Mudborne News

Hey friends, and happy new year I hope you all had a lovely break and are ready for the 2025!

Here's a little recap of what I've been up to this past year:

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[h2]Personal[/h2]

2024 was the first year of me doing gamedev full-time, for the whole year! It's certainly different to back when I was making APICO on the side of a full-time job (and later freelance work). I feel a lot more pressure that what I make has to be 'good', and by 'good' I mean good enough to pay the rent.



With a lot of APICO's gameplay, I just did what I personally thought would be fun, and the end result is a weird combination of things but those who get it, love it. With Mudborne I've been trying to do the same thing, but I have a lot more worries about certain mechanics or moments that I wouldn't have if it wasn't tied to keeping the lights on.

I can't say I'd ever go back to my old job all the time I can sustain myself making games (the big red date on my whiteboard tells me I have until October 2026 until I run out of money!), but it definitely has been a noticeable change doing art for money instead of hobby.



With APICO done, all the games I'm making are all in my own engine built on top of the LÖVE framework, and it's made things so much quicker to create. At the time of writing Mudborne is very nearly finished up, and it's taken only 8 months in total working full-time on it.

I'd love to get into a place where I can comfortably making a game every year or so, without feeling rushed. I have so many different ideas I'd love to make, and only so much time!



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[h2]APICO[/h2]

APICO had it's 3rd and final (sorry) content update, "A Hive Of Industry". This update added a bunch of automation machines, plus a lot of stuff you all asked for, including pets, decoration and a butt-tonne of QoL tweaks.



I've also done a few little bug fix patches here and there which I'm sure gave you all a bit of false hope on new content when the download queued!

It was nice to finally 'finish' up APICO - sometimes I wish I never did any of the content updates but I think looking at it now I'm happy with where it ended up, even if it's still a lil janky and bloated and I think all the art looks wack.



I'd love to come back to it one day, in a seperate game. When I drew up the new credit postcards (above) I had fun invisioning a game where you do go to the mainland and help clean up the environment using your bees. I think it'd be nice to take the same APICO gameplay, streamline some of it and make it all fit better (especially the money making side), and then expand the bees to all have functions in restoring nature.

However I think that'll need to wait a while as I have 2 game children screaming at me to finish, and a bunch of other ideas I want to get started on!

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[h2]Synthesis[/h2]

I don't often join gamejams, mostly because of the time limits they have, or I just don't personally have any time - but in 2024 I joined the LÖVE Jam, for games made with the framework.

I was still learning the framework at the time and tinkering with the engine I'd made to create the Snacktorio demo, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to have a break from the APICO stuff that was getting me down at the time, and learn a bit more of the framework.



I was really happy with the end result - 'Synthesis'. I wanted to make a puzzle game with different modules like what you get with old patch synthesisers. As you mess with the different modules it changes the patterns drawn until you eventually come across the combination needed to match the required shape.

I also made a point not to ever explain any module's function - you just learn through doing very basic levels and then the rest you just learn overtime by doing. I wanted it to feel very experimenty for the player.



It was really fun to put this together! I had 10 days and pretty much used them all. I also did the music for it because I wanted to start practicing music creation for Mudborne, and was interesting in having the music 'evolve' with the puzzle progress.



I think it'd be cool to revisit one day as a 'full' game, as you could have lots of different module types and interactions, and let players connect modules themselves in different orders which then affects the outcome.

If you want to check out the game you can get it over on itch.io here:
https://ellraiser.itch.io/synthesis

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[h2]Mudborne[/h2]

Ah Mudborne, my beloved. I've spent what feels like an eternity working on this game, when it's only been 8 months. I think I've stared at frogs more than I have the real world, but I've enjoyed pretty much every part of it.



It's been an interesting process, first I did like concept art for the rough game, and worked on all the individual mechanics - then I worked on the actual world development and story and tied it all together.

After the new demo was finished up, I spent a long time just designing the entire world and how everything connects, then piecing together the story. The writing in this one was definitely a killer as I've never written like a proper big story, let alone one with a few twists and turns.



I wanted something players could piece together themselves, and get clues from all over the place to work out certain things, so there was a lot involved in making sure it all fit together nicely. At the time of writing this I've just finished up all the final dialogue lines, and now it's just a lot of drawing and polish left to go.

I'm planning to do a private playtest in the Discord this month for the first time, so I can try and streamline any tutorialisation stuff and see if I've made things a bit _too_ difficult. I'm pretty confident it's a fun game but it's weird how hard it gets to judge that the longer you work on making the game.



Once the playtest is over it'll just be some last little bits to tweak and any changes to make and it'll be ready to release! Crazy to think it'll be my second published game. If you haven't already be sure to give it a wishlist! You can also check out the demo still:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/

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As for 2025, I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing! The only thing I do know is Mudborne will be released this year, which is very exciting, I just can't say when yet.

After that, I'm not sure - I'll need a long break that's for certain. I'd like to start working on Snacktorio proper and get that finished, but it depends on my brothers workload (he still has a 'real' job). He did a lot of the work on the game design of Snacktorio and has a good idea for the levels, so I wouldn't want to really do it without him.



If he is free, then I imagine Snacktorio will get polished off this year, maybe an early 2026 release! If not then I'll just have to work down the list to the next game idea and get started...

A big thank you to everyone who played any of my games in 2024, all of the new APICO players, returning players for the 4.0 update, froggy friends excited for mudborne - without all of you I wouldn't be able to do this and I'm extremely grateful.

Here's to 2025!
~ Ell

Hey friends! Another month whizzing by, but I managed to get a lot done for Mudborne - here's what I've been up to.

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[h2]Cold As Ice[/h2]
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...

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[h2]Central Hub[/h2]
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...



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[h2]Yet Another Region[/h2]
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.

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[h2]​Game Cartography[/h2]
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!

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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

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.

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[h2]Biodiversity[/h2]
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.

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[h2]Spore Printing[/h2]
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.

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[h2]The Kindergarten[/h2]
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.

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[h2]Residential District[/h2]
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.

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[h2]Fancy Flooring[/h2]
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.

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[h2]Ice Frog Cometh[/h2]
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.

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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

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)

Mudborne's new demo is finally out, and it's been lovely to see how much you've all been enjoying it
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!

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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...

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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!)

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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!



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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



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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).



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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.



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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!



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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



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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