November 24 Update

Hello world!

As the great state poet and federal weirdo Tyler Okonma once said:

[h2]’CAN WE GO BACK TO NOVEMBER???’[/h2]
Oh, of course we can, darling! So here’s a little recap for you about what we did this (last) month (November):

[h3]1. We added the Herbit Settlement! [/h3]
As you may recall from a video we made there is a small creature roaming your garden called Herbit. You can interact with, talk with, and even receive quests from it. At some point it may invite some of its cousins to your island – and they’ll start a small village!
These cousins can be employed (for some veggies) to sail over to the other islands of your archipelago to get new seeds and/or items for you. To improve the cousins abilities for expeditions you can expand their settlement by leveling up their chambers, lighthouse, storeroom, and harbour.
Though we still use placeholder assets for the settlement and the archipelago map the Herbit Settlement is fully functional and only needs some more hints, tooltips, and regular banter from the Herbit’s cousins to feel right :-)
Oh, but speaking of tooltips...

[h3]2. We added tooltips, adjustable difficulty & time scales, and other quality of life features! [/h3]
Sometimes I (Lion) get a bit lost in details but these things were (mostly) really on my to-do-list! I swear!!!
But either way you’ll now be able to adjust the game’s difficulty in the settings. Lower difficulties make quests easier to accomplish by demanding less items from you to complete them, higher difficulties will demand more items.
You can also adjust the game’s timescale if you prefer to have a more chill game. Currently the standard time scale is already pretty low with 12min/ingame day but you will be able to speed that down to 24min/day or up to 8min/day.
We also gave interactable objects an outline on mouse hover over, added the possibility to use world tooltips, and added regular (UI) tooltips for items (so far). As Blink182 would say: ‘All the small things!’
But speaking of small things: we also have one BIGGIE for you this month again:

[h3]3. We made a new devlog! [/h3]
And it’s finally one that was made by Alicia again!!! It’s about the design process of our upper garden/watch tower area. Therefore it contains the ideation and production of environment (the tower), vehicle (the Trade Co. ship that docks at the tower) AND character designs (Milly & Maynard are on the ship) – so it’s almost a whole ingame scene design recap! Be sure to check it out on YouTube as long as it is still hot!

[h2]But beside YouTubez we are also working on a game! [/h2]
Oh, you already knew that? But I bet you don’t know what we are currently working on, do you? Well, then I’ll tell you...

[h3]1. We are adding tooltips over tooltips! [/h3]
We already have some tooltips and hints in our game but currently we are trying to fill up their ranks. Meaning: we are adding descriptions for all placeable objects (pots, lamps, et c.), excavated items (plants you dug out with a shovel to place them somewhere else), as well as tooltips for all ingame interactables (compost, water well, sleep capsule, potion crafting desk). Additionally we want to make tooltips ‘expandable’ (via pressing SHIFT on hover over) to give additional info about specific items (e.g. the fill amount of a watering can, the approximate buy/sell value of an item, et c.) and add an overview of all absolved quests (currently there is only a UI window for your currently running quests). Exciting!

[h3]2. We are adding banter dialogue for the compost, potion crafting, and settlement UI panels! [/h3]
As you may know (again) we implemented the (more complex) compost, crafting, and Herbit settlement UI in the last couple of months. They all came with new ingame mechanics (leveling compost chambers to access better compost soil tiers, ‘exploring’ crafting recipe ingredients through trial and error, leveling the Herbit settlement for better Herbit expeditions) AND all had a associated character sitting at the bottom of the screen in case you need any help (kind of like Window’s Clippit/Clippy). These characters (the ‘compost version’ of the Herbit, ‘crafting’ Helio, ‘settlement’ Herbit) currently only have tutorial dialogues/specific info to tell (like what compost value a selected item has in case of the Compost Herbit). That means: they still need some additional/banter and/or a FAQ-like dialogue if you need any additional help after the tutorial dias.

We are also planning to setup a Discord server in the next couple of months. Maybe even this month??!? Who knows!!!
By the way: did you know that we have a Bluesky account too? Maybe you should check that out!

That's it so far! We do not really have as much time to do stuff this month because of Chrisme and stuff but so do you! So keep that in mind and don't be too harsh on yourself. After all: it is Chrimse!!!
[h2]Have a nice last month of the year![/h2]
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xoxo Gogobee

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