Harvest Island News

Welp, since the day I announced my delay, a lot of progress has been made. A lot of polishing has been made and a lot of balancing as well. There's even a fast travel! Check that out!

This past two weeks has been hectic for me that I forgot to post a new demo for the indie fest. So, I've uploaded a new polished demo for you guys to take a look and play! Hopefully I'm not too late. I'll also upload a broadcast sometime soon this week as well for those of you that just want to quickly glance at the game and check out how it is. I'll talk about the game development in my broadcast.

As for the game update and how it's going. I would say it's 95% complete. I just need to wait on a bit more art, make a bit more music, and have a few more testers to play the final version of the game one last time. Very very very close to being done. In my next post, I'll give you a confirm release date of when Harvest Island can be played. It really will be released this year!

Here's the list of new things:
-Game scale (You can now zoom into the game 2x since people had a hard time seeing the game)
-Text box animated to come from sides
-Clear petting Objectives (This reduces confusion and helps balance the game when you feed, tend to the animals, and pet them)
-UI Art implemented
-Animals have Favorite foods (I'll let you figure the secret out :))
-New Heart Emoji
- New fish animation
-New coconut animation
- New bugs animation
- New Well watering Animation
- New cotton animation
- New apple tree animation
- Replaced a few old object arts (Like logs, twigs, mussels, apples)
-Refined part of the story's writing so that it doesn't feel repetitive.
- New Character Portraits (Lot's of new expressions added)
- Fast Travel added (There's an entire new world in that fast travel!)
- Balanced food consumption and energy consumption for "Tutorial" part.
- Extended the demo just a little bit more so that the game has a resolution and finishes the game's "Tutorial" and premise.
-Added 3 children's story books (Read it in the father's room once you journey along the game a bit)
-New Translations added (But this is a bit incomplete since I'm still working on this.)
-Added Nap Feature

There's probably a lot more which I can't remember from the top of my head since I'm just working purely in getting the final game released vs keeping the game updated to you guys. There's a lot of changes and I know you'll like them.

Harvest Island will be delayed. The amount of work is enormous with just translating, testing, and polishing alone. I can't finish all of this in 3 weeks. I have given myself 2 months to do this and it's still not enough. Harvest Island will be be released between June-September

I am a very transparent developer and this is what I need to get done before the release.
Music - I need to add more music to the game.
Polishing - The game requires a lot of balancing. This means testers needs to replay the game every time I make massive changes to the game's balancing and this can take weeks to finish. The game also requires more cut scenes and more writing. The story is complete and written. That won't change, but the extra writing is for more world building and more character development. There is also new illustrations that needs to be fitted into the game as well and that can take a week or more to import and fit for each dialogue.
Translation - This is taking the most of my time this past two months. The amount of work to translate 6 languages is insane. I'm about maybe 50% done with this. Once that's done, there's the translation testing which hasn't even started because of the sheer amount of work from importing the translations work to the game AND programing the translations to fit in the game without causing any bugs/cut offs and other little annoying bugs that international players will face. I have tested my game in english but not other languages. Also keep in mind these translators are oversees and it takes roughly 16- 24h for them to respond which adds more time to the development.

I'm sorry that I have to delay the game, but it must be done. I do not want to publish a game that's filled with bugs, lack of polish, and subpar development. I've been pulling so many all nighters to make it to the release date but it's just impossible. The translators are struggling to meet deadlines due to unforeseen circumstances, there's not enough time for testing in their languages for better quality of translations, and there's just not enough time for me to test my game which most of the development time has been towards translations and fixing translations problems.

Two months is not enough time to finish all of these big tasks. I need more time to finish a game where you can enjoy playing.

The release date will be between June - September this year.

Harvest Island will be in the Storyteller Festival! That means you'll be able to play the extended demo! There's lots to do! Like crafting, farming, petting wild animals, building, cooking, fishing, and the list goes on.

I'll also be playing Harvest Island as well! The broadcast will be on March 25th at 3PM PST! If you miss the broadcast, I'll also publish it on youtube!

Here's a helpful guide to start.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Before the game even releases, I made a beginners guide on how to play Harvest Island. Hopefully this marketing stunt plays off haha.

Updates to the games development progress.
Music: 90% done.
Translation LQA: 5% done.
Illustration/Character Design: 50% done.
Story: 95% done. Need to add more lore to flesh things out.
Trophies Achievements: 0% done
Game Polish/Testing/Bug Fixes: 10% done.

Pretty much right now, it's all in testing phase to spot bugs and add last minute features incase the game is facing some balancing issue. Anyways, be excited for the game's release! We got about 1 month and 3 weeks left!

This is why Harvest Island is in a Pseudo Ultrawide Screen. Sometimes I stumble across other streamers that wonders why and so here I am, explaining why I did it.

As for the game development progress. Everything is going according to plan. Only 2 months left until the release of Harvest Island.

Here are some of the things I'm still working on.

More Character Portraits
Music
Quality assurance and language quality assurance testing
Polishing game: adding a few more quests, fixing bugs, and balancing
Trophies and achievements

Also, I'll be in the Mystery Steam Fest!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]