Born! I'm excited to announce that new demo for Mudborne is out now and live on Steam!!! I'm also excited to announce I'm teaming up with Future Friends on this one to help me publish it. Whether you played the original gamejam version or not youre in for a treat, as this is a completely new game, new art, new mechanics, new music, new engine - the whole works. Im really looking forward to you all getting your slimy green hands on it <3 Check the trailer out below for a sneak peak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJq7u9hcAUg&ab_channel=TNgineersOfficial I've also updated the roadmap for the game so you can see what stuff is planned for the full-game! https://steamcommunity.com/app/2355150/discussions/0/4429939323286608245/ Hop you enjoy!! ~ Ell
[ 2024-08-15 07:40:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Mudborne Demo Out Now!
[ 2024-08-14 14:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends - IT'S NEW GAME TIME!
Im excited to announce that Mudbornes new demo is out RIGHT NOW on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/
Im also excited to announce that the lovely folks at Future Friends will be helping to publish your new fav froggy game with me. Check out the trailer below for a sneak peak of what you're in for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJq7u9hcAUg&ab_channel=TNgineersOfficial
A spiritual successor of sorts to APICO, Mudborne instead focuses on genetic manipulation and generational puzzles to create and discover all sorts of frog species, that act as keys to let you travel between the waking and dreaming worlds - the demo takes you through the main mechanics and creating 8 different species. If you love APICO I think youll love this, theres a lot of stuff Im doing differently but you should still feel right at home.
Whether you played the original gamejam version or not youre in for a treat, as this is a completely new game, new art, new mechanics, new music, new engine - the whole works. Im really looking forward to you all getting your slimy green hands on it, I hop you enjoy!! <3
Dampest regards,
Ell
[ 2024-08-14 14:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]
Devlog #04 - Bringing It All Toadgether
So like I mentioned in the last devlog the main thing now was to actually design the whole demo area - not exactly a quick job! To try and make a start I went back to the paper sketches I did originally of the islands, then simplified them and started planning out what items went where and what paths the gates led to.
Each gate takes you to the dream world, for now there's no gates that take you back into a seperate waking area so for the demo at least it was a bit simpler as the gates would just take you to a smaller area to explore and then come back to the waking world - however there were still a few specific 'treasures' I wanted to hide, along with some lore notes to discover if you explore.
One thing I ended up doing too is deciding that the demo area will be different to the full-game starting area - I don't have the time right now to plan the whole world properly, and I spent a lot of time worrying how the demo area would fit in with stuff I hadn't even designed yet. By saying, okay actually this will just be a special demo area, loosely based on what the full game will have, meant I could take some pressure off and experiment. It'll mean that demo worlds can't be used for the full-game but honestly im okay with that, APICO did the same - I'll probably just do some starting items/unlocks for players that played the demo as a reward if they want it.
Once I had the world sketched out I then, moved things over to tiled, sketching out the large sections of water + land first and then slowly going in and adding all the objects.
I think it took about 3 days of solid work to get the final demo world in a way that worked, there were some bits that I had to stop, go draw some scenery, and then come back to Tiled - but this let me setup some nicer little areas and rooms to explore, with plenty of secrets/hints hidden in the environment. The game is set in a research pond, so I wanted there to be plenty of notes + journals and information left lying about, which made it super fun to fill out each of the rooms and areas and actually think about what they were/are used for, as well as what hints I could show rather than tell.
Once I finished designing the world in Tiled I didn't actually have to do much coding to get it working - there were a couple of 'locked' things that you need keys to open, but Tiled let's you set properties on any of the objects so I just added something to handle that and the rest just loaded in!
Plus now I had the finished world done I could draw the map! For Mudborne I wanted to do things a little bit different yet again, and this time not have a pixel perfect map - instead something a bit more drawn out, with some notes jotted over it as clues.
This means I can have a bit more artistic license with the map and the proportions, to emphasis certain areas over others - as well as have multiple different maps in the full-game that you have to find to unlock (plus the dream equivilents!) [hr][/hr]
With the world fully designed, now it was time to just... play the game a shit-tonne. I also needed to do the SFX, which I always enjoy, but I also needed to do the music - sadly for Mudborne's full-game I haven't got Mothense around, so this time I took a stab at the music myself! If it ends up sucking ass I can always get a composer for the full-game, but I've also always wanted to try doing some myself so seemed like a good opportunity to try it.
So while playtesting I'd jot down any SFX needed and add them as I went, along with some nice ambience tracks for day/night. Then after playtesting each day I tried to attempt making a little bit of music, even if it was just staring at the piano for a few hours - eventually I came up with a couple of tracks that I felt fit in with the general atmosphere of the game (although to call it full music would be a bit generous, muzak might be a better term haha!) While playtesting I also tweaked the quests a bit, just to make sure everything was clear enough - while still leaving a few bits for players to discover themselves. I also got my friend Ash to help - she's done the QA for APICO and Snacktorio, and she's very good at breaking my games now too :')
For the most part there wasn't too many major changes to the gameplay - a bunch of QoL stuff for sure but nothing that deviated from the original plan that much. One thing I tweaked was preventing the natural mushroom spores blooming as it was really easy to just gather them and never make your own mushroom farms. Instead I made spores still form naturally, and my using the magnifying glass on them it'd store where you saw them so you could easily replicate that later with your cultivators - so they act more like clues of where you can cultivate rather than being easy farms.
Another change was the later gates need a couple generations, which introduces the concept of 'ancestry' to the demo. I didn't want to have this super hand-held to the player, it's something I think is very visual that you learn as you go - however I still wanted something to make it easier. Luckily I'd left some space in one of the rooms to turn it into an 'ancestry research' place - with a new machine that allows you to view any frogs last 7 generations (shown below on the right), along with a lore note on how the system works.
I also added it so you could use the magnifying glass on gates to store their unlock requirements - this was you can easily revisit them in the book without walking all the way back to try and remember what you needed. In the demo there is only 1 and 2gen gates, but later on you'll find ones all the way up to 7gen, which would be extremely hard to just remember or even write down yourself on paper.
With that all done it just left a lot of testing and bug hunting/fixing - something I'm still doing now as it's easy to overlook stuff when there's only a couple of you playtesting! [hr][/hr]
With the new demo ready outside of more testing, I then spent a bunch of time cleaning up the old steam page, getting some new screenshots and trying to explain the game and show off the gameplay a bit better than what the original gamejam text did - esp. showing the 'dream' world.
I'd also been in talks with a publisher for a lot of this year about Mudborne - sadly I never heard anything back in the end and they ghosted me last minute, which was unfortunate as I'd met up with them a few times so felt like it was pretty close to happening and was relying on them for a big push around the new demo. With that no longer happening I also spent this month frantically getting in contact with all sorts of people, first to try and decide the best thing to do in the limited time I had, and then find people who actually had the time to do something last minute without breaking the bank - I was extremely fortunate to ended up contacting someone who managed to turn things around very last minute, I can't say anything just yet but keep an eye out for more news!
[hr][/hr] So now begins the last little stretch - lots more playtesting and QA, some performance tests and optimisation, and just generally trying to make sure this new demo really shows off what the game is going to be about. Testing it with some more people helped me feel a bit more confident about it all - I think because so much is done differently from APICO I started to second guess myself but now everythings finished off and I can play it end to end I'm really happy with where it's ended up. I can't wait to let you all get your slimy green hands on it, and, by the time you read the next devlog - you already would have :D ~ Ell
[ 2024-07-28 17:33:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends! I've been busy working away at the demo this month, and basically got the whole thing finished up >:D All that remains is to do some more QA and bug hunting, so let's get into what I've been doing. [hr][/hr]
A Whole New World
So like I mentioned in the last devlog the main thing now was to actually design the whole demo area - not exactly a quick job! To try and make a start I went back to the paper sketches I did originally of the islands, then simplified them and started planning out what items went where and what paths the gates led to.
Each gate takes you to the dream world, for now there's no gates that take you back into a seperate waking area so for the demo at least it was a bit simpler as the gates would just take you to a smaller area to explore and then come back to the waking world - however there were still a few specific 'treasures' I wanted to hide, along with some lore notes to discover if you explore.
One thing I ended up doing too is deciding that the demo area will be different to the full-game starting area - I don't have the time right now to plan the whole world properly, and I spent a lot of time worrying how the demo area would fit in with stuff I hadn't even designed yet. By saying, okay actually this will just be a special demo area, loosely based on what the full game will have, meant I could take some pressure off and experiment. It'll mean that demo worlds can't be used for the full-game but honestly im okay with that, APICO did the same - I'll probably just do some starting items/unlocks for players that played the demo as a reward if they want it.
Once I had the world sketched out I then, moved things over to tiled, sketching out the large sections of water + land first and then slowly going in and adding all the objects.
I think it took about 3 days of solid work to get the final demo world in a way that worked, there were some bits that I had to stop, go draw some scenery, and then come back to Tiled - but this let me setup some nicer little areas and rooms to explore, with plenty of secrets/hints hidden in the environment. The game is set in a research pond, so I wanted there to be plenty of notes + journals and information left lying about, which made it super fun to fill out each of the rooms and areas and actually think about what they were/are used for, as well as what hints I could show rather than tell.
Once I finished designing the world in Tiled I didn't actually have to do much coding to get it working - there were a couple of 'locked' things that you need keys to open, but Tiled let's you set properties on any of the objects so I just added something to handle that and the rest just loaded in!
Plus now I had the finished world done I could draw the map! For Mudborne I wanted to do things a little bit different yet again, and this time not have a pixel perfect map - instead something a bit more drawn out, with some notes jotted over it as clues.
This means I can have a bit more artistic license with the map and the proportions, to emphasis certain areas over others - as well as have multiple different maps in the full-game that you have to find to unlock (plus the dream equivilents!) [hr][/hr]
Playtesting
With the world fully designed, now it was time to just... play the game a shit-tonne. I also needed to do the SFX, which I always enjoy, but I also needed to do the music - sadly for Mudborne's full-game I haven't got Mothense around, so this time I took a stab at the music myself! If it ends up sucking ass I can always get a composer for the full-game, but I've also always wanted to try doing some myself so seemed like a good opportunity to try it.
So while playtesting I'd jot down any SFX needed and add them as I went, along with some nice ambience tracks for day/night. Then after playtesting each day I tried to attempt making a little bit of music, even if it was just staring at the piano for a few hours - eventually I came up with a couple of tracks that I felt fit in with the general atmosphere of the game (although to call it full music would be a bit generous, muzak might be a better term haha!) While playtesting I also tweaked the quests a bit, just to make sure everything was clear enough - while still leaving a few bits for players to discover themselves. I also got my friend Ash to help - she's done the QA for APICO and Snacktorio, and she's very good at breaking my games now too :')
For the most part there wasn't too many major changes to the gameplay - a bunch of QoL stuff for sure but nothing that deviated from the original plan that much. One thing I tweaked was preventing the natural mushroom spores blooming as it was really easy to just gather them and never make your own mushroom farms. Instead I made spores still form naturally, and my using the magnifying glass on them it'd store where you saw them so you could easily replicate that later with your cultivators - so they act more like clues of where you can cultivate rather than being easy farms.
Another change was the later gates need a couple generations, which introduces the concept of 'ancestry' to the demo. I didn't want to have this super hand-held to the player, it's something I think is very visual that you learn as you go - however I still wanted something to make it easier. Luckily I'd left some space in one of the rooms to turn it into an 'ancestry research' place - with a new machine that allows you to view any frogs last 7 generations (shown below on the right), along with a lore note on how the system works.
I also added it so you could use the magnifying glass on gates to store their unlock requirements - this was you can easily revisit them in the book without walking all the way back to try and remember what you needed. In the demo there is only 1 and 2gen gates, but later on you'll find ones all the way up to 7gen, which would be extremely hard to just remember or even write down yourself on paper.
With that all done it just left a lot of testing and bug hunting/fixing - something I'm still doing now as it's easy to overlook stuff when there's only a couple of you playtesting! [hr][/hr]
Finishing Touches
With the new demo ready outside of more testing, I then spent a bunch of time cleaning up the old steam page, getting some new screenshots and trying to explain the game and show off the gameplay a bit better than what the original gamejam text did - esp. showing the 'dream' world.
I'd also been in talks with a publisher for a lot of this year about Mudborne - sadly I never heard anything back in the end and they ghosted me last minute, which was unfortunate as I'd met up with them a few times so felt like it was pretty close to happening and was relying on them for a big push around the new demo. With that no longer happening I also spent this month frantically getting in contact with all sorts of people, first to try and decide the best thing to do in the limited time I had, and then find people who actually had the time to do something last minute without breaking the bank - I was extremely fortunate to ended up contacting someone who managed to turn things around very last minute, I can't say anything just yet but keep an eye out for more news!
[hr][/hr] So now begins the last little stretch - lots more playtesting and QA, some performance tests and optimisation, and just generally trying to make sure this new demo really shows off what the game is going to be about. Testing it with some more people helped me feel a bit more confident about it all - I think because so much is done differently from APICO I started to second guess myself but now everythings finished off and I can play it end to end I'm really happy with where it's ended up. I can't wait to let you all get your slimy green hands on it, and, by the time you read the next devlog - you already would have :D ~ Ell
[ 2024-07-28 17:33:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Devlog #03 - Hop To It!
Mudborne's actual story has already been written out at a high level, with the main threads and discussions planned out - as part of that I have 5 different characters to introduce.
APICO definitely suffered from "talking shop" NPCs, so to try and avoid that this time I've tried to spend more time thinking about each NPC's role in the story and different ways you can interact and help them rather than just a simple shop. Unfrotunately, the first NPC above, Hopert the Carpenter, is also the 'crafting station' of sorts for the game, you bring items to trade (like bugs they like) or raw materials and they make what you need. Some of the other NPCs have some very different interactions, but they're met a lot later in the story.
However unlike APICO there is actually things you can help the NPCs out directly with, Hopert has a couple things they need a hand with if you're up for some extra work!
There's also a bit more involvement with the actual story in their dialogue rather than just commenting on progress like APICO did - just overall trying to make them more interesting characters you want to talk to. [hr][/hr]
I still wanted some guide books in Mudborne, as I think it works well in this sort of game with lots of different mechanics to master - experiment as much as you like but if you're stuck here's some guides. However I wanted to make them more visual and less wordy - APICO definitely suffered from WoT overload. For the 'quests' I grouped them all into key areas - controls, tools, frogs etc, and then had individual one-pager 'chapters' make up the quests.
By using icons on the LHS instead of the chapter titles it makes it a bit less overwhelming to look at, and easier to flick between chapters you want to do. The little lilypad / pond quest overview helps to make it clearer the order you're doing things and how to progress. I was actually dreading implementing the books just because of how much they were a pain in APICO before I remembered I'm in a different engine now and it was actually such a breeze.
For the frogs/mushrooms/critters I thought it'd be overkill to have seperate books for each, so instead settled on one single encyclopedia with all of them together.
I went through a few design options but ultimately ended with something like the above. Icons again for each chapter make for a much nicer collection view as you progress and save you an awful lot of scrolling. My only issue now was how to approach the drawings for the books. I wanted to have a little scene for each entry, for helping build a picture of the world and as a little reward for finding each species as you progress, however I haven't really had to do larger pixel art scenes ever so it's been a bit difficult to accept that what I'm doing now isn't as good as what's in my head.
Some I'm happy with - others not so much. But with how much time I have to work on the full game all I can do is just keep at it and keep drawing and eventually get to where I want to be. Regardless of how much I hate my work, the more detailed scenes also let me show some of the game in way more detail than you see in the cute pixel rendition of the overworld - and are another place I can sneak some little hints/clues into for people to find. The other "books" come in the form of a map, and a notebook - which acts as not only a store for random scraps of notes + journals you come across but also allows you to add your own notes to keep track of things.
Haven't quite settled on exactly how these will be laid out yet as I'm waiting to design some of the notes you discover - I'm thinking vaguely RE style, text on top of a faint rendition of what you're reading, page entry, journal etc. But however it ends up it'll be a nice way of giving you more hints of the world and what happened, as well as some clues to unlocking certain frogs or mushrooms or items. [hr][/hr]
As I was playing around with the prototype more, the more I realised the existing mushroom mechanics wouldn't be enough for the demo. I was planning on doing the mushroom farms and the spore gathering (hybrids) stuff for the full game, but as it stood there was too much waiting around + rolling the dice with natural spawns. So I needed to add something, and spore gathering was a mid-late game thing so it had to be mushroom farms - which I hadn't even thought about at this point, and needed to design.
I ended up developing a two-step process - firstly you create compost from different flora items you find, different combinations for different compost that will have their own effects. Then you use that compost in 'cultivators' that allow you to have more of a controlled environment. Mushrooms require a specific temperature + moisture AND environment to form and then bloom. Temperature is mostly based on the day, but other factors can change that. Moisture is based on where the mushrooms are, as well as weather and other factors.
While the compost is a bit experimental at first, you'll find hints and clues to other useful combinations - for example a 'wetter' compost that increases moisture levels by 1, or one that increases the amount of mushrooms you harvest. Later on you'll also be able to use frogs to boost temperature + moisture to extremes - it's no accident that two of the frog genetic traits are UMBRAGE and SATURATION. By adding this process the player can then setup a bunch of cultivators in places to get the right conditions to farm a bunch of mushrooms they need, rather than wait for mother nature to take her sweet time. I also think it's a nice base mechanic that gives me flexibility later to make more complex, like with spore harvesting to create different hybrids to remove genetic modifications you don't want - as well as give you something to be checking on while you wait for your frogs to finish... kissing. [hr][/hr]
One thing I also had on the list was 'variants' - slight variations of frog species that have different patterns + colors. However I didn't want to just have these as shiny variants that you get from rolling the dice, as 1. you'd already have this for bugs and 2. it's just not that interesting.
However in a game about genetics it's pretty easy to squeeze in variations of different species. If every species has a set genetic "key" that forms it, (i.e. 4744444) I know all the 'gaps' between species. So if you take the common green species (4444444) and boost the AMPLITUDE to the max you get a new species (7444444) - but if you don't boost it to the max (6444444) you technically still have a common green (as no other species match the key), but I can use that as criteria for a 'variant' of that species.
This was I can increase the rewards for experimenting even more than the base gameplay, and also reward 'mistakes' as you might not get a whole new species but you might still get something new for your efforts. [hr][/hr]
There was lots of other bits I did too - a backpack you can equip that will hoover up bugs instead of them going into your inventory, or a settings menu (now with an actual borderless window option what a treat), or a proper file system + home screen.
I also wrote up all of the dialogue + lore entries, did all the descriptions+hints for all the frogs/mushrooms/critters, wrote all the quests (already at about 8000 words oops) - which all helped me find different bits of the demo to tweak and improve. However there's still a LOT left to do - I need to design the actual demo 'map' and all the areas, I need to implement the notebook and the map, control remapping, gamepad support, finish drawing all the book art, draw some cutscenes, add sfx, write music... it's definitely feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment.
It's also super hard to judge the demo right now because I need the world designed with all the different areas to explore and work on unlocking because it's the key motivation - you find new species of frogs to use their genetic 'keys' to unlock portals between the waking/dreaming worlds and get to different areas and treasures. Without that it's hard to tell how much fun the demo is when I'm stuck in the same little prototype area, so I'm also feeling a bit demotivated around whether it will be 'fun' - you know, what a game is supposed to be lmao
I think all the mechanics work well together but still just hard to see the full picture, so for july my first task is to design the actual demo world with all the areas and portals and secrets - then I should be able to actually play the whole thing properly and see where we're at and tell my imposter syndrome to piss off lmao ~ Ell
[ 2024-06-30 18:58:02 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey everyone! Been a little while! APICO kept me very busy over May with the new update and bug fixes that came with it but I think I'm nearly finished with it all now (sorry beekeepers!) I kept doing Mudborne stuff on and off throughout though, and then June has been a lot of build on top of the prototype I had to start to form the demo - lots of stuff to cover! [hr][/hr]
Froggy Friends
Mudborne's actual story has already been written out at a high level, with the main threads and discussions planned out - as part of that I have 5 different characters to introduce.
APICO definitely suffered from "talking shop" NPCs, so to try and avoid that this time I've tried to spend more time thinking about each NPC's role in the story and different ways you can interact and help them rather than just a simple shop. Unfrotunately, the first NPC above, Hopert the Carpenter, is also the 'crafting station' of sorts for the game, you bring items to trade (like bugs they like) or raw materials and they make what you need. Some of the other NPCs have some very different interactions, but they're met a lot later in the story.
However unlike APICO there is actually things you can help the NPCs out directly with, Hopert has a couple things they need a hand with if you're up for some extra work!
There's also a bit more involvement with the actual story in their dialogue rather than just commenting on progress like APICO did - just overall trying to make them more interesting characters you want to talk to. [hr][/hr]
Guiding Light
I still wanted some guide books in Mudborne, as I think it works well in this sort of game with lots of different mechanics to master - experiment as much as you like but if you're stuck here's some guides. However I wanted to make them more visual and less wordy - APICO definitely suffered from WoT overload. For the 'quests' I grouped them all into key areas - controls, tools, frogs etc, and then had individual one-pager 'chapters' make up the quests.
By using icons on the LHS instead of the chapter titles it makes it a bit less overwhelming to look at, and easier to flick between chapters you want to do. The little lilypad / pond quest overview helps to make it clearer the order you're doing things and how to progress. I was actually dreading implementing the books just because of how much they were a pain in APICO before I remembered I'm in a different engine now and it was actually such a breeze.
For the frogs/mushrooms/critters I thought it'd be overkill to have seperate books for each, so instead settled on one single encyclopedia with all of them together.
I went through a few design options but ultimately ended with something like the above. Icons again for each chapter make for a much nicer collection view as you progress and save you an awful lot of scrolling. My only issue now was how to approach the drawings for the books. I wanted to have a little scene for each entry, for helping build a picture of the world and as a little reward for finding each species as you progress, however I haven't really had to do larger pixel art scenes ever so it's been a bit difficult to accept that what I'm doing now isn't as good as what's in my head.
Some I'm happy with - others not so much. But with how much time I have to work on the full game all I can do is just keep at it and keep drawing and eventually get to where I want to be. Regardless of how much I hate my work, the more detailed scenes also let me show some of the game in way more detail than you see in the cute pixel rendition of the overworld - and are another place I can sneak some little hints/clues into for people to find. The other "books" come in the form of a map, and a notebook - which acts as not only a store for random scraps of notes + journals you come across but also allows you to add your own notes to keep track of things.
Haven't quite settled on exactly how these will be laid out yet as I'm waiting to design some of the notes you discover - I'm thinking vaguely RE style, text on top of a faint rendition of what you're reading, page entry, journal etc. But however it ends up it'll be a nice way of giving you more hints of the world and what happened, as well as some clues to unlocking certain frogs or mushrooms or items. [hr][/hr]
Grow Your Own
As I was playing around with the prototype more, the more I realised the existing mushroom mechanics wouldn't be enough for the demo. I was planning on doing the mushroom farms and the spore gathering (hybrids) stuff for the full game, but as it stood there was too much waiting around + rolling the dice with natural spawns. So I needed to add something, and spore gathering was a mid-late game thing so it had to be mushroom farms - which I hadn't even thought about at this point, and needed to design.
I ended up developing a two-step process - firstly you create compost from different flora items you find, different combinations for different compost that will have their own effects. Then you use that compost in 'cultivators' that allow you to have more of a controlled environment. Mushrooms require a specific temperature + moisture AND environment to form and then bloom. Temperature is mostly based on the day, but other factors can change that. Moisture is based on where the mushrooms are, as well as weather and other factors.
While the compost is a bit experimental at first, you'll find hints and clues to other useful combinations - for example a 'wetter' compost that increases moisture levels by 1, or one that increases the amount of mushrooms you harvest. Later on you'll also be able to use frogs to boost temperature + moisture to extremes - it's no accident that two of the frog genetic traits are UMBRAGE and SATURATION. By adding this process the player can then setup a bunch of cultivators in places to get the right conditions to farm a bunch of mushrooms they need, rather than wait for mother nature to take her sweet time. I also think it's a nice base mechanic that gives me flexibility later to make more complex, like with spore harvesting to create different hybrids to remove genetic modifications you don't want - as well as give you something to be checking on while you wait for your frogs to finish... kissing. [hr][/hr]
Spice Of Life
One thing I also had on the list was 'variants' - slight variations of frog species that have different patterns + colors. However I didn't want to just have these as shiny variants that you get from rolling the dice, as 1. you'd already have this for bugs and 2. it's just not that interesting.
However in a game about genetics it's pretty easy to squeeze in variations of different species. If every species has a set genetic "key" that forms it, (i.e. 4744444) I know all the 'gaps' between species. So if you take the common green species (4444444) and boost the AMPLITUDE to the max you get a new species (7444444) - but if you don't boost it to the max (6444444) you technically still have a common green (as no other species match the key), but I can use that as criteria for a 'variant' of that species.
This was I can increase the rewards for experimenting even more than the base gameplay, and also reward 'mistakes' as you might not get a whole new species but you might still get something new for your efforts. [hr][/hr]
What Next?
There was lots of other bits I did too - a backpack you can equip that will hoover up bugs instead of them going into your inventory, or a settings menu (now with an actual borderless window option what a treat), or a proper file system + home screen.
I also wrote up all of the dialogue + lore entries, did all the descriptions+hints for all the frogs/mushrooms/critters, wrote all the quests (already at about 8000 words oops) - which all helped me find different bits of the demo to tweak and improve. However there's still a LOT left to do - I need to design the actual demo 'map' and all the areas, I need to implement the notebook and the map, control remapping, gamepad support, finish drawing all the book art, draw some cutscenes, add sfx, write music... it's definitely feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment.
It's also super hard to judge the demo right now because I need the world designed with all the different areas to explore and work on unlocking because it's the key motivation - you find new species of frogs to use their genetic 'keys' to unlock portals between the waking/dreaming worlds and get to different areas and treasures. Without that it's hard to tell how much fun the demo is when I'm stuck in the same little prototype area, so I'm also feeling a bit demotivated around whether it will be 'fun' - you know, what a game is supposed to be lmao
I think all the mechanics work well together but still just hard to see the full picture, so for july my first task is to design the actual demo world with all the areas and portals and secrets - then I should be able to actually play the whole thing properly and see where we're at and tell my imposter syndrome to piss off lmao ~ Ell
[ 2024-06-30 18:58:02 CET ] [ Original post ]
Devlog #02 - Born Of Mud
So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas
The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:
As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery. The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world
Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)
To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.
I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.
[hr][/hr]
With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.
With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.
With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.
It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell. [hr][/hr]
With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.
Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.
I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)
I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it! [hr][/hr]
As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were:
The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.
The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.
The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds. "That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks
Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...
Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog. In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. [hr][/hr]
So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc
I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')
While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to. I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)
[hr][/hr] As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell
[ 2024-04-29 10:58:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Steam to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game [hr][/hr]
Back To The Drawing Board
So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas
The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:
As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery. The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world
Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)
To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.
I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.
[hr][/hr]
Lost In A Dream
With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.
With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.
With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.
It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell. [hr][/hr]
Something Old Something New
With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.
Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.
I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)
I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it! [hr][/hr]
Maths For Fun
As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were:
- Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn)
- Grinder (mushroom = powders)
- Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud)
- Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole)
- Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs)
- Bed (skip ahead time)
The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.
The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.
The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds. "That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks
Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...
Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog. In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. [hr][/hr]
What Next?
So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc
I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')
While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to. I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)
[hr][/hr] As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell
[ 2024-04-29 10:58:08 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - FEB2024
APICO took part in Humble's Exceptional Indie Allies Bundle, along with 6 other amazing games, to celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower. Big thanks to everyone who supported the cause - so far youve helped raise over $25,000! (Also if youre quick you can still grab the bundle today!) [hr][/hr]
Ell took a little week break from finishing APICOs Honeycore Update to join this years LVE game jam with their submission, Synthesis! In Ells own words; [quote=ellraiser]this year the theme was interface so you know I had to! I wanted to make a bit of an abstract puzzle game where the player isn't taught any controls and has to learn through trial and error, and I'm happy with how it all ended up! It was also my first time making music for a game so... enjoy that lol[/quote]
You can try out the jam game over on itch.io here! [hr][/hr]
Whitethorn Games, APICOs publisher, held a celebration of gaming across all the games in their catalogue through a showcase and Steam event (you can catch the vod here) While we didnt have anything to show, there was some nice sneak peaks at our sibling games, like Magical Delicacy and Botany Manor! [hr][/hr]
Its been a bit of a slow year so far, with not much to share while Ell plugs away at finishing the final update, however we have got some lovely things planned for the 4.0 launch to look forward to, so be sure to keep an eye out. Well also havs the Steam Spring Sale coming very soon (March 14th!) with the deepest discount to-date for APICO and the soundtracks, so a perfect time to pick up APICO and catch up with everything before the last update [hr][/hr] Aaand that was February at TNgineers! As always, thank you so much for your support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2024-03-01 18:55:03 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi friends, hope youre doing well!
Its already the beginning of a new month, and you know the drill: its time for a new recap!
[hr][/hr]
Celebrating Black History Month
APICO took part in Humble's Exceptional Indie Allies Bundle, along with 6 other amazing games, to celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower. Big thanks to everyone who supported the cause - so far youve helped raise over $25,000! (Also if youre quick you can still grab the bundle today!) [hr][/hr]
LVE JAM 2024
Ell took a little week break from finishing APICOs Honeycore Update to join this years LVE game jam with their submission, Synthesis! In Ells own words; [quote=ellraiser]this year the theme was interface so you know I had to! I wanted to make a bit of an abstract puzzle game where the player isn't taught any controls and has to learn through trial and error, and I'm happy with how it all ended up! It was also my first time making music for a game so... enjoy that lol[/quote]
You can try out the jam game over on itch.io here! [hr][/hr]
Whitethorn Winter
Whitethorn Games, APICOs publisher, held a celebration of gaming across all the games in their catalogue through a showcase and Steam event (you can catch the vod here) While we didnt have anything to show, there was some nice sneak peaks at our sibling games, like Magical Delicacy and Botany Manor! [hr][/hr]
Final Countdown
Its been a bit of a slow year so far, with not much to share while Ell plugs away at finishing the final update, however we have got some lovely things planned for the 4.0 launch to look forward to, so be sure to keep an eye out. Well also havs the Steam Spring Sale coming very soon (March 14th!) with the deepest discount to-date for APICO and the soundtracks, so a perfect time to pick up APICO and catch up with everything before the last update [hr][/hr] Aaand that was February at TNgineers! As always, thank you so much for your support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2024-03-01 18:55:03 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - JAN2024
As you may have seen on our socials, pets are coming to APICO along with the final Honeycore update! To celebrate, we held a design-your-own-pet competition (which receieved over 200 submissions!), and narrowed down the cuties to just five finalists, which were put up to a vote by all of you.
Although the dino was the vote winner by a small margin, everyone found it super difficult to pick - and why should they have to? Weve decided that all five designs will be winners, so youll be able to enjoy all of them as pets in the final update - congratulations to all the artists! <3 [hr][/hr]
Ells been working hard on the Honeycore Update, and you might have seen some bits and bobs on our socials and on Discord!
New cute decor and furniture, light automation, moving crates & beeboxes without emptying them we've been very glad to see your reactions to all the new things weve planned for this last update and cant wait to let you all get your hands on it! [hr][/hr]
For those of you who use Amazon Prime Gaming, APICO is currently part of the free Prime games you can claim! You have until February 14th to claim it - once you do itll be added to your library indefinitely! This is the same as the latest Steam / PC release, so you get all of the same nautical goodness. [hr][/hr]
Coming very shortly after this recap, Whitethorn Games (APICOs publisher!) will be having their Whitethorn Winter Showcase! This is a celebration of gaming magic across all the other sister games, so be sure to check it out to see what other new games are coming that might bee off interest to you. Theres also a new Humble Bundle where you can get APICO along with some other fantastic games, all to help celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower, so if youre still looking to pick up APICO as well as support a wonderful cause this is your chance! [hr][/hr] And thats it for this first recap of 2024! Big thanks for your amazing support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2024-02-07 08:50:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi friends!
A new year is upon us, and its been a bit of a manic start with Ell moving house but were back on track now!
[hr][/hr]
APICO Pet Competition
As you may have seen on our socials, pets are coming to APICO along with the final Honeycore update! To celebrate, we held a design-your-own-pet competition (which receieved over 200 submissions!), and narrowed down the cuties to just five finalists, which were put up to a vote by all of you.
Although the dino was the vote winner by a small margin, everyone found it super difficult to pick - and why should they have to? Weve decided that all five designs will be winners, so youll be able to enjoy all of them as pets in the final update - congratulations to all the artists! <3 [hr][/hr]
APICO 4.0 WIPS
Ells been working hard on the Honeycore Update, and you might have seen some bits and bobs on our socials and on Discord!
New cute decor and furniture, light automation, moving crates & beeboxes without emptying them we've been very glad to see your reactions to all the new things weve planned for this last update and cant wait to let you all get your hands on it! [hr][/hr]
APICO Prime!
For those of you who use Amazon Prime Gaming, APICO is currently part of the free Prime games you can claim! You have until February 14th to claim it - once you do itll be added to your library indefinitely! This is the same as the latest Steam / PC release, so you get all of the same nautical goodness. [hr][/hr]
Coming Very Soon
Coming very shortly after this recap, Whitethorn Games (APICOs publisher!) will be having their Whitethorn Winter Showcase! This is a celebration of gaming magic across all the other sister games, so be sure to check it out to see what other new games are coming that might bee off interest to you. Theres also a new Humble Bundle where you can get APICO along with some other fantastic games, all to help celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower, so if youre still looking to pick up APICO as well as support a wonderful cause this is your chance! [hr][/hr] And thats it for this first recap of 2024! Big thanks for your amazing support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2024-02-07 08:50:33 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers - 2023 In Review
[ 2023-12-20 11:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]
2023 is almost at an end, and its been a busy ol year looking back! Heres a lil ellraiser/TNgineer wrapped
[hr][/hr]
Started the year off strong dropping a demo for Rift Breach, an experimental lil dungeon crawler.
This was super fun to make, and helped me get better at scoping small as well as got my out of my usual pixel art comfort zone!
[hr][/hr]
Then FletchMakes hosted a 7 day gamejam + I couldnt resist making the APICO but frogs Id always joked about
Mudborne was born(e) + I was overwhelmed with how much people loved it. It also showed me just how much I can get done with a super strict scope and detailed plan!
[hr][/hr]
APICO had its 1st birthday! From a silly concept made in HTML to now published on all platforms with over 50,000 beekeepers playing - truly never thought it would go anywhere
Im forever grateful to everyone whos played and shared this funky bee game
[hr][/hr]
At this point trying to keep up with socials for 3 different games was getting far too much and I needed help - enter @mibyledraws who joined as the first official TNgineer!
Thank you for all your hard work, wonderful videos, and helping me keep on top of everything <3
[hr][/hr]
I got round to releasing the 2nd free content update for APICO, "What Lies Beeneath, with all sorts of weird and wonderful ocean friends
Its been tough to keep working on this mess of a game, but its worth it to see how much people have been enjoying all the new content
[hr][/hr]
Decided that I wanted to take the Mudborne concept into a full-game, and started planning out everything along with a new art style and vibe for it (theres only so far a sprite-rip of APICO can go lmao)
Its wild to see how far Ive started to come from tiny rectangle trees!
[hr][/hr]
Towards the end of the year I left my freelance contract + went full-time gamedev, not quite by choice but it was something I wanted to do for a while
Ill now be able to spend all my time on the games, as well as all the other little concepts Ive had bubbling away...
[hr][/hr]
I moved from GameMaker to LVE, built a small framework for future games like Snacktorio + Mudborne, and contributed to the engine itself
Was the first time actually helping making a substantial contribution to an open-source project and I learnt a lot!
[hr][/hr]
After a couple years in + out of development and a last minute engine change to LVE, I finally finished + released the demo for Snacktorio
Weve had some amazing feedback and its been so gratifying to finally get it out and see people enjoy it
[hr][/hr]
Looking ahead to 2024, itll be my first year as a full-time gamedev (as well as reaching lvl 30!)
Im planning to release the final update for APICO, as well as releasing either Mudborne or Snacktorio - might even have to drop some new demos too, as a treat
[hr][/hr]
Thanks for everyone who has supported me and TNgineers throughout the year.
Whether that was playing the demos, buying the games, sharing your progress, joining the discord, posting wholesome reviews, sending me cute bee pics - Im truly grateful to you all <3
[ 2023-12-20 11:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - NOV2023
The demo for our factory-cooking simulator, Snacktorio, has finally been released! Thanks so much to all of you chefs, players and content creators for your support <3 If youd like to get a taste of whats in store you can watch the trailer below, or just go try out the demo on Steam! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIsDeQQokwM [hr][/hr]
In the middle of the month we snuggled up and celebrated cozy games through the Cozy Quest Festival hosted on Steam, with APICO and Mudborne!
The organizers, Secret Mode, hosted a lovely stream to try out some of the games and demo taking part in the festival, and played the Mudborne demo while interviewing Ell, which you can watch here. [hr][/hr]
Our little froggy nature-sim reached 10,000 wishlists last month! We are so happy and thankful to each and every single person whos supported Mudborne, played it, and wishlisted it on Steam. Heres all 10,000 of you, live in-game:
[hr][/hr] Aaand thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping the soups coming :) Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2023-11-30 15:57:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi friends!
Its almost December, which means its time to recap what happened last month!
[hr][/hr]
Snacktorio: Ready To Order!
The demo for our factory-cooking simulator, Snacktorio, has finally been released! Thanks so much to all of you chefs, players and content creators for your support <3 If youd like to get a taste of whats in store you can watch the trailer below, or just go try out the demo on Steam! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIsDeQQokwM [hr][/hr]
Cozy Quest Steam Festival
In the middle of the month we snuggled up and celebrated cozy games through the Cozy Quest Festival hosted on Steam, with APICO and Mudborne!
The organizers, Secret Mode, hosted a lovely stream to try out some of the games and demo taking part in the festival, and played the Mudborne demo while interviewing Ell, which you can watch here. [hr][/hr]
10,000 FROGS
Our little froggy nature-sim reached 10,000 wishlists last month! We are so happy and thankful to each and every single person whos supported Mudborne, played it, and wishlisted it on Steam. Heres all 10,000 of you, live in-game:
[hr][/hr] Aaand thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping the soups coming :) Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2023-11-30 15:57:59 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - OCT2023
We joined the Frog Con, an online convention for frog lovers that mixes educational panels with creative works, in the middle of the month. Mudborne was one of the froggy games and got played during the convention! For the occasion, we shared more about the game on our socials, as well as some redesign work-in-progress sneak peeks!
[hr][/hr]
A fellow beekeeper created a checklist tracker & guide spreadsheet for APICO! Its truly an amazing resource, and includes the Ocean Update (3.0) new content.
Thank you so much DeluxeGremlin for this! [hr][/hr]
Fellow beekeeper Hazel shared this screenshot of her base in our community discord! Between the rainbow hive garden and the Mothense concert for the NPCs, its a dream place to bee. If you want to share youre own cute pics you should come join us!
In other APICO news, the lovely Chelsea, that you may know as myPotatoGames on Twitter, wrote a very wholesome review of our beekeeping sim! Its always heartwarming to hear such nice feedback <3 [hr][/hr]
Last month, our discord bot beebot started sharing a beemoji mashup everyday, and that gave us an idea: what if you could make your own mashup, and beebot could send it to the server?
You can now submit your mashup by filling this form, and itll get added to the bots daily posts! :D [hr][/hr] Thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping these hives buzzing, its been a quiet month but we have some exciting stuff coming next time! Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2023-10-31 20:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi friends!
A month passed by since our last newsletter, heres whats been going on!
[hr][/hr]
FROG CON
We joined the Frog Con, an online convention for frog lovers that mixes educational panels with creative works, in the middle of the month. Mudborne was one of the froggy games and got played during the convention! For the occasion, we shared more about the game on our socials, as well as some redesign work-in-progress sneak peeks!
[hr][/hr]
APICO Checklist Tracker
A fellow beekeeper created a checklist tracker & guide spreadsheet for APICO! Its truly an amazing resource, and includes the Ocean Update (3.0) new content.
Thank you so much DeluxeGremlin for this! [hr][/hr]
APICO Community Spotlight
Fellow beekeeper Hazel shared this screenshot of her base in our community discord! Between the rainbow hive garden and the Mothense concert for the NPCs, its a dream place to bee. If you want to share youre own cute pics you should come join us!
In other APICO news, the lovely Chelsea, that you may know as myPotatoGames on Twitter, wrote a very wholesome review of our beekeeping sim! Its always heartwarming to hear such nice feedback <3 [hr][/hr]
Beemoji Mashup!
Last month, our discord bot beebot started sharing a beemoji mashup everyday, and that gave us an idea: what if you could make your own mashup, and beebot could send it to the server?
You can now submit your mashup by filling this form, and itll get added to the bots daily posts! :D [hr][/hr] Thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping these hives buzzing, its been a quiet month but we have some exciting stuff coming next time! Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie
[ 2023-10-31 20:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - SEP2023
What Lies Beeneath launched on September 26 on PC! Beekeepers can now explore the ocean, restore coral reefs, clean the seabed, fish and, of course, discover all the new bees (including underwater ones!!). You can check out the patch notes here to see all the new stuff added. If youre a console player, no worries! The update will eventually come to you, and well make sure to let you all know when it happens <3 [hr][/hr]
To celebrate the new update, APICO and its amazing soundtracks (Im not the one who composed it so I can say it) are currently on sale on Steam! The game is 45% off, and the soundtracks are each 50% off until October 10th [hr][/hr]
We experimented a bit with the discord server this month: after a short career in sending cute bee pics, beebot switched to beemojis creation. Some are cuter than others, but its a little surprise everyday! Weve also been very happy to see the players enjoy the update and sharing tips (and bugs) in the server, feel free to stop by! <3 [hr][/hr]
In October, well join Frog Con, a lovely online convention for frog lovers that raises funds for amphibian conservation. In the middle or froggy cams, the artist alley and educational streams, Mudborne will take part to the con as a froggy game, October 13-23 Be sure to check it out, along with the other amazing froggy games well be alongside! [hr][/hr] And thats a wrap for September! We wish you all a good spooky month! Take care, Manon, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-10-02 17:44:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hi friends!
September is already gone and oh boy, what a month! APICOs second major update came out - What Lies Beeneath :D
[hr][/hr]
APICO 3.0 Makes A Splash!
What Lies Beeneath launched on September 26 on PC! Beekeepers can now explore the ocean, restore coral reefs, clean the seabed, fish and, of course, discover all the new bees (including underwater ones!!). You can check out the patch notes here to see all the new stuff added. If youre a console player, no worries! The update will eventually come to you, and well make sure to let you all know when it happens <3 [hr][/hr]
APICO Steam Sale
To celebrate the new update, APICO and its amazing soundtracks (Im not the one who composed it so I can say it) are currently on sale on Steam! The game is 45% off, and the soundtracks are each 50% off until October 10th [hr][/hr]
Bee Butts?!
We experimented a bit with the discord server this month: after a short career in sending cute bee pics, beebot switched to beemojis creation. Some are cuter than others, but its a little surprise everyday! Weve also been very happy to see the players enjoy the update and sharing tips (and bugs) in the server, feel free to stop by! <3 [hr][/hr]
Whats Next?
In October, well join Frog Con, a lovely online convention for frog lovers that raises funds for amphibian conservation. In the middle or froggy cams, the artist alley and educational streams, Mudborne will take part to the con as a froggy game, October 13-23 Be sure to check it out, along with the other amazing froggy games well be alongside! [hr][/hr] And thats a wrap for September! We wish you all a good spooky month! Take care, Manon, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-10-02 17:44:40 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - AUG2023
Unless youve been living in a pineapple under the sea, youve probably seen that the APICO 3.0 update, aka, What Lies Beeneath has been announced as coming soon! Bee sure to check out the new trailer! If youre a content creator or streamer interested in trying out the new content you can also fill in our creator preview form. [hr][/hr]
Pleased to say that the lovely Manon (also known as MibyleDraws) will be joining us as our PR & CM! If you've been enjoying anything posted on socials this last month (like all the new cute tiktoks), then you have Manon to thank for it! [hr][/hr]
G.Round is a playtesting platform where you can get your hands on a bunch of different indie games and feedback directly to the developers! Currently you can playtest both Mudborne and Rift Breach, and give us feedback as well as chat with other players in the G.Round discord! [hr][/hr]
Now that weve got 4 different games being juggled about, its impossible to manage 6 different accounts on each platform (we know, weve tried) Weve now combined all games into a single TNgineers account on each platform, so be sure to follow to not miss anything! (Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram, Steam) [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on August, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie & Manon
[ 2023-09-02 13:48:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
August came and went, my first month technically doing gamedev full-time! Both exciting and terrifying :'D
[hr][/hr]
APICO 3.0 Coming Soon
Unless youve been living in a pineapple under the sea, youve probably seen that the APICO 3.0 update, aka, What Lies Beeneath has been announced as coming soon! Bee sure to check out the new trailer! If youre a content creator or streamer interested in trying out the new content you can also fill in our creator preview form. [hr][/hr]
MibyleDraws Joins The Gang
Pleased to say that the lovely Manon (also known as MibyleDraws) will be joining us as our PR & CM! If you've been enjoying anything posted on socials this last month (like all the new cute tiktoks), then you have Manon to thank for it! [hr][/hr]
G.Round Playtesting
G.Round is a playtesting platform where you can get your hands on a bunch of different indie games and feedback directly to the developers! Currently you can playtest both Mudborne and Rift Breach, and give us feedback as well as chat with other players in the G.Round discord! [hr][/hr]
Socials Consolidation
Now that weve got 4 different games being juggled about, its impossible to manage 6 different accounts on each platform (we know, weve tried) Weve now combined all games into a single TNgineers account on each platform, so be sure to follow to not miss anything! (Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram, Steam) [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on August, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie & Manon
[ 2023-09-02 13:48:57 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - JUL2023
The lovely people at Wholesome Games have organised a Steam Sale thats host to all sorts of cosy games, with some sweet discounts on offer! As part of the sale, APICO will be 40% off until 7th August, with both OSTs 50% off as well. [hr][/hr]
For the redditors among you, you might have heard of a little thing called /r/place - a community canvas where everyone can get involved. Thanks to the help of the community, we were able to get APICO immortalised in a small section with a bunch of other indies you might know! [hr][/hr]
We were lucky enough to have APICO selected for the Itch.io Summer Selects Bundle, a special bundle containing APICO and 5 other cool indies! Thanks to everyone who bought the bundle and supported us, we hope you enjoy all your new sweet games <3 [hr][/hr]
For our console friends, 2.2.3 is now live on Xbox / Playstation. This was a small update but contained some important fixes and means the consoles are now in-line with PC! Unfortunately Nintendo wasnt as kind with approval and still wont let the patch through, however youre not missing out on anything major! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on July, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-07-31 20:49:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
Another month flies by, it feels like I was only just writing the June recap! Here's whats been going on.
[hr][/hr]
APICO Wholesome Games Sale!
The lovely people at Wholesome Games have organised a Steam Sale thats host to all sorts of cosy games, with some sweet discounts on offer! As part of the sale, APICO will be 40% off until 7th August, with both OSTs 50% off as well. [hr][/hr]
APICO at /r/place
For the redditors among you, you might have heard of a little thing called /r/place - a community canvas where everyone can get involved. Thanks to the help of the community, we were able to get APICO immortalised in a small section with a bunch of other indies you might know! [hr][/hr]
Itch.io Selects
We were lucky enough to have APICO selected for the Itch.io Summer Selects Bundle, a special bundle containing APICO and 5 other cool indies! Thanks to everyone who bought the bundle and supported us, we hope you enjoy all your new sweet games <3 [hr][/hr]
APICO 2.2.3 for Xbox/Playstation
For our console friends, 2.2.3 is now live on Xbox / Playstation. This was a small update but contained some important fixes and means the consoles are now in-line with PC! Unfortunately Nintendo wasnt as kind with approval and still wont let the patch through, however youre not missing out on anything major! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on July, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-07-31 20:49:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - JUNE2023
So after a very long time, APICO has finally released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. This is the latest version of the game, and includes all the beeautiful butterfly content! We hope all the new beekeepers enjoy their stay at Port APICO <3 [hr][/hr]
Rift Breach got a bunch of new updates, and the demo was re-released for Steams Nextfest, which you can still try out! Unfortunately it didnt really gather any response or interest, so itll be going into cold storage for a bit while we work on the other games. [hr][/hr]
Mudborne got nominated for the Rising Star award in the 2023 UK Indie Cup! We didnt win in the end, but the fact that a little 1 week froggy demo managed to get a nomination is still amazing to see! [hr][/hr]
Feed The Beasts is now Snacktorio! We had to change the name for legal reasons and we asked the Factorio team as a joke, but they said yes. Its weird having to call it something different after 3 years but here we are - you can find us in all the same places just a different name and logo. [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on June, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-07-02 09:32:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
We're now halfway through the year, which is a scary thought given all the things I still want to get done in 2023... better get to it!
[hr][/hr]
APICO releases on Xbox!
So after a very long time, APICO has finally released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. This is the latest version of the game, and includes all the beeautiful butterfly content! We hope all the new beekeepers enjoy their stay at Port APICO <3 [hr][/hr]
Rift Breach at NextFest
Rift Breach got a bunch of new updates, and the demo was re-released for Steams Nextfest, which you can still try out! Unfortunately it didnt really gather any response or interest, so itll be going into cold storage for a bit while we work on the other games. [hr][/hr]
Mudborne Indie Cup Nominee
Mudborne got nominated for the Rising Star award in the 2023 UK Indie Cup! We didnt win in the end, but the fact that a little 1 week froggy demo managed to get a nomination is still amazing to see! [hr][/hr]
Hello Snacktorio
Feed The Beasts is now Snacktorio! We had to change the name for legal reasons and we asked the Factorio team as a joke, but they said yes. Its weird having to call it something different after 3 years but here we are - you can find us in all the same places just a different name and logo. [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on June, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-07-02 09:32:04 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - MAY2023
May 20th was APICOs birthday! We had lots of deals and sales to celebrate - dont worry if you missed out though as we have an Itch.io one still to come! The hive doubled in size in just a week, so thank you to all the newbees that have joined us - we hope you enjoy <3 [hr][/hr]
Voting has now ended for the Design A Butterfly competition, and the winner was @Hollibees Sunset Butterfly Everyone had such a difficult time deciding, thank you for all the artists for their wonderful entries! [hr][/hr]
So its been confirmed APICO will be coming to Xbox soon, stay tuned next month for some date announcements! Xbox initial release will include the 2.0 butterfly update by default <3 [hr][/hr]
The groundwork for 3.0, aka What Lies Beeneath has started, with a hefty devlog you can read over on Ko-Fi or Steam! No dates to announce yet but were still aiming for Q3/Q4 this year <3 [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on May, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-05-31 12:07:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
May has flown by, and it's an important anniversary month for both APICO and myself personally, marking the start of me making games 3 years ago. Here's whats been going on:
[hr][/hr]
APICOs Birthday
May 20th was APICOs birthday! We had lots of deals and sales to celebrate - dont worry if you missed out though as we have an Itch.io one still to come! The hive doubled in size in just a week, so thank you to all the newbees that have joined us - we hope you enjoy <3 [hr][/hr]
Butterfly Design Winner
Voting has now ended for the Design A Butterfly competition, and the winner was @Hollibees Sunset Butterfly Everyone had such a difficult time deciding, thank you for all the artists for their wonderful entries! [hr][/hr]
APICO On Xbox
So its been confirmed APICO will be coming to Xbox soon, stay tuned next month for some date announcements! Xbox initial release will include the 2.0 butterfly update by default <3 [hr][/hr]
APICO 3.0 Beegins
The groundwork for 3.0, aka What Lies Beeneath has started, with a hefty devlog you can read over on Ko-Fi or Steam! No dates to announce yet but were still aiming for Q3/Q4 this year <3 [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on May, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-05-31 12:07:05 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - APR2023
In case you missed it, a release date for consoles for the 2.0 Butterfly Update has now been announced! I Cant Beelieve Its Not Butter(flies) will be fluttering over to Nintendo Switch & Playstation on May 11th - save the date! [hr][/hr]
The Design A Butterfly competition has now ended! Thanks so much to everyone who took part. Well setup a post soon for voting to let you all decide your favourite that will be added into the 3.0 update! [hr][/hr]
Mudborne has now already reached over 1000 wishlists! Thanks so much to everyone whos checked out the demo - well absolutely be coming back to this one later in the year, and start planning a full game! <3 [hr][/hr]
Were super happy to say that the Family Gaming DB gave APICO the family gaming award + recommendation for 2022 Weve spent a lot of time making sure APICO is enjoyable for all ages, so it means a lot to be given this! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on April, bee safe and well see you next month! Love,Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-05-01 09:09:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
April has been and gone, finally bringing some sunshine and bumblebees to the garden! Here's what we've been up to:
[hr][/hr]
2.0 Update For Consoles
In case you missed it, a release date for consoles for the 2.0 Butterfly Update has now been announced! I Cant Beelieve Its Not Butter(flies) will be fluttering over to Nintendo Switch & Playstation on May 11th - save the date! [hr][/hr]
Butterfly Competition
The Design A Butterfly competition has now ended! Thanks so much to everyone who took part. Well setup a post soon for voting to let you all decide your favourite that will be added into the 3.0 update! [hr][/hr]
Mudborne
Mudborne has now already reached over 1000 wishlists! Thanks so much to everyone whos checked out the demo - well absolutely be coming back to this one later in the year, and start planning a full game! <3 [hr][/hr]
Family Gaming DB
Were super happy to say that the Family Gaming DB gave APICO the family gaming award + recommendation for 2022 Weve spent a lot of time making sure APICO is enjoyable for all ages, so it means a lot to be given this! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on April, bee safe and well see you next month! Love,Ell & Jamie
[ 2023-05-01 09:09:17 CET ] [ Original post ]
TNgineers News - MAR2023
Another friend joins the gang! Ell took part in a week long game-jam, and the result was Mudborne, an APICO-like focused around frogs + mushrooms. You can read more about the development of the game over the 7 days, or just try the demo out for yourself on itch.io or Steam! [hr][/hr]
Speaking of friends joining the gang, we have a new TNgineer! Some of you might recognise StarVenus/Beenus from Discord or /r/APICO, were delighted to announce shell be joining us as a social + community manager! Its getting a bit hectic managing 3 (now 4) games, so reinforcements were needed, and have arrived! [hr][/hr]
Feed The Beasts finally has a steam page, so you can get those wishlists in and follow us for updates on the progress of the game! Were slowly edging towards a demo release, and cant wait to share it with you all! [hr][/hr]
Some of you may remember our Design A Bee competition back before the butterfly update - well were doing another one, and this time its for designing your own butterfly! The winning design will be added to the game, plus the designer will win a bunch of prizes too - check the announcement post for more info! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on March, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie (AND BEENUS) <3
[ 2023-03-30 12:21:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
March has flown by, and with it the weather has slowly turned from wet and rainy to... well still wet and rainy cos it's the UK baby!!!! Here's what's been going on
[hr][/hr]
Mudborne
Another friend joins the gang! Ell took part in a week long game-jam, and the result was Mudborne, an APICO-like focused around frogs + mushrooms. You can read more about the development of the game over the 7 days, or just try the demo out for yourself on itch.io or Steam! [hr][/hr]
Beenus
Speaking of friends joining the gang, we have a new TNgineer! Some of you might recognise StarVenus/Beenus from Discord or /r/APICO, were delighted to announce shell be joining us as a social + community manager! Its getting a bit hectic managing 3 (now 4) games, so reinforcements were needed, and have arrived! [hr][/hr]
FTBS Steam Page!
Feed The Beasts finally has a steam page, so you can get those wishlists in and follow us for updates on the progress of the game! Were slowly edging towards a demo release, and cant wait to share it with you all! [hr][/hr]
Butterfly Competition!
Some of you may remember our Design A Bee competition back before the butterfly update - well were doing another one, and this time its for designing your own butterfly! The winning design will be added to the game, plus the designer will win a bunch of prizes too - check the announcement post for more info! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on March, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie (AND BEENUS) <3
[ 2023-03-30 12:21:32 CET ] [ Original post ]
Creating Mudborne
To start with I planned out the basic gameloop: ur a frog, u catch frogs, breed frogs, get more frogs etc until ur drowning in frog. I wanted to play more with the trait + inheritance stuff APICO has to have traits directly effect the frog you get - you can see some of the ideas here in my AAA-rated game design doc:
In APICO I've always done everything together, BeeA + BeeB might = BeeC if conditions are right. I wanted to try breaking this down to split out the conditions + new species gameplay into two distinct halves - first gather mushrooms that only bloom in certain conditions, then use the mushrooms combined with mud to make a potion of sorts that would buff a give frog trait +1 or -1. Rather than have diff. frogs combine to form diff. species, I wanted those traits to be the cause - getting a 1 or 5 in a trait would turn your frog into a new species.
With that out the way, I started drawing out a small concept sketch! I like to try and visualise how the game will look at the end so I can try and make the general palette all cohesive as well as see all the different mechanics and extras I'll need to code.
my son is borne The idea of you actually being a small frog keeping smaller frogs was hilarious to me so kinda ran with it - I also had a vague idea of making it clear the game is set inside a giant pond but never got that far! I then drew out all the items I would need for the game, borrowing generously from APICO where appropriate (I did only have 7 days after all!)
a bunch of the final sprites changed for the items but the frogs/mush stayed the same for the most part! As I mentioned originally i was thinking it'd be cute to show several progressively zoomed in scenery shots showing the game takes place at a tiny scale inside a pond - but I didn't think it was something i could realistically do in the time! (this whole jam was a great exercise in ruthless scope cutting) Instead I changed tactics and decided that I'd have the player sleeping when the game starts + in their dream they have an overly dramatic vision of some deity that gives them both the book (the in-game guide) as well as the general goal (find all my frogs pls) thus space frog god was born
possibly the most high res pixel art i've done to-date? Outside of the menus for the various "machines" in-game, at the end of day 1 I basically had everything drawn ready to go, which meant I could just fully get stuck into the mechanics while already having a great picture of what everything would look like! [hr][/hr]
So with my sprite work done I opened up GameMaker and got to work! First up I setup a tilemap of all the different grass/mud/water tiles, plus some scenery, and fleshed out a rough game map
this is the standard GM "room editor"! For the mushroom spawns, I wanted there to be a clear distinction between a mushroom patch, and a mushroom in bloom, so for each mushroom I drew a scenery tile that would represent that mush
truly the pinnacle of animation I then added lil foliage patches to the game where mushrooms could potentially spawn (inheriting the tile they are on). The game then checks occasionally if there should be more of each mushroom, and if so places a baby one ready to bloom when the conditions are right (i.e. night-time + mud + raining, or day-time + shallows + not raining)
When in-game these foliage patches would just be generic scuffed terrain pixels, but then once a mushroom baby spawns it shows the tile mushroom, then when blooms creates a mushroom. You can see the distinction in-game here, along with some trees I added to help finish off the basic nature scenery!
blue + red mushrooms in bloom (black outline) then various mushroom babies waiting for the right conditions I added a basic mouse + highlighting system, a basic day/night cycle with a shader to make a nice blue night-time shade, and then some rain and fog to give some atmosphere to the swamp! Every day the game would rain - originally I planned to have a little weather radio you could check but due to time this got replaced with a small tooltip in the bottom-left of the screen.
starting to feel like an actual world now! I then added the start of the show, our little frog player! As the game was using tiles I could easily check which tile the player was under, and show walking / wading in water / wading in mud animations respectively (and later little PFX splashes) I then also added in some little "spores" to the mushrooms when they bloomed just to really bring attention to them
To finish the day off, I then coded the most important feature - tiny little frogs!! I spent a bunch of time messing around with different AI patterns but eventually landed on something that was silly and effective. They'd jump randomly on their own, do occasional ribbets (that would later have a SFX), and also jump when the player tried to get near them - just to add a bit of fun to catching frogs with the net later!
also some speed slowdown when walking in mud! [hr][/hr]
After a long sleep dreaming of frogs I got started drawing up the various menus I need - my game style is very menu heavy so the core mechanics are usually in them! First up a bed to let people skip time, as well as revisit dream frog for a progress check
Next up i wanted a large storage option as I already knew just how many frogs + spawn people will hoarde, so I designed a little "barrel" will let people have multiple sections of storage to use as they like (frogs or items or both)
why doesnt APICO have this? i dont know honestly To get into the "meat" of the game, the cauldron lets people take buckets of mud and the mushrooms they found and stir together into magic mud that would be used to affect traits later! I wanted to add one of my "mechanism" minigames here just cos its like my whole schtick and i thought it'd be a cute way of including one! the spoon stirs as you drag left + right on your happy cauldron friend
he's just happy to be here For getting frogspawn I did a simple breeding box (which i have named a "spawner" because you can't be going around having an item called the "breeder" online in the year of our lord 2023) Frogspawn will take a mix of trait vals from both parents used, Punnett Square style as i'm contractually obligated to do - but ultimately it's not a big part of the game in a way it really needs to be talked about much, as the mushroom modifications are how you ultimately get new species
Then for the final step in the process, I wanted a nursery where you put water, magic mud + frogspawn together and sort of "layer" them (like the sand in a bottle crafts!) Based on the mud used, the frogspawn will get a +1 or -1 to one of the 5 traits. if the trait is now a 1 or a 5 (min. or max.) a different species of frog will appear instead, with a guide in-game giving hints of what frogs you might get, and what mushrooms might do.
With all the menus done I could again just get stuck into coding - this is generally the pattern I have with all my gamedev, try and perfect a visual of what it'll look like in-game, then work on making that in code. I setup some basic menu/slot objects + the player hotbar/inventory - slots were just instances that store the item info data + sprite to draw (if any). I then did some basic interaction stuff to make it clear the tool you're using will have an effect based on what you're hovering cos I love an icon
later magnifying glasses would also show you the item sprite for a given mush/frog too! I then spent a big chunk of time messing with some smaller things, like being able to move items around, drop items etc - bit fiddly but luckily ive done this before lol I also worked on the frogs to give them some extra fx, like an "in mud" visual, and their little ribbet frame! I also did a lot of stuff that doesn't look cute or fun behind the scenes, mainly around getting all the menu slots to work nicely and let items have a total or durability - plus added in all the usual mouse suspects; right-click to split stack , middle click to gather all etc
I then added in menus - I had very lofty goals for getting through all menu logic in one day lmao! I managed to finish off the bed, which in it's defense was always going to be a more "complicated" one as not only did I have to first add the concept of buttons to all menus first, but then also do some special fx with the sleeping transition Unlike APICO, sleeping would move the time ahead entirely - along with any "machines" running. For example if you had a spawner with frogs breeding in, and slept for a few hours, the spawner would now be "done" - it's a small game so i didnt want a lot of empty time waiting around, and I didn't think there was any downside to letting people choose to skip ahead as they needed!
and the tiny little Zs so precious omg I did manage to get out another menu, the spawner, towards the end of the day. Here you can put two frogs together to get some frogspawn (sped up for the vid). I also worked on some general "error" message + state bubbles for the objects cos you know i love a system status visual With that done Day 3 was done, and while I hadn't done everything I'd hoped for I'd made a big jump ahead and setup a lot of stuff that'd make the other menus easier to create!
now kiss.... [hr][/hr]
So I might have underestimated how much time it was gunna take to do the menu system setup, but with it done I was confident I could get through the last 4 menus on day 4 and then be able to test the proper loop all the way through I felt that'd be a good midway point to check the whole thing end to end and be able to be like okay yes this is Confirmed FunTM or whether it was naff and still have time to tweak things before submitting. First up I added the barrel menu, for which I already had the concept of "active" slots from the player inventory. When open all slots are active, when shut only the hotbar slots are. Using the same idea I could create "pages" of slots for the barrel, activating and deactivating the slots on each page as needed - the rest just worked magically!
seriously why doesnt APICO have this I then moved onto the cauldron, which was probably the most complex menu of them all as I needed to add some new types of GUI for the tank and the mechanism, plus make the mechanism move left and right when dragging! plus I had to get that lil cauldron man stirring just right for the vibes
I also went and finally gave the magnifying glass a purpose now I had all the drawing stuff I needed for it - hovering any frog, mushroom patch, or mushroom gives the "item" sprite shown so you know exactly whats what (plus its super cute running around with a lil mag glass) I then spent a bunch of time writing actual words not code (gross), which was basically just fleshing out the names of all frogs, their "likes" (a reward flavour text for discovering them), the mushrooms, and basically just mapping out what mushrooms would do what and where they spawn etc
zoom.... enhance.... Once I was done with that I added in my fav game mechanic - tooltips! I'm a big fan of showing the "status" of any system, so tooltips are a no brainer for me. While adding them I also added a basic little trait panel popup for the frogs/frogspawn so people could see the values they currently had VS what they might want to achieve (i.e. catch some frogs and see which ones have 2s or 4s already to save buffing multiple times)
the 5 traits are Pizazz, Ribbet, Chonk, Stink, and Grump I then finished off the nursery menu! This was the final piece of the loop, letting you use the magic mud you made in a cauldron + frogspawn to get new frogs and modify traits in the process! I also added some extra tooltip info just so it's clear as mud (the mud, that is)
look at them go!! As you can see in that last GIF there was also a little house now! This was just a static scenery sprite with some layering trickery to make look real when walking around/into it plus some basic collision tiles to make it all feel correct and solid! I didn't really want to spend time adding placable walls/tiles, as I definitely wouldn't have the time and I didn't think it was important for the core concept
You can see some of the menu objects here that changed from the original drawings! I then pissed around a bit getting all the different frogs in the game as well as their tiny overworld counterparts to work properly, and also had to change how some stuff worked to use a seperate "dictionary" with all the info in I liked the idea of not only picking up frogs but being able to place them down, sort of like an unlimited overworld storage (that admittedly hops slowly to a different location over time but it's still cute)
I then finally built out the world and all the resources, as well as added, lilypads, that would act as the main resource with logs for crafting everything! Similar to the mushroom "foliage" i just did little lilypad spawner tiles to create new lilypad items as needed, based on a global count - that way they always respawned and you always had enough.
the mostly final world design in the room editor in GM, pink are foliage/lilypad spawners, red is collision I also then made an attempt at the "discovery" animation - it was basic but my plan was if I have time I'll add some easing/bounce to various elements to make it a bit more jazzy, however I did lo-key love it being terrible for it to then reveal the silliest looking frog (which, spoilers, I ended up keeping and leaning into by adding a really ridiculous sad party blower sound on the reveal) I think i struggle a lot with stuff i can't easily visualise, and for bigger animation stuff it's easier to make it inside gamemaker - all the other things I've done so far have p. much all been taken directly from aseprite, so more animated stuff i find a lot harder! I ending the day with a little crafting! It was super basic but it did the job and meant the base game had everything in it to play through the core mechanics, so I could do some testing of the main loop and check if it was fun (for me at least)
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To start with on day 5 I sketched up all the book design! I only really needed 3 pages, one to explain the main mechanics, one to keep track of frogs and view hints/progress, and one to keep track of mushrooms and their preferences (day/night/weather). Later I'd add a 4th just to explain the 5 traits and re-iterate how you got new species.
truly a masterpiece For frogs/mushrooms I just wanted a simple page with all of them visible, black if not discovered, and hoverable for info/hints. For the "mechanics" page i wanted a sort of diagram with the same hoverable stuff, but instead it's game items, so you can see how everything fits in with a little flowchart style set of arrows to give you an idea of how to follow the process. I got to work drawing up the sketches into what they'd look like in the game! First up the frog book:
i added little background sketches of in-game items to give it some vibes I did the same thing with the mushrooms, and added little hints at what the effects would do of the mushroom. Even though discovering a mushroom would unlock the tooltip to tell you outright "+1 Grump" or whatever, I liked the idea of having some symbolism for certain traits shown on both the frog + mushroom pages
For the final (and actually first) page, I wanted the discovery / guide page to have a tree of sorts that you could follow along, each icon giving you info on that thing/obj/mechanic Then I'd have some little unlock states for that sweet sweet game progression, there's quite a few steps but broken down this way I felt would prevent things being unclear OR overwhelming (APICO's books truly suffer with the latter)
I wasn't decided whether I'd do a bunch of "random" blobs as the backings for the icons, or just go with circles to have some neatness The blobs had some some charm to be sketched out but overall I felt it might feel too messy, so I turned them into circles in-game to make it a bit clearer/neater on the hoverable sections. The book was essentially just another menu, so it was easy to just define the menu and add the gui (hoverable bits) and buttons (left/right page arrows)
plus some classic ell pun quest names I set up a basic script that checked the stuff for the "quests" to be unlocked, and then linked the mushroom/frog status to being picked up - later on I'd add little notifications to encourage you to check the book when you did and to make it clear when you'd found something new! With that done I felt like the game was in a good place - all the core gameplay was in and there was an actual guide to help give you a path to follow and progress to check so next up was the GOD FROG, which ended up being the most painful part of the whole game tbh!
A lot of tears later, I had a sequence done for the dream mechanic - I needed two things in this, one was the "intro" for the first time someone plays to give the player the book, and to general set the stage for the game, I then also needed it for the general "check my progress" option which was when you choose to dream at the bed. This needed to be a shorter sequence and then just a summary of the 10/10 frogs you'd found (which would then also be the trigger for the "win" and credits roll once you get all of them). I had a font I'd drawn for another concept a while back that was bigger and more gothic than my standard font and loved the idea of having the god speak in a different font (ala Terry Pratchett)
With that done, and the save/load being sorted, I did a basic lil home screen! Outside of music/sfx/testing i was actually p. much done at this point, so it meant I could then start to work through a list of "nice-to-haves" that I'd been putting aside while working on the main stuff, while Jamie did some testing for me!
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So with everything that had gone on yesterday I kinda had everything done for now! I added a small settings menu mainly to allow the game to be paused, SFX/music volume, and have a small controls panel just to make sure it's clear whats what. I definitely spent way too much that i should have checking all possible pause game fuckups (+ still prob missed some lmao)
With those done my day was essentially just adding in the SFX for everything (for which i'd kept a list during development of all the things + interactions that would need a sound!) plus adding in placeholder music tracks to check the game's "jukebox" system of auto playing tracks at different times, and then finally some testing! When it comes to music i'll be the first to admit that I suck ass at it, so I didn't even try and instead enlisted the help of my dear friend @MothenseMusic who you may recognise from being the composer of APICO! You can listen to a couple of the tracks they made here and here.
the final night shader + classic twin circle indie game lighting I didn't (and still dont) have a good way to record sound so you'll just have to take my word for it that the ambience + general SFX were all done and sounding lovely (I mean you could just go check out the demo rn too) I then polished off some last little bits and little FX, and then spent some time creating some nice screenshots for the itch.io page! It was wild to think at this point I'd finished off a small concept game that was only a sketch a week before!!
Later in the day Moth polished off the last track, so I added them in the game, built the game for Windows/MacOS/Linux, and uploaded everything for itch.io and posted it publicly to submit to the gamejam! [hr][/hr]
And finally, I rested! One thing I'd been undecided on during the jam was whether I'd want to turn this into a full game at some point, but I'd already had so much fun working on it the first 2 days I was like sod it I'll make a steam page for it. Worst case, it'd be 70 down the drain (steam page fee), but best case if people like the game I could funnel people to wishlist it on Steam so I that I'd a good idea of interest. I setup a basic page and submitted - I mentioned before you can get away with some really rough looking screenshots and still get a page approved, so I was able to get the steam page up in time for the game being released on itch, and add a little "wishlist" button to the homepage!
After the initial wave of people playing, I fixed a couple bugs and then submitted it to Steam also, meaning I could get the demo up on Steam too and have a wider audience start checking it out, might seem wild for just a gamejam game but I really think the concept has (frog)legs, and there's lots of ideas I have for a full game, including:
[ 2023-03-30 09:06:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hey friends!
As some of you might know, Mudborne was the result of me taking part in #FletchFest, a 1 week creative jam hosted by @FletchMakes!
I've always joked about making "APICO but frogs", but it's never been much more than that. With the jam having a theme of "pond" I felt like it'd be a great opportunity to imagine what that concept could be like, and the sort of things I could do differently within a similar menu-heavy crafting sim world.
And so, Mudborne was borne!
(NB: This is a summary blog of the development, but if you're interested in more details I live tweeted during the entire week in this thread here! You can try the demo right now here on Steam or over on itch.io)
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Day 1
To start with I planned out the basic gameloop: ur a frog, u catch frogs, breed frogs, get more frogs etc until ur drowning in frog. I wanted to play more with the trait + inheritance stuff APICO has to have traits directly effect the frog you get - you can see some of the ideas here in my AAA-rated game design doc:
In APICO I've always done everything together, BeeA + BeeB might = BeeC if conditions are right. I wanted to try breaking this down to split out the conditions + new species gameplay into two distinct halves - first gather mushrooms that only bloom in certain conditions, then use the mushrooms combined with mud to make a potion of sorts that would buff a give frog trait +1 or -1. Rather than have diff. frogs combine to form diff. species, I wanted those traits to be the cause - getting a 1 or 5 in a trait would turn your frog into a new species.
With that out the way, I started drawing out a small concept sketch! I like to try and visualise how the game will look at the end so I can try and make the general palette all cohesive as well as see all the different mechanics and extras I'll need to code.
my son is borne The idea of you actually being a small frog keeping smaller frogs was hilarious to me so kinda ran with it - I also had a vague idea of making it clear the game is set inside a giant pond but never got that far! I then drew out all the items I would need for the game, borrowing generously from APICO where appropriate (I did only have 7 days after all!)
a bunch of the final sprites changed for the items but the frogs/mush stayed the same for the most part! As I mentioned originally i was thinking it'd be cute to show several progressively zoomed in scenery shots showing the game takes place at a tiny scale inside a pond - but I didn't think it was something i could realistically do in the time! (this whole jam was a great exercise in ruthless scope cutting) Instead I changed tactics and decided that I'd have the player sleeping when the game starts + in their dream they have an overly dramatic vision of some deity that gives them both the book (the in-game guide) as well as the general goal (find all my frogs pls) thus space frog god was born
possibly the most high res pixel art i've done to-date? Outside of the menus for the various "machines" in-game, at the end of day 1 I basically had everything drawn ready to go, which meant I could just fully get stuck into the mechanics while already having a great picture of what everything would look like! [hr][/hr]
Day 2
So with my sprite work done I opened up GameMaker and got to work! First up I setup a tilemap of all the different grass/mud/water tiles, plus some scenery, and fleshed out a rough game map
this is the standard GM "room editor"! For the mushroom spawns, I wanted there to be a clear distinction between a mushroom patch, and a mushroom in bloom, so for each mushroom I drew a scenery tile that would represent that mush
truly the pinnacle of animation I then added lil foliage patches to the game where mushrooms could potentially spawn (inheriting the tile they are on). The game then checks occasionally if there should be more of each mushroom, and if so places a baby one ready to bloom when the conditions are right (i.e. night-time + mud + raining, or day-time + shallows + not raining)
When in-game these foliage patches would just be generic scuffed terrain pixels, but then once a mushroom baby spawns it shows the tile mushroom, then when blooms creates a mushroom. You can see the distinction in-game here, along with some trees I added to help finish off the basic nature scenery!
blue + red mushrooms in bloom (black outline) then various mushroom babies waiting for the right conditions I added a basic mouse + highlighting system, a basic day/night cycle with a shader to make a nice blue night-time shade, and then some rain and fog to give some atmosphere to the swamp! Every day the game would rain - originally I planned to have a little weather radio you could check but due to time this got replaced with a small tooltip in the bottom-left of the screen.
starting to feel like an actual world now! I then added the start of the show, our little frog player! As the game was using tiles I could easily check which tile the player was under, and show walking / wading in water / wading in mud animations respectively (and later little PFX splashes) I then also added in some little "spores" to the mushrooms when they bloomed just to really bring attention to them
To finish the day off, I then coded the most important feature - tiny little frogs!! I spent a bunch of time messing around with different AI patterns but eventually landed on something that was silly and effective. They'd jump randomly on their own, do occasional ribbets (that would later have a SFX), and also jump when the player tried to get near them - just to add a bit of fun to catching frogs with the net later!
also some speed slowdown when walking in mud! [hr][/hr]
Day 3
After a long sleep dreaming of frogs I got started drawing up the various menus I need - my game style is very menu heavy so the core mechanics are usually in them! First up a bed to let people skip time, as well as revisit dream frog for a progress check
Next up i wanted a large storage option as I already knew just how many frogs + spawn people will hoarde, so I designed a little "barrel" will let people have multiple sections of storage to use as they like (frogs or items or both)
why doesnt APICO have this? i dont know honestly To get into the "meat" of the game, the cauldron lets people take buckets of mud and the mushrooms they found and stir together into magic mud that would be used to affect traits later! I wanted to add one of my "mechanism" minigames here just cos its like my whole schtick and i thought it'd be a cute way of including one! the spoon stirs as you drag left + right on your happy cauldron friend
he's just happy to be here For getting frogspawn I did a simple breeding box (which i have named a "spawner" because you can't be going around having an item called the "breeder" online in the year of our lord 2023) Frogspawn will take a mix of trait vals from both parents used, Punnett Square style as i'm contractually obligated to do - but ultimately it's not a big part of the game in a way it really needs to be talked about much, as the mushroom modifications are how you ultimately get new species
Then for the final step in the process, I wanted a nursery where you put water, magic mud + frogspawn together and sort of "layer" them (like the sand in a bottle crafts!) Based on the mud used, the frogspawn will get a +1 or -1 to one of the 5 traits. if the trait is now a 1 or a 5 (min. or max.) a different species of frog will appear instead, with a guide in-game giving hints of what frogs you might get, and what mushrooms might do.
With all the menus done I could again just get stuck into coding - this is generally the pattern I have with all my gamedev, try and perfect a visual of what it'll look like in-game, then work on making that in code. I setup some basic menu/slot objects + the player hotbar/inventory - slots were just instances that store the item info data + sprite to draw (if any). I then did some basic interaction stuff to make it clear the tool you're using will have an effect based on what you're hovering cos I love an icon
later magnifying glasses would also show you the item sprite for a given mush/frog too! I then spent a big chunk of time messing with some smaller things, like being able to move items around, drop items etc - bit fiddly but luckily ive done this before lol I also worked on the frogs to give them some extra fx, like an "in mud" visual, and their little ribbet frame! I also did a lot of stuff that doesn't look cute or fun behind the scenes, mainly around getting all the menu slots to work nicely and let items have a total or durability - plus added in all the usual mouse suspects; right-click to split stack , middle click to gather all etc
I then added in menus - I had very lofty goals for getting through all menu logic in one day lmao! I managed to finish off the bed, which in it's defense was always going to be a more "complicated" one as not only did I have to first add the concept of buttons to all menus first, but then also do some special fx with the sleeping transition Unlike APICO, sleeping would move the time ahead entirely - along with any "machines" running. For example if you had a spawner with frogs breeding in, and slept for a few hours, the spawner would now be "done" - it's a small game so i didnt want a lot of empty time waiting around, and I didn't think there was any downside to letting people choose to skip ahead as they needed!
and the tiny little Zs so precious omg I did manage to get out another menu, the spawner, towards the end of the day. Here you can put two frogs together to get some frogspawn (sped up for the vid). I also worked on some general "error" message + state bubbles for the objects cos you know i love a system status visual With that done Day 3 was done, and while I hadn't done everything I'd hoped for I'd made a big jump ahead and setup a lot of stuff that'd make the other menus easier to create!
now kiss.... [hr][/hr]
Day 4
So I might have underestimated how much time it was gunna take to do the menu system setup, but with it done I was confident I could get through the last 4 menus on day 4 and then be able to test the proper loop all the way through I felt that'd be a good midway point to check the whole thing end to end and be able to be like okay yes this is Confirmed FunTM or whether it was naff and still have time to tweak things before submitting. First up I added the barrel menu, for which I already had the concept of "active" slots from the player inventory. When open all slots are active, when shut only the hotbar slots are. Using the same idea I could create "pages" of slots for the barrel, activating and deactivating the slots on each page as needed - the rest just worked magically!
seriously why doesnt APICO have this I then moved onto the cauldron, which was probably the most complex menu of them all as I needed to add some new types of GUI for the tank and the mechanism, plus make the mechanism move left and right when dragging! plus I had to get that lil cauldron man stirring just right for the vibes
I also went and finally gave the magnifying glass a purpose now I had all the drawing stuff I needed for it - hovering any frog, mushroom patch, or mushroom gives the "item" sprite shown so you know exactly whats what (plus its super cute running around with a lil mag glass) I then spent a bunch of time writing actual words not code (gross), which was basically just fleshing out the names of all frogs, their "likes" (a reward flavour text for discovering them), the mushrooms, and basically just mapping out what mushrooms would do what and where they spawn etc
zoom.... enhance.... Once I was done with that I added in my fav game mechanic - tooltips! I'm a big fan of showing the "status" of any system, so tooltips are a no brainer for me. While adding them I also added a basic little trait panel popup for the frogs/frogspawn so people could see the values they currently had VS what they might want to achieve (i.e. catch some frogs and see which ones have 2s or 4s already to save buffing multiple times)
the 5 traits are Pizazz, Ribbet, Chonk, Stink, and Grump I then finished off the nursery menu! This was the final piece of the loop, letting you use the magic mud you made in a cauldron + frogspawn to get new frogs and modify traits in the process! I also added some extra tooltip info just so it's clear as mud (the mud, that is)
look at them go!! As you can see in that last GIF there was also a little house now! This was just a static scenery sprite with some layering trickery to make look real when walking around/into it plus some basic collision tiles to make it all feel correct and solid! I didn't really want to spend time adding placable walls/tiles, as I definitely wouldn't have the time and I didn't think it was important for the core concept
You can see some of the menu objects here that changed from the original drawings! I then pissed around a bit getting all the different frogs in the game as well as their tiny overworld counterparts to work properly, and also had to change how some stuff worked to use a seperate "dictionary" with all the info in I liked the idea of not only picking up frogs but being able to place them down, sort of like an unlimited overworld storage (that admittedly hops slowly to a different location over time but it's still cute)
I then finally built out the world and all the resources, as well as added, lilypads, that would act as the main resource with logs for crafting everything! Similar to the mushroom "foliage" i just did little lilypad spawner tiles to create new lilypad items as needed, based on a global count - that way they always respawned and you always had enough.
the mostly final world design in the room editor in GM, pink are foliage/lilypad spawners, red is collision I also then made an attempt at the "discovery" animation - it was basic but my plan was if I have time I'll add some easing/bounce to various elements to make it a bit more jazzy, however I did lo-key love it being terrible for it to then reveal the silliest looking frog (which, spoilers, I ended up keeping and leaning into by adding a really ridiculous sad party blower sound on the reveal) I think i struggle a lot with stuff i can't easily visualise, and for bigger animation stuff it's easier to make it inside gamemaker - all the other things I've done so far have p. much all been taken directly from aseprite, so more animated stuff i find a lot harder! I ending the day with a little crafting! It was super basic but it did the job and meant the base game had everything in it to play through the core mechanics, so I could do some testing of the main loop and check if it was fun (for me at least)
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Day 5
To start with on day 5 I sketched up all the book design! I only really needed 3 pages, one to explain the main mechanics, one to keep track of frogs and view hints/progress, and one to keep track of mushrooms and their preferences (day/night/weather). Later I'd add a 4th just to explain the 5 traits and re-iterate how you got new species.
truly a masterpiece For frogs/mushrooms I just wanted a simple page with all of them visible, black if not discovered, and hoverable for info/hints. For the "mechanics" page i wanted a sort of diagram with the same hoverable stuff, but instead it's game items, so you can see how everything fits in with a little flowchart style set of arrows to give you an idea of how to follow the process. I got to work drawing up the sketches into what they'd look like in the game! First up the frog book:
i added little background sketches of in-game items to give it some vibes I did the same thing with the mushrooms, and added little hints at what the effects would do of the mushroom. Even though discovering a mushroom would unlock the tooltip to tell you outright "+1 Grump" or whatever, I liked the idea of having some symbolism for certain traits shown on both the frog + mushroom pages
For the final (and actually first) page, I wanted the discovery / guide page to have a tree of sorts that you could follow along, each icon giving you info on that thing/obj/mechanic Then I'd have some little unlock states for that sweet sweet game progression, there's quite a few steps but broken down this way I felt would prevent things being unclear OR overwhelming (APICO's books truly suffer with the latter)
I wasn't decided whether I'd do a bunch of "random" blobs as the backings for the icons, or just go with circles to have some neatness The blobs had some some charm to be sketched out but overall I felt it might feel too messy, so I turned them into circles in-game to make it a bit clearer/neater on the hoverable sections. The book was essentially just another menu, so it was easy to just define the menu and add the gui (hoverable bits) and buttons (left/right page arrows)
plus some classic ell pun quest names I set up a basic script that checked the stuff for the "quests" to be unlocked, and then linked the mushroom/frog status to being picked up - later on I'd add little notifications to encourage you to check the book when you did and to make it clear when you'd found something new! With that done I felt like the game was in a good place - all the core gameplay was in and there was an actual guide to help give you a path to follow and progress to check so next up was the GOD FROG, which ended up being the most painful part of the whole game tbh!
A lot of tears later, I had a sequence done for the dream mechanic - I needed two things in this, one was the "intro" for the first time someone plays to give the player the book, and to general set the stage for the game, I then also needed it for the general "check my progress" option which was when you choose to dream at the bed. This needed to be a shorter sequence and then just a summary of the 10/10 frogs you'd found (which would then also be the trigger for the "win" and credits roll once you get all of them). I had a font I'd drawn for another concept a while back that was bigger and more gothic than my standard font and loved the idea of having the god speak in a different font (ala Terry Pratchett)
With that done, and the save/load being sorted, I did a basic lil home screen! Outside of music/sfx/testing i was actually p. much done at this point, so it meant I could then start to work through a list of "nice-to-haves" that I'd been putting aside while working on the main stuff, while Jamie did some testing for me!
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Day 6
So with everything that had gone on yesterday I kinda had everything done for now! I added a small settings menu mainly to allow the game to be paused, SFX/music volume, and have a small controls panel just to make sure it's clear whats what. I definitely spent way too much that i should have checking all possible pause game fuckups (+ still prob missed some lmao)
With those done my day was essentially just adding in the SFX for everything (for which i'd kept a list during development of all the things + interactions that would need a sound!) plus adding in placeholder music tracks to check the game's "jukebox" system of auto playing tracks at different times, and then finally some testing! When it comes to music i'll be the first to admit that I suck ass at it, so I didn't even try and instead enlisted the help of my dear friend @MothenseMusic who you may recognise from being the composer of APICO! You can listen to a couple of the tracks they made here and here.
the final night shader + classic twin circle indie game lighting I didn't (and still dont) have a good way to record sound so you'll just have to take my word for it that the ambience + general SFX were all done and sounding lovely (I mean you could just go check out the demo rn too) I then polished off some last little bits and little FX, and then spent some time creating some nice screenshots for the itch.io page! It was wild to think at this point I'd finished off a small concept game that was only a sketch a week before!!
Later in the day Moth polished off the last track, so I added them in the game, built the game for Windows/MacOS/Linux, and uploaded everything for itch.io and posted it publicly to submit to the gamejam! [hr][/hr]
Day 7
And finally, I rested! One thing I'd been undecided on during the jam was whether I'd want to turn this into a full game at some point, but I'd already had so much fun working on it the first 2 days I was like sod it I'll make a steam page for it. Worst case, it'd be 70 down the drain (steam page fee), but best case if people like the game I could funnel people to wishlist it on Steam so I that I'd a good idea of interest. I setup a basic page and submitted - I mentioned before you can get away with some really rough looking screenshots and still get a page approved, so I was able to get the steam page up in time for the game being released on itch, and add a little "wishlist" button to the homepage!
After the initial wave of people playing, I fixed a couple bugs and then submitted it to Steam also, meaning I could get the demo up on Steam too and have a wider audience start checking it out, might seem wild for just a gamejam game but I really think the concept has (frog)legs, and there's lots of ideas I have for a full game, including:
- mud pools / nursery pools for tadpoles (so splitting out the nursery into 2 distinct processes, the first for frogspawn to mess with traits, and the second to care for the tadpoles and give them the conditions they need to grow into big stronk frog)
- more expanded nursery puzzle to let you add multiple layers of things that all effect the final frogspawn outcome
- ways to display your cute frogs, like little scenery pieces you can place that when you put a frog on them they won't hop away, essentially acting as overworld storage of frogs (tiny frog spas, tiny frog zen gardens etc)
- custom houses with upgrades but also decoration stuff (build smaller houses, bridges between islands, terraforming etc)
- digging more into mushrooms, specifically the spawning positions. I'd like to look into making it the players responsibility to create small patches mushrooms can bloom on, as well as collect spores to experiment with growing your own mushroom combinations
- mushrooms that have multiple effects, i.e. not just +1 or -1 but could do like x2 A but -1 B
- expand frog traits to be 1-7, and have new frog conditions be all sorts of different combinations, i.e. max stink, max grump and max chonk, or like a 6666 frog
- something more indepth with the biology of frogspawn, perhaps being able to use a microscope and modify some traits to remove some of the recessive ones
- exploring the "dreaming" mechanic and perhaps have an alternative dream world you can visit to do things that effect the real world + vice-versa (ala Link To The Past)
- pet frogs that can follow you???
[ 2023-03-30 09:06:30 CET ] [ Original post ]
Mudborne
ellraiser
Developer
ellraiser
Publisher
1970-01-01
Release
Game News Posts:
27
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🕹️ Partial Controller Support
🎮 Full Controller Support
🕹️ Partial Controller Support
🎮 Full Controller Support
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MUDBORNE... YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN
Mudborne is a laid-back nature sim game about breeding & collecting frogs! Visited in your dreams by a mysterious deity, you begin a journey to help rediscover Her lost children.
- Finally reach your life goals and become an actual frog!
- TINY LITTLE FROGS YOU CAN CATCH AND CHASE
- Find and collect different mushrooms to help buff (or debuff) your frogs
- Play god and manipulate your frogs genetics to find new species
- One of the frogs has a tiny hat!!! GOTY contender????
Mudborne spawned as a small week-long gamejam, #FletchFest, organised by FletchMakes!
The result is the game you can play for free over on https://tngineers.itch.io/mudborne, with music by Mothense! :D
I've always joked about making "APICO but frog", but it's never been much more than that - with the gamejam theme of "pond" however it seemed like a good opportunity to make it a reality!
With Mudborne I wanted to play more with the idea of direct manipulation & min/max-ing of genetics to find new species (rather than just slapping bees together), as well as some more interesting nature mechanics - while still bringing the same menu management & crafting minigame vibes you all know and love (along with all the learning I've had making APICO!)
I've got lots of ideas for this concept and would love to turn this into a more fleshed out demo and maybe even a full game if people are interested, so if you are maybe give it a lil wishlist??
If you want to follow along with the project you can catch us on Twitter, or hit up the TNgineers Discord, links are in the sidebar.
MINIMAL SETUP
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
- Processor: Intel Core i5 (4th Gen)Memory: 4 MB RAM
- Memory: 4 MB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Integrated
- Storage: 250 MB available space
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