Snacko News

Meowllo everyone! Did you see our announcement and new trailer during the Wholesome Direct?
If you haven’t...yes, it’s true!



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Being able to play Snacko on Switch will be a dream come true! Even though it’ll take a lot of work to get all the whiskers and toe tufts working on the system, we think it’s a platform a lot of Snacko fans will enjoy playing the game on.

We’ve been super eggcited to announce this, and we’re so happy that the Snacko community has been so patient and supportive over the past few years.

From liking our Tweets, to chatting on Discord, and especially our Kickstarter backers and Patreon & Ko-fi supporters...all of you have been why we’ve been able to take our smol cat game to this level of chonk.

We have a lot of love for Snacko, and we’ve been extremely lucky to have a community that feels the same way.

Thank you for supporting us!
Thank you for looking forward to Snacko!

[h3]Meowllo! Summer is here! The temperature is rising and so is the amount of assets! Cries quietly. In a few days, the Wholesome Direct will go live on June 12 at 10AM PT. We have something new to share with you, so make sure to tune in![/h3]

Direct aside, let’s take a peek at all the new assets this month, shall we?




Stefan has been hard at work finishing a bunch of animations for the characters in Snacko! I finally got around to putting all of them into the engine and setting them up. There were a lot. Here’s just a look at some of them:



It’s a mix of Kickstarter backer tourists and villagers and “regular” villagers. There’s still a lot of work to be done to implement dialogue, portraits, and so much more. It’s a little daunting, but I think it’ll be rewarding to see everything come together in the end!




Last month, we showed some new Grassy Plains assets, including birch trees and bamboo.



You can find saplings while out gathering wood and plant them back home on your farm or in the town.



This month, we finished up the assets by giving them a sapling mesh as well as some UI icons to match.



All of the item text have been written with a lot of love, so we hope you look forward to reading them! Please laugh at my jokes! 😳



Trees weren’t the only new assets - there’s also food! Here are three Kickstarter backer recipes: dubu (tofu) kimchi, white chili, and a dragon inspired sushi dish.



They all look delicious, right? I always get hungry making food icons or assets for Snacko. It’s very troublesome. The Temari Dragon was extremely fun to design and make! I’ve always wanted to see temari sushi in person, they always look so dazzling in photos…



But there can’t be food without ingredients! The majority of the existing crops were converted to Snacko’s current art style a while ago, but there were still some missing assets.



This month, we cleaned everything up and polished up the 3D models as well as the UI icons for them. They’ve been vertex painted like the previous crops so they’ll move around in the wind slightly. There’s something very calming just standing in the farm field…

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/033/754/692/5603bc2ac007a2465aaa7ccb9ea44c14_original.gif?ixlib=rb-4.0.2&w=700&fit=max&v=1622686351&auto=format&gif-q=50&q=92&s=6fd312f771955f436ec9184ea0d6b686

During this process, we also added in new or polished up icons for other items, like mushrooms you can forage in the wild, or special woods from trees.



[h3]That’s all for this month! We hope you can catch the Wholesome Direct on Saturday! Thank you for reading through the devlog, and thank you for your support 💖[/h3]

Wholesome Direct will feature 75 ameowzing games from ameowzing people, chock full of exclusive announcements, updates, interviews, and more...so make sure to tune in!



[h3]You can learn more at wholesomegames.com
Or follow them on Twitter for the link when it goes live!

We'll also be updating live on our socials:
🐣 Twitter
💬 Discord[/h3]

Meowllo everyone! April sure passed by quick…I thought it was still March. Time is scary.
This month, we’ve been working on a lot of cool things! Except we can’t show them to you just yet! Terrible! But it’s OK, there’s a lot of asset and art work done this month, we can show you some of those. This will be a pretty image heavy devlog!



Last month, we showed some assets for the Grassy Plains. This month, the family is all complete! Say hello 👋



Some tulips, a new fence, and flowers to help brighten up the colors. We wanted to keep the Grassy Plains primarily green. Lots of fresh warm greens! The terrain is quite large, here’s how it looks in the 3D modelling program:



…And here’s how the same chunk looks in-game!



It’s been a lot of fun working on the level. It’s changed quite a bit as it progressed, and it’s also become a lot more hilly. I swear, I do know what “plains” are. I took some, um, creative liberties.



The pond and the northern end with the bamboo are one of my favorite spots.



Also, owo what’s this…?



Adding another building to the “rustic homes” set, here’s an Alchemist’s shop.



Keeping in theme with the rest of the rustic homes, it features mainly Softwood and Stone. As always, you can dye the roof! To keep things consistent, I use the same set of pieces and textures for each style of housing. It also makes things easier!



Making a house is like building with blocks. Sometimes it can get a bit annoying to have to tweak things to work in the style I want them to, but I see it as a fun puzzle!



There’s also a few more things you can place as decorations. The fertilizer sacks are cute 😳
[h3]Well, that’s all for this month! Thank you for reading the devlog, your support means a lot to us 💖[/h3]

[h2]Before this month's update, we just want to say hi to everyone who is new! Thank you for all the love and support from around the world 🐾 You can always stay up-to-date through our Twitter, or join our Discord and say meowllo![/h2]

OK, now on to the devlog!

Meowllo! It’s starting to warm up here and all the flowers are starting to bloom. The same goes for Snacko! This month we’ve had some progress on the overall game, as well as some new assets for the first area that’s furever spring: the Grassy Plains 🌿


We finally got the first little bite size chunk of Snacko playable in its (almost) final form! That means an opening cutscene, introducing the island, and some tutorial bits! It feels great to finally see the pieces and parts come together into a video game. Sometimes, it can be easy to forget that this is a real videogame.



Obviously, we can’t show any of that here. That would ruin the fun! You’ll just have to wait until release. Nobu Jr. couldn’t have said it better.



This came with a bunch of things like bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and little tweaks to mechanics. Those took up the big majority of our time this month! At least we squashed a ton!



We also remade some older assets that suddenly popped up in the cutscenes. The old lantern was not chunky enough. It was also one of the first assets I’ve made for Snacko. Look how many polygons there are 🙀


Working on cutscenes in Unreal is kind of like having a little camera with you in the game world and setting places for it go to. In the intro cutscene, there’s a nice little fly-over of the farm, and the camera in that instance is controlled like this:



Er, don’t mind the flat cows and chicken. Of course, the actual stuff that happens in the cutscene takes a bit more work. Depending on how many things have to happen, and whether or not you’re just chatting or if someone has to give you items, it can range from being pretty simple to “ohh no”.



They’re still done over top of a code system that’s exposed to the engine’s native visual scripting, meaning it’s easy for anyone to poke their head in and look at the cutscene actions to figure out what’s going on. That’s super cool, right?


The furever spring of Grassy Plains…The Plains has undergone some changes. It’s a bit more hilly with some cliffs framing the sides, and it also has new trees and flowers!



We wanted the Plains to feel distinctly different from the town and farm, as we want every other biome to also feel special. So, instead of using the usual round trees and evergreens, we now have these cool birch trees and a fluffy cypress.



Sunflowers and little mushrooms will also dot the land and bring some extra color to it 🌻
That’s all for this month! We hope everyone has an ameowzing April filled with better weather 🐾