Snacko News

Meowllo everyone! Spring is supposed to be here, but it’s still kind of cold. Sad.

This month, we had a week where we weren’t able to work on anything because we moved! We’re currently in a temporary place before we move to our final destination in a couple of weeks.

It was uh, a lot. Anyways, we were still able to do some work and hit our first big milestone!

[h2]📖 END OF A CHAPTER[/h2]
We finished the main story! Now the cutscenes and text is all complete, along with the camera movements. Ken was able to finish all of it by the end of March, and it was a huge lifesaver.

The cutscenes require a lot of setting up. Every time an NPC emotes something, walks somewhere, triggers a quest, or just says something, it has to be implemented.

With Ken’s work, we were able to quickly wrap up the loose ends and tie it all together. But…this is also Ken’s last month with us! Let’s all thank Ken for all the ameowzing work he’s done for Snacko 👏

There’s still bugs and little quirks to work out, but the story is officially playable from beginning to end! Now, we just have to finish all of the content. Laughs nervously.

[h2]🌳 TREE[/h2]
Speaking of content, the Frozen Tundra and Mushroom Forest were always a bit…naked. I had to put in the foliage for those areas.

The Mushroom Forest took the longest, because it just needed a lot of stuff to make it look like a proper forest. Oh, but not too much stuff. If I put in too much stuff the Switch will just yell at me.

The Frozen Tundra was a little harder. If I put too much stuff, it looked off. Like the desert, part of the vibe was this feeling of isolation and extreme temperature environment.

So it couldn’t be too luscious. Also, the color spots just kinda ruined the tundra views.

I ended up placing mostly smaller bushes and rocks to give it that feel, and limited the trees to small clumps instead of being everywhere.

[h2]🎮 EVERYTHING ELSE[/h2]
Asides from all that, there were a lot of fixes and things missing. Most of it were mistakes in cutscenes or dialogue.

A whole lot of “oh no Mikan is walking away from me why is she leaving come back” in the middle of a cutscene. Some other things include actually adding water levels to the watering can. Up until this week, you had infinite water in your watering can.

Now, you can either interact with a water source like a well on your farm to refill it or…

Jump into water! Recursive calls this the “Mario Sunshine” update.
There’s no pretty indicator bar yet, just a generic progress bar to show your water levels. But don’t worry about it, I’ll fix that. Soon.

That’s pretty much it! The rest of it is mostly all of the NPC dialogue finished (finally) and a lot of other stuff I can’t show you because it’d be spoilers.

Thank you for reading! We hope you’re having a great week, and we’ll see you next month 😺

Meowllo everyone! We’re a little late for February’s devlog because…writing…is hard.



If you follow us on Twitter or joined our Discord, you know I’ve spent the past couple of weeks writing dialogue. I’m still working on that (8 left~) so I’ve been having trouble finding the time and writing brain cells to write the devlog.

OK, less complaining, more devlog!

[h2]📬 Dialogue[/h2]
OK, I’m gonna talk about this first, because I’m drowning in text. There’s just a lot of talking. I mean, that’s technically my fault, because I could make the NPCs talk less, but then I’ll be sad.



Each NPC has hello’s when you talk to them for the first time every day, and those can change depending on the time of day or your relationship level.



Different text may also come up if they have a flag set (like working, or eating) or if you’re friends with them.
In a vacuum, that’s not a huge issue. But, multiply that by 28 NPCs…and well, I’ve been suffering just a little bit.

[h2]📐Cartography[/h2]
Beyond my writer’s tears, we’ve also been working on implementing the maps so you know where you are and where you’re going. Here’s just some of the maps!



You can choose to toggle the mini-map on your HUD on or off and just pull out your big map when you’re lost…or have it on all the time, because you’re lost all the time (me).



There’s still some details to iron out, like NPC icons being big, but hey - it works!

So, um, yeah. Outside of that, and a lot of back-end stuff like making sure features work properly, UI tweaks, being able to close menus (that’s a nice feature, wouldn’t you say?), that’s all we have for this month.

Sorry, There’s not a lot of pretty pictures. There’s only so many Google Docs I can post with Consolas text before I start getting whacked for spoiling the whole game.

Thank you for all the support, we really appreciate it!

Back to writing…
Pulls out a tissue box for my tears

Meowllo! The things we have to do pile up fast, and the days are going by faster 🙀 We covered a lot of ground last month over a variety of things, so we’ll just go over some of them briefly:


We started going through the main story and implementing the dialogue, cutscenes, and quests. We’ve had the pleasure of Ken helping us wrangle all the implementation and all we had to do was play through it and fix any outstanding issues.

On paper, that sounds easy! Right?

Well, Scarecrow disagrees.


This is supposed to say turnips...

Without spoiling anything, there’s a quest where you must give a scarecrow 20 turnips. He then does a little animation. I was but a naive child when I wrote this part out, not knowing the headaches a Simple Spinning Scarecrow could cause.



There is supposed to be one (1) scarecrow. In this screenshot, there are four (4). Why are there four? Why is only one spinning? Why are there four??


How I feel about the scarecrow

We did eventually figure it out, but not after a long day of cursing and confusion.



Luckily, by the end of the Grassy Plains, we got through a lot of growing pains and were able to get through the Desert Canyon section much faster.



Here’s a bonus picture of a bug where we had some camera misconfiguration that resulted in the characters facing the opposite way. But it’s fixed now! I felt so smart 😊




Snacko has a lot of stuff. Just…stuff. Lots of it. This includes recipes, furniture, buildings, NPC data…stuff.

Well, we had to start organizing the stuff so we could take inventory and make sure everything will be actually implemented in the future.



It looks a bit different depending on what sort of information it is, but now that we have everything mapped out, we’ve been going through our internal database and custom tool to make sure all the items are in, which ones need icons, which ones need an item description, etc. It’s not the most glamorous or fun work, but it’s necessary!



Part of that is also going back and realizing we’re still missing some tutorial popups 😳 Popups will occasional happen mid-cutscene during a tutorial given by Nobu or someone else, but you can also read through them at your own pace via any bookshelf. We were missing some for things like ranching and fishing, but now they’re in!

Every time you mash through a tutorial, I cry just a little bit.

And lastly…


We had originally shown our maze-like approach to mines in Snacko, where the layouts are procedurally generated using pieces and parts we’ve made and set up.

The art never got updated, and it finally got the makeover it deserved!



Floors, walls, foliage, and assets are now in line with what you’d expect to fit in with the rest of the game. It’s a big relief knowing we no longer have a big brown box. The top screenshot was taken 9 days prior to the bottom screenshot. The atmosphere now fits Dale’s awesome mines themes much better!



We also had an issue of seeing through the doorways would diminish the feeling of discovery, so we made a shader that fades as you get closer to you - but only once you’ve removed the blocker! We hope you have a lot of fun in the mines 💖


[h2]…And that’s all for this month! Thank you for sticking with us until the end. January had a lot going on, and development will probably keep this pace up until we hit the light at the end of the tunnel!

Thank you so much for your support, and we’ll see you next month~[/h2]

[h2]Meowllo everyone! Happy new year![/h2]

It’s amazing that after…39 devlogs and 2 years, we’ve finally hit this point. What point? The point in development where we’re focusing on content creation and implementation, and fixes and balancing!

It felt like we’ve been creating an endless stream of features, systems, and designs…but the end of the tunnel is near. We still have some small things to tie up, but we’re mainly into filling out the bones we’ve made with some juicy, meaty, content.



Honestly, it’s a little scary. For the months and months we’ve spent on creating the foundation for the game, and now we have to tie everything together. We have to make sure all of the things we decide to fill the game with result in a fun game.

It feels like a lot of responsibility.



This also means there’s going to be less and less to show in the new year. For the past 2 (wow) years, we’ve been able to chat a lot about what we’ve been doing with development. Putting in day-night cycles, dialogue choices, and so on. But now, with content becoming our new focus, there will be less to show. We don’t want to spoil the entire game before it even comes out!



So, now that we’re in the new year, we’ll be working extra hard to bring Snacko to the finish line. Thank you for all the support you’ve been giving us. We’re extremely humbled by everyone’s excitement for Snacko, and we want to do our best to live up to these expectations and succeed!

[h3]We’ve heard about you sharing us with your friends, we've noticed your wishlists on Steam, we’ve seen your pledges and donations on Patreon and Ko-fi, and we’ve felt your enthusiasm through your Twitter replies and YouTube comments. We’re not exaggerating or joking when we say this is the fuel that helps us keep going.

Sincerely, from the bottom of our hearts, and our four cats, thank you for an amazing 2021. We hope you can continue your love and support for us in 2022 🐾[/h3]





[h2]🌱 You can now walk around in all 4 biomes![/h2]


[h2]🏗️ Redesigned the building system to make it easier to use with controllers! Added more options like multi-slot dyes and more![/h2]


[h2]🎵 Dale North finished the OST! All the tracks are great, by the way…[/h2]


[h2]🎮 Announced we were coming to the Nintendo Switch on Wholesome Direct with a shiny new trailer![/h2]


[h2]🎬 Implemented a system for cutscenes and events![/h2]


[h2]📑 Finished the game’s script and started implementing content[/h2]


[h2]🐧 Stefan Ahlin has given us the joy of idle animations for all the NPCs[/h2]


[h2]💌 Brought the world to life with visual effects by Ken Visudharomn and Adam deGrandis, and sound effects by Fat Bard and José Ramón García[/h2]

Meowllo everyone! It’s finally the last month of the year. That’s a little scary, isn’t it? That’s extremely scary (for us). We’ll also be away for 10 days in December…taking our first extended break since we started working on Snacko full-time! Wow, it’s been two years, huh…

All of us have been diligently chipping away at the mountain of work that is Snacko. Here’s just some of the things we’ve been working on:


We have Bibiki working with us for the sound effects! The past month has seen a lot of sound effects being created by him and then implemented.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We had a lot of holes in our implementation, like tools not recognizing the differ ent surfaces, etc. It’s very satisfying to finally get it done and see it in action!

It’s done in a similar way to how we’re handling the different visual effects for player landing on grass vs dirt, etc. Now the visuals and the sounds match! It’s a great feeling 😌


We’re in the home stretch of sprites and their animations! Stefan has been hard at work creating the cutest walk animations for the villagers. Oh, but we don’t want to show all of them just yet 🤫

In the meantime, have the directional sprites for Kiryl! I had a bit of trouble fitting some of my designs into the compact Snacko sprites, but it was a lot of fun to figure out. Like a puzzle. Except if you misplace a pixel, the character goes from looking fine to super stupid.

Now that the sprites are almost completed, there’s still a lot of work left to do. Their daily dialogues, friendship events, schedules, portraits…

Ahh! The list goes on! We also spent some time this month organizing our tasks. There’s a lot of work spread across different categories, and sometimes it’s easy to lose track of them. Look at Nobu Jr., he’s so small.


The barn became a source of some…headaches lately. The issue was that the way we handled the barn door animation meant the doors were separate from the rest of the barn. Which was fine, until you tried to dye it.

Everything would get dyed except the door, which is an issue. We had the option of either having the building system support multiple meshes, or to make the barn one mesh and animating the doors more traditionally. The easiest option was to make the barn one mesh. Which was…fine. Until the building system didn’t support skeletal meshes, so we had to add in support for that.

A whole rodeo and a half later, we finally have the barn back to what it was, except now the doors get dyed. Yahoo?


Last but not least…a new mini area: the hub! We used to connect a lot of the maps together using the Grassy Plains, but Recursive brought up a valid point: it’s really weird going from the farm or town’s weather, to spring (Plains), to whatever the next biome’s weather is.

So…I made a hub. And moved the Goddess Pond from the farm to there. I hope this will make travelling to multiple places less tedious - this is a lot less walking!

It will also make transitioning between cutscenes and the story flow a bit better…I think. Well, that’s all for this month! We’ll see you in the new year 🥂