Iron Village News

Hey everyone, there’s another release coming your way right now! I’m going to be ramping up on marketing/PR ahead of Next Fest & the full release, so I wanted to get in another round of bug fixes and improvements before showing it off. Of course, I’m sure there’ll be some other embarrassing bug that’ll surface, but oh well.

Anyway, here’s the list of changes:

• Prevented players from demolishing trees in an area of the map that isn’t unlocked yet.
  
• Lots more content for progression level 4.
  
• Adjusted the position of the building footprint icons.
  
• Fixed trains to use the correct sound channel, allowing them to finally be muted.
  
• Pause train sounds when the game is paused.
  
• Added a tooltip over the Continue button to show which save is being loaded.
  
• Fixed the number of decimal points for approval ratings in the Railway Status window, for real this time.
  
• Spacebar no longer counts as a button press the way Enter and left clicks do. (It will still pause the game.)
  
• Buildings can now have multiple locations for villagers to go to – for instance, they can use multiple doors, or work in different parts of the quarry.
  
• Fix an issue where the game would try to find a cloud save locally.
  
• Adjusted the estimated arrival times of trains.
  
• Added wood costs to certain stone buildings – not as much as the stone cost, but non-zero.
  
• Prevent demolition of a storage building if there won’t be enough room to store its contents.
  
• Fixed an issue with the train floors not showing when doors open.
  

So uh, it's been awhile since I posted last - hope you all had a good holiday season! I've finally got an updated version of the demo launched (in fact, it went up on Steam on Tuesday, and Itch yesterday morning), so here's some release notes for what's new (and what's new, but hidden in the full game):

• Fixed an issue where the train smoke in the main menu failed to animate when returning from an active game.
  
• Shifted the first train the buys potatoes to purchase them earlier.
  
• Villagers now stay awake for longer.
  
• Z layering of UI has been completely overhauled to avoid future overlapping issues.
  
• Fixed a lot of visibility issues with the tutorial bubbles.
  
• The little upgrade icon no longer blocks you from clicking the Railway Status button.
  
• Villagers can now get water directly from wells, and food directly from certain source buildings. (e.g.
• Bakeries, but not farm fields.)
  
• Changed the Play x2 and x4 buttons to act like the Play x1 button: clicking on it while paused properly unpauses the game.
  
• Pressing Enter in the New Game Screen goes to the next UI element.
  
• After building a road, default to keeping the “build mode” on.
  
• Fixed a bug where laborers were being cloned in buildings (even though the villager was not).
  
• Villagers can now prioritize jobs based on needs – for example, if they’re low on water, they will prioritize working at a well.
  
• A lot of level 4 work (no spoilers yet!)
  

• Added “permit” documents, describing the level that the player just unlocked.
  
• Made game loading slower. (Ran into a weird issue with multithreaded loading no longer working, so now it’s single-threaded until I can get around to investigating properly.)
  

• Added little footprint icons to show if a building 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, or 2×2. A better implementation is coming, but this covers the lack of information for touch screen players.
  
• Overrode base Godot logic to allow you to move the mouse a little while clicking a building button, and still count it as a click rather than a drag. This was an especially large problem on touch screens.
  
• Made some UI adjustments to hopefully keep text boxes above the on screen keyboard. This probably requires additional tweaks.
  
• Added Cloud Save support on Steam, toggleable via an in game setting.
  
• Loading & Saving Games on Cloud now uses a custom UI panel.
  

• Map Expansion: You can now expand to the other side of the tracks in level 3. Although this is not accessible in the demo, the margins between the playable space and the edge of the map have expanded.
  

• Known Bug: You can chop down trees in the south even if you have not unlocked it.
  
• Code has been added to paint in some grass if you are loading an old save, but otherwise these map changes only take place in new saves.
  
• Autosave is now implemented, when enabled in the settings the game will save every 5 minutes.
  

• Adjusted the positioning of the Buy & Sell buttons to hopefully make them more visible.
  
• Improved (but did not fully fix) an issue with progress bars appearing 100% full before the underlying task is actually done.
  
• Changed the build system to not include certain full game assets in the demo.
  
• On Android, shift certain UI elements over from the left to avoid getting blocked by camera notches. (This has been slightly overdone, and will be re-fixed soon.)
  
• The Carreteras section of the build menu (en Español) has been renamed Caminos to better reflect the usage.
  

It’s been a week since BostonFIG, which was a crazy, fun, and great time, and I wanted to sit down and jot down some of my thoughts, since this was my first time doing one of these sorts of events. Hopefully this’ll be interesting, and at least useful for other indie devs!

I had first heard of BostonFIG through Most Dangerous Games, they had Capitalism Craft at the online showcase earlier in the year. (It’s still under development, but it’s a really fun game. CW: Capitalism.) They had an in person event coming up (first time in 5 years!), so I figured I’d apply and submit Iron Village.

The way the event is set up, there’s a “showcase” of games (both digital and physical) selected from the applicants, and afterwards awards are given out for the top games. There were 80 applicants, and unfortunately Iron Village did not end up making the cut. This was very disappointing, but there were two huge consolations:

1. Very detailed feedback from the curators. Getting good feedback on a game in development can be quite difficult, especially when starting out. The two critical parts that stood out the most to me were the relative lack of theming and the lack of recoverability at the start of you get yourself into a bad situation. This feedback is already making its way into the game through the new New Game screens and the Welcome Administrator letter at the start, and some of the progression restructuring has been done to flesh out the world a bit more. The new backstory also hints at why this land is empty, although that doesn’t fully get explained. The lack of recoverability is being worked on – some of it is already in place, just not well communicated to the player, but if your villagers all leave because they’re unhappy, it is pretty difficult to make a comeback.

2. Anyone who didn’t get selected for the showcase was still invited to get a table as an “indie sponsor” for $400 USD, minus application fees already paid. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one to take them up on the offer, so I wasn’t the only non-showcase game there.



So fast forward a little, and early on a cold Sunday morning I pack up my Steam Deck, my MacBook, headphones, a mouse, a sign, and a tablecloth and drive into Boston. I’m definitely nervous – this is the first time I’ve shown off Iron Village in front of a large number of people in person, so of course there’s a nagging feeling of “what if this game is actually kind of shit?”

Turns out I didn’t need to worry, once the doors opened both the deck and the laptop were occupied most of the time. I only managed to sneak out for lunch at 2pm, and that still required me to leave while someone was still playing. The first important finding from the event: it turns out lots of people like Iron Village!

The biggest benefit of presenting Iron Village at BostonFIG (and IMO, the main purpose of shelling out the money and presenting at conventions) is those findings. There’s just no better way to get feedback than to witness a bunch of people playing your game in front of you. I filled more than a page in my notebook with observations, player feedback, and a few bug reports. Here’s a list of some of the main things that stood out:

• Despite testing beforehand, we found two glaring bugs within the first 5 minutes: (1) the tutorial bubbles for trading with a train pop up over the build menu if it’s open, but then go away if you close the build menu; (2) when you go back to the main menu after playing, the trains in the menu spawn smoke particles that don’t actually animate. Thanks to that bug, I had to restart the game every time someone played.
  
• Different people will find different ways to play, especially in ways you didn’t expect. Sometimes it’s a one off, sometimes there’s a pattern. If it’s a pattern (for example, some players building one of each farm field and then running out of money), it’s worth at least paying attention to.
  
• This especially shows up on the Steam Deck. Since it’s designed to let people play PC games on a handheld device, there’s a lot of different input methods, including a controller, touch pads, and a touch screen. All of these will get tested at some point, especially by players who haven’t used a steam deck before, so hopefully your game can handle it! (Iron Village mostly passed, although the left touch pad doesn’t seem to do anything in game.)
  
• Upon seeing the art style, a lot of people will ask, “is this like Stardew Valley”? The episode of No Small Games on Fields of Mistria was talking about this phenomena when describing farm sim games, it turns out it’s not just farm sims!
  
• Letting your players figure things out for themselves at the start is really useful to test how well your tutorial works, but unless you did it perfectly, it does mean you have to watch them struggle a little.
  
• In addition to finding out about problems in the game, this sort of playtesting is really helpful for confirming what went well, as well as confirming future priorities. For instance, one problem that came up was that villagers wouldn’t prioritize getting water when they were thirsty, they’d just pick a random job. I was already planning on adding job prioritization, but this confirmed that I should make it a high priority.
  
• Two players stuck around for long enough to get through level 3, so up to an hour of gameplay!
  
• In contrast to the constant busyness, the actual wishlist numbers were not substantial. I was probably spoiled by the effects of the Thanksgaming Kotaku article (+400 or so wishlists), but over the last week I’ve received around +20 wishlists. The feedback is way more valuable than the wishlists, but I wanted to share that data as well.
  

I think that just about covers my experience! Definitely a fun event, and I’ll definitely be there in some form next year!

Hey all, so as I mentioned last time, I’m going to be at the Boston Festival of Indie Games tomorrow! Sunday, December 15th from 10am to 5pm at Cyclorama, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116.

For those of you who can’t make it though, you’re not missing out on the new update! 0.7.15 of the demo has now gone live, which is the same version that is available to play in Boston. (The main difference is that level 3 is also playable in BostonFIG.) Here’s the full release notes:

• Added dirt ground textures to animal pens.
  
• Implemented Needs for villagers – now they require food and water, otherwise their satisfaction will fall, which may cause them to leave.
  

• Added a new menu when starting a new game, making it a more thematic experience.
  
• Made farms 2×1 with longer crop rows
  
• Updated train consists so that later stage goods are more spread out. This should help make it so that you don’t have to wait for several trains before making one huge trade.
  
• Fixed coal tenders to show as full if the train is not requesting coal (i.e. level 1)
  
• Updated status icons to look more like a speech bubble, which should help legibility
  
• Updated progression to add potatoes and peppers to level 1. Potatoes act as a very good source of food, and peppers can be refined in level 2 to make magick powder.
  
• Adjusted passenger car graphics to make the floor higher.
  

• Added a Magick Refinery to turn the magick peppers into powder.
  
• Fixed Build Menu tutorials to adjust their y position if the menu moves, e.g. because the window is resized.
  
• Added trains that move in the main menu
  
• Updated progression levels to be “permits” with names, which should hopefully be a better thematic explanation for why certain buildings are unlocked at certain times.
  
• Added an in-universe tutorial note at the start of the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where the status of the tender was not persisted on load
  
• The bakery now produces 2 bread per 1 water & 1 flour instead of 1 bread. This was required to balance the game economy, now that bread is the best food available for filling up your villagers.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing A on the controller would not actually let you build the selected building.
  
• Fixed a few different instances of menus where controller focus would be lost.
  
• Made orchards 1×2
  
• Made homelessness less dissatisfying in level 1. Your villagers will be about three times more patient about sleeping in the station at the start.
  
• Fixed the passenger number pop up to properly display the number of emigrants.
  
• Fixed an issue where reopening the build menu would focus the controller on a button in the first tab, not the one that’s still open.
  
• I also uncovered an issue that’s probably been around since the start: the Load Game and Save As… menus do not work on the Steam Deck. This seems to be an issue with how Godot works with the OS – the FileDialog seems to rely on org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser, something which is probably installed by default on normal Linux, but not the Steam Deck. Since I’m planning on implementing cloud saves, I’ll end up having to do my own implementation anyway, but I just wanted to call this out.
  

This past week I’ve just about finished the “overhaul” of the initial gameplay, which will be the subject of this dev diary. But first, an announcement:

Iron Village will be at the Boston Festival of Indie Games this weekend! The event is Sunday, December 15th from 10am to 5pm at Cyclorama, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116. You’ll be able to get your hands on the full build – i.e. including level 3, not just the demo! I hope to see some of you there! (Please note that face masks are *required*!)

Anyway, I’ve been away from home for the past two weeks – basically a combination of Thanksgiving, a wedding, and not wanting to for back and forth with the kids in the week between the two. Thanks to my day job’s office attendance policy, I had to take this as a vacation – though I really needed it, to be honest.

This left me with a week where I could actually get some solid time to work on Iron Village. One of the things that has been neglected in Iron Village is the setting – what’s going on here? Why are we building a town here? Why is the land empty? Is there any detail to the setting besides generic medieval/fantasy? Some of this will be addressed as you play, but the beginning doesn’t really have that much to it.


A Royal Proclamation – you do get to name your own kingdom though.


Signed by the mysterious Monarch Faearn

First off, the New Game screen has been updated. It takes the form of a Royal Proclamation – literally telling you to go make a town to support the new railway, which is being built to facilitate trade with Nova Porthladd, a city which recently opened up for trade. This new screen does commit the sin of regurgitating exposition at you, but at least it’s doing so in character?


This is from level 2, but new changes are all present here.

Level 1 of gameplay has been shaken up quite a bit. The aesthetic change is that farm fields are now 2×1 in size – I felt like they didn’t take up enough space in proportion to other buildings, so literally doubling their size should help. There are now *four* different crops to choose from: wheat and giant mushrooms are still in place, but now potatoes and peppers have been moved from level 3. Potatoes serve as an initial food source (more on food needs in a moment), and peppers have been rebranded as magick peppers. There’s some lore to be fleshed out about tropical dwarves and spiciness as a form of magic, but for now just keep in mind it’ll be an important resource.

The biggest mechanical change is hunger & thirst. Is it crazy to be adding new mechanics this late in making the game? Probably. Thankfully though, the state machine for villagers was set up in a way that made things fairly straightforward. The easiest part to explain is thirst: villagers get thirsty over time, and get thirsty faster while working. When they get a chance, they’ll pop over to the water tank, have a drink (taking it from your water supply), and then get back to work/sleeping/whatever they wanted to do next. If they get too thirsty, their satisfaction takes a negative hit, which eventually causes them to leave.

Hunger works the same way, although different foods can be more or less filling. In level 1, potatoes are the best source of food, providing 60 fullness. (This is an internal value that is not exposed in the game, FYI, although depending on feedback I could see that changing.) Magick peppers and giant mushrooms also work as food (20 fullness each), but they’re lower priority since their main purpose is manufacturing other goods.

I’m going to leave it here, discussion of changes to levels 2 and 3 will wait for another diary. I want to close out with a huge thanks to John Walker, whose Thanksgiving tradition of highlighting unknown indie games on Kotaku led to Iron Village showing up in an article! Over the course of four days, that got us from just under 300 wishlists to over 700! Go check out the article, as well as part 2 to see some other titles deserving your attention!