Dandelion Void News

[p]Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void devlog! We are posting this a bit earlier than our normal schedule to coincide with a special announcement: Dandelion Void will be supporting multiplayer![/p][p][/p][p]The venerated YouTuber and friend-of-the-team MrAtomicDuck has dropped a new video today with a great overview of Dandelion Void. It also includes footage of never-before-seen features, enemies, and hazards! If you haven't watched it already, please find it below:[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]If you're reading this and not subscribed to MrAtomicDuck, make sure to do so! He's even got a Dandelion Void stream planned for this Thursday, at 11am EST / 4pm GMT.[/p][p][/p][p]We listed Dandelion Void as a single player experience when we launched our preview page last May. Multiplayer had always been something we hoped for for the game – it’s survival-crafting, after all! – but as seasoned game industry veterans, we believe in responsible scope and schedule planning. Back then the game was just our game director Brian’s side project, and a single player experience was what he had time to make.[/p][p][/p][p]After it became clear that we had an audience, we scaled up our resources considerably (more info in our previous post!). Brian went full-time, along with several new team members! Multiplayer was of course among the first features we thought of as we expanded our vision for the game, but we weren't ready to make the plunge until we were happy with our demo’s single player experience.[/p][p][/p][p]Flash forward several months, and we are now extremely satisfied with how our demo is testing! We’d been going back and forth on when to make the multiplayer announcement, when Duck serendipitously mentioned he was working on a Dandelion Void video. He asked us whether multiplayer was on the roadmap, and we figured it was time to confirm that yes, there will be multiplayer![/p][p][/p][p]In a real sense, our team had to become multiplayer first before our game could. Our colleague Roland  has extensive experience with networking in video games, and will be helping to lead this transition! He started with us part-time last year, and will be coming on full-time in the coming months.[/p][p]We’re sure you have some follow-up questions, which we have done our best to answer below! Note that some details will have to wait until the game is closer to release.
[/p][p]How will adding multiplayer affect the game's development?[/p][p]Adding multiplayer is no small task. Very soon, the multiplayer conversion will be the full-time focus of our entire engineering team. We have given this task a generous amount of room in our schedule to reflect its complexity. [/p][p]During this period, these devlogs will be a little lighter on gameplay features. But we will still have plenty of treats to show you from the art side![/p][p][/p][p]How will multiplayer be hosted?[/p][p]Our plan is to have player hosted, peer-to-peer multiplayer. [/p][p][/p][p]How many simultaneous players will be supported?[/p][p]The exact number will depend on a number of technical questions that we are in the process of answering, but we hope to support as many as possible while still maintaining a stable and well-balanced game experience.[/p][p] [/p][p]Will couch co-op be Supported?[/p][p]While we love us some couch co-op, we don’t think it’s a proper fit for the gameplay we are pursuing, and it would be a big technical lift for developers (and future modders) compared to a relatively small number of players taking advantage of the feature. We won’t stop you from setting up a proper LAN party though![/p][p][/p][p]Will Multiplayer be co-op or PvP?[/p][p]Like many survival-crafting games, co-op is our main focus for multiplayer. You and your friends can work together to build bases, scrub areas of harmful vegetation, and cover each others’ backs in combat![/p][p]PvP will exist in the sense that your attacks can hurt and kill other players, but it will not be a major design focus for us. We believe a big part of survival is co-operation, and we’d like to explore mechanical incentives and rewards for players banding together against the hazardous environment of Dandelion Void[/p][p]That’s all for today! Please look forward to more updates and stories on the development of our multiplayer features on this blog in the coming months. In the meantime, take care and have a great week![/p][p]– Robin and the Manzanita Interactive team[/p]

[p]Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void devlog! Today’s post is a little different. Now that we’re in the glorious new year, we wanted to reflect on everything that’s happened up to now, and share some of our “new year’s resolutions” for the game. [/p][p]This is a bit of a longer post, so please feel free to skip around as you like! The sections are as follows:[/p]

• [p]Ancient History - An archeological dig into early prototype footage![/p]
• [p]2025 Highlights - The story of the year Dandelion Void took off to the stars![/p]
• [p]2026 Resolutions - Our goals for Dandelion Void Development in the new year![/p]

[p]Note that while we are discussing high-level goals for 2026, this post will not touch on our release timeline. But keep your eyes peeled later this year for more information on Dandelion Void’s schedule![/p][p]Before we get into 2025, let’s turn back the clock and look at some of our game’s “childhood photos.” These early development videos span all the way back to 2023, when the game was just a part-time hobby project for Brian.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]This is the earliest publicly available video of Dandelion Void, showing off a visibility occlusion system. It's a neat effect, but we eventually removed it in favor of simpler door-based occlusion. Over longer playthroughs the wild motion of the occlusion shapes would wear on the eye.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Here you can see the first functional test of our “ponic” vegetation. The algorithm for spawning these has largely survived intact over the years. Our visual identity is “overgrown spaceship,” and we were really happy with how the distribution looked on the first try! [/p][p]Notice that the game doesn't yet have the layers of roots, humus, and algae from the current version fo the game. These elements visually smooth the borders between the man-made flooring and the wild vegetation, which looks a bit abrupt in the video.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]This longer clip shows some of the first combat gameplay! You may notice elements like wild boars, streets, and cars that were eventually removed, as they no longer fit our worldbuilding direction.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]This is the earliest post where you can see the game’s visual style coalesce. We have a new lighting model on display, and we finally ditched the perspective camera in favor of a classy orthographic one. It took a long time to nail our look, but we are really happy with how it turned out! [/p][p]To round things out, here's a dev screenshot from just a couple weeks back. How far we've come![/p][p]Now, onto 2025:[/p][h2]Production & Audience Building[/h2][p]Dandelion Void development started in 2023, but 2025 was the biggest year for the game by far. At the end of May we launched our wishlist page – with modest expectations, frankly – and we were floored to see how much the game resonated with people. In our first 2 weeks we got over 40,000 wishlists, and in December we reached the 80k mark! [/p][p]It's hard to overstate how much of a game changer this response has been. Knowing that people are hungry for our game gave us the confidence to go all in on Dandelion Void. In June we grew from a solo team to a 6 person operation: our game director Brian was joined by Dara (animation & modeling), Roland (engineering & art), Robin (engineering & narrative), Catton (music composition), and Frenchy (sound effects). This allowed us to expand the vision for Dandelion Void from a part-time hobby project, to a fully scoped releasable game. [/p][p][/p][p]Apparently over a thousand people want to discuss our game? It's hard to wrap our heads around![/p][p]Other notable events include our Discord growing to over 1,000 members, and MrAtomicDuck’s stream in November, which doubled as a major gameplay preview. The game has also been featured in a few viral TikToks, reels, and Bilibili posts! We are truly grateful to everyone who has shared the game, posted about it, and created fan art and video content. Your support is allowing us to make the best possible version of Dandelion Void![/p][h2]Development Highlights [/h2][p]At the start of 2025, Dandelion Void felt closer to a tech demo than a full game. A systems-heavy title like ours requires core infrastructure like a map editor, chunk loading and unloading, batched vegetation rendering, usable inventory UI, etc., and putting it all together is no small task. Brian also did plenty of game design along the way, but there was so much technical work to be done that we weren't able to do playtests very often.[/p][p]By mid-year we finally had a foundation laid out, and so our focus shifted to bring Dandelion Void from “technically playable” to “fun as hell.” Our goal was to have an internally playable demo that felt like a strong, standalone experience and supported 40-60 minutes of gameplay. [/p][p]Some of the ways we did this were:[/p]

• [p]Redesigning our demo level to have a stronger sense of progression and discovery. This also included adding some progression-blocking items and environmental objects, e.g. broken doors that must be destroyed with a sledgehammer. See more info in this devblog![/p]
• [p]Refining the cleaning and furniture placement systems to give players the satisfaction of creating their own little nests.[/p]
• [p]Fleshing out our looting experience with new junk items and storage furniture.[/p]
• [p]Adding readable texts to start representing our narrative in-game [/p]
• [p]Balancing our hunger, thirst, and other stat systems more aggressively so that the player is constantly thinking about their next meal![/p]

[p]Along with other improvements, these changes culminated in test sessions where our players were finally starting to have the type of game experience we had always envisioned for Dandelion Void: satisfying looting, terrifying combat encounters, and little pockets of safety and comfort in between.[/p][p]Creating a fresh new map allowed us to tailor the environment to the needs of this early demo![/p][p]After creating this first “standalone demo,” we regrouped, did a ton of internal and external playtesting, and planned a development push for an improved version. We learned that our testers’ biggest requests were more narrative context and gameplay variety, so we focused our efforts strategically on a few more new features:[/p]

• [p]Adding a storyboard-style intro cutscene to explain who your character is and how they found their way into the game environment [/p]
• [p]Creating a series of “Story Room” setpieces (survivor hovel, rat room, library, etc.) to give the player little moments of discovery as they explore[/p]
• [p]Giving the uproots a secondary leap attack to add texture to combat and make the enemies harder to kite[/p]
• [p]Adding the new TwigSnapper enemy and a bleeding status effect to increase the diversity of threats to the player’s life![/p]

[p]Early playtesters told us that they wanted more narrative context and stakes established for their character, so Roland drew this intro cutscene! [/p][p]In general we were very happy with the variety that these improvements added to the game. This second “standalone demo” is the version that MrAtomicDuck played last November; you can read our reflections on it here! Seeing such a successful playtest was a fantastic way to end the year for us.[/p][p]In December we began work on a third major "standalone demo," which will focus on character creation, more new environments, and new types of threats. Up to now all of this playtesting has been done with friends and industry colleagues, but we do hope to expand our playtesting to fans in the future.[/p][p]Speaking of the future, let's talk about our major goals for this year![/p][h2]Game Goals:[/h2][p]One way to think about game production – and really any creative process – is a pendulum swinging between “expanding” and “refining.” Expanding is where you add brand new systems and content, which might start off in a rough state. Refining is the process of taking that new material and iterating upon it until it's fun, polished, and compelling. [/p][p]A novelist might spend a day writing a rough draft of a new chapter, or they might be editing an existing one until the language is perfect. Both phases are necessary, but they use different parts of your brain and rarely happen simultaneously.[/p][p]Generally speaking, 2025 was a year of refining for us. Brian's work since 2023 had given us a ton of raw material to work with, and it was our job to package it all into a compelling standalone experience. Most of our energy was spent improving existing content rather than adding new systems. For instance, the standalone demo that Duck played had a highly polished looting and character needs game loop, but it lacked major features like crafting.[/p][p]Now that we have a strong standalone build that we consistently have fun playing, it's time for the pendulum to swing back to the expanding phase! We're happy with our skeleton, and are ready to start adding some meat to its bones. This includes:[/p]

• [p]Doing a big environmental art direction push to create more unique spaces and refine the visual identity for the ship's architecture[/p]
• [p]Filling out keystone systems like crafting, skill progression, health and injuries, etc.[/p]
• [p]Fleshing out new enemies, plants, and hazards to mechanically differentiate different biomes and ship areas[/p]
• [p]Adding more map randomization features -- randomly destroyed walls and containers, procedurally distributed pockets of different types of plant life, etc. -- to create more variance between different playthroughs [/p]
• [p]Fleshing out our character creator to allow the player to experiment with different visual appearances and mechanical builds[/p]
• [p]Finding new ways to tell the story of the Pergola through in-game environments, objects, and mechanics[/p]
• [p]Working on a major new feature that we can't give any information on now, but we guarantee you will be excited to see. Sorry to be a tease![/p]

[p]One thing you might notice is that the majority of these features are focused on enabling mid-game and late-game experiences. This is because we have been highly focused on the early game up to now, in service of creating the standalone demos.[/p][p]Features like character trait selection add replay value, allowing us to expand our total "minutes of fun"![/p][p]Something we reference a lot in our game design planning is the concept of “minutes of fun” from this 2019 GDC talk by Subnautica's Charlie Cleveland. The idea is that throughout the development of a game, your demo should be able to support longer and longer play sessions without the player seeing all the content or getting bored. [/p][p]In our current demo we have a solid 1-2 hours, but as we add new late game systems we intend to stretch that into dozens, and eventually hundreds of hours![/p][h2]Team Resolutions:[/h2][p]The goals listed above reflect our teamwide intentions for the game in 2026. To round things out, the 4 members of our core development team will share our personal resolutions for Dandelion Void development! [/p][p]Dara:[/p]

[p]As a 3D artist on Dandelion Void, my resolution for the new year is to continue honing in my art skills, learn more techniques, and quicken my workflow. I’d like to model many more assets to fill out the world in our spaceship. This past year, I got to add a lot of junk, furniture, key items, and more but I am so excited to help the ship grow! I’d also want to create more fun animations for our characters, giving them more personality and flair.[/p]

[p]Roland:[/p]

[p]After the wishlist trailer blew up, Brian and Robin knew Dandelion Void was destined to be something larger than they had originally planned. They graciously approached me to join the team, and while I’ve been able to lend a hand with optimizations, occasional art assets, and various administrative tasks, I still have not been able to give the project my full attention, for a number of reasons.

I’m hoping 2026 changes this, and lets me put my full weight into making Dandelion Void the best it can be. On top of further optimization work, I want to get my hands into the nuts and bolts of the game’s core, adding support for a number of exciting features I won’t elaborate on just yet, but are literally game-changing![/p]

[p]Robin: [/p]

[p]In 2026 I want to improve my basic 3D art skills in Blender! As a designer and engineer frequently working on gameplay features, it’s often up to me to stub in “temp art” for new objects and enemies. These are eventually replaced by our infinitely more talented artists, but due to schedule overlaps the temp asset will sometimes stay in the project for a few weeks.[/p][p]I believe that placeholder “programmer art” should still be evocative of the final vision for a feature. We talk a lot about “grayboxing” in our industry, but I don’t think you can actually get a real sense of whether a new enemy is functioning correctly if it’s literally just a gray capsule. Humans are visual creatures, and playtesters can only imagine so much![/p][p]in December I finally bit the bullet and modeled my first rigged enemy in Blender. It’s not winning any beauty contests, but being able to block something in with basic attack animations helped me get a sense for how well the game design of the creature is working. I look forward to handing it off to a real artist, but in the meantime it’s in the game and testing well! I’m hoping to build on these skills in 2026 and become more self-sufficient.[/p]

[p][/p][p]Brian:[/p]

[p]Each of us has so much talent to bring to the table, so many good ideas, and so much passion for our vision of Dandelion Void. I’ve really felt myself growing in the role of Game Director, but there’s still so much to learn! My resolution… get more comfortable wearing the Game Director hat, ditch the imposter syndrome, make mistakes and learn from them![/p]

[p][/p][p]That's all for now! 2025 was a wild ride, and all indications point to an even more exciting 2026. We hope you all have a great new year, and can't wait to share more updates on Dandelion Void with you in the coming months![/p][p]-- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive team[/p]

[p]Hi everyone! Welcome to another Dandelion Void dev blog. Last time we talked about our new background and traits system. Today we’re segueing that into showing a new type of Status Alert, and a trait that makes it more prominent![/p][p][/p][p]As a heads up, this post is a bit “gastronomical” and discusses digestion, stomach issues, and vomiting. Nothing too visually graphic, but please be warned if this is something you are sensitive to. With regard to our regular spoiler label, this post touches on a new status alert, traits, and their gameplay implications.[/p][p][/p][p]Our new stat alert was inspired by an item description. One of the earliest food sources in Dandelion Void was the tuber, an edible root produced by the ponic grasses. We added these because we wanted a foragable food source for our early playtest builds. To keep them from trivializing the looting experience, we gave them a very low nutritional value. [/p][p][/p][p]Inspired by the unpleasant thought of eating a raw potato, we came up with the description: “your stomach tightens at the thought of choking it down.” [/p][p][/p][p]This ended up being a pretty evocative phrase, and many of our playtesters have even felt compelled to read it aloud. The only problem is that up to now it hasn't been true: a single raw tuber wasn’t very nutritious, but players could easily pound 6 of them back-to-back to fill up their belly without any consequences. We felt that this oversight could be “tightened up.”[/p][p][/p][p]Indigestion is a new Stat Alert triggered by questionable dietary choices; ponic tubers now worsen indigestion in addition to relieving hunger. If you accumulate too much indigestion you might find it difficult to run. At a certain level there’s even a chance for you to throw up, which is both gross to look at and also makes you very hungry.[/p][p][/p][p]Please enjoy the programmer art icon while it lasts! We'll be replacing it with something more polished in the near future.[/p][p][/p][p]Once we add cooking, you might be able to prepare raw tubers into meals that are easier on the stomach. In the meantime, indigestion subsides over time, so getting a little bit is fine. You can chance eating a raw tuber every now and then, just don't push it. [/p][p][/p][p]But you may need to be extra careful if you’ve taken our new “Prone to Cramps” trait, which significantly increases the amount of indigestion you get from raw foods![/p][p]One question we are on the fence about is whether we should make a policy of mirroring positive and negative traits. For instance: if "Prone To Cramps" makes you less tolerant of raw foods, should we have a corresponding “Four Stomachs” trait that makes them easier to digest?[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It feels like an obvious choice, and it satisfies the part of my brain that craves pattern completion. But even though the mechanics behave similarly, I worry that they don’t add equal gameplay value. [/p][p][/p][p]From our perspective, taking “Prone to Cramps” adds new decisions for the player. Decreasing the pool of foods you can easily digest forces you to think more about the food system, and plan your meals further ahead. You might place a higher priority on getting a cooking setup going, which could in turn cause you to build more "satellite" bases so that you always have access to food preparation materials. It also creates fun story moments where, if you do run out of palatable food, you have to decide whether choking down a tuber (and possibly evacuating your stomach) is a worthwhile risk against the alternative of going hungry.[/p][p][/p][p]By contrast, if a “Four Stomachs” player can easily handle raw foods, then it’s easier for them to snack on the go and they don’t have to worry about cooking as much. The player’s total pool of edible options increases, but the number of choices they have to make goes down. Feeling hungry? Just grab one of the tubers that are growing everywhere! By allowing you to ignore a core mechanic, Four Stomachs might actually remove gameplay.[/p][p][/p][p]This is of course a slightly exaggerated example. We could balance a hypothetical Four Stomachs trait to not be game-breaking. And for a game of this level of complexity, it’s not the end of the world for players to have to think a bit less about a single system. [/p][p][/p][p]There’s also an argument that we can let the players make this choice – if they think Four Stomachs makes the game less fun, they don’t have to pick it! I personally like to avoid putting players in situations where the strategically “correct” choice leads to an inferior experience, but there are different philosophies on this matter. [/p][p][/p][p]More than anything, the point of this tangent is to communicate how game design choices that seem obvious can actually be quite thorny. This isn’t a matter we’re decided on quite yet, and we look forward to future playtest data.[/p][p][/p][p]Editor's note: Robin was recently seen hunched over a bottle of Pepto Bismol, muttering "If I must suffer, so must the world..." in the cadence of a supervillain monologue. She insists that this is not a relevant detail.[/p][p][/p][p]That’s all for this week, thanks for reading![/p][p]- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive Team[/p]

[p]Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void dev blog! Today we have some exciting progress to show on an initial version of our character creator. [/p][p]As a quick update from last post, the VOD from MrAtomicDuck’s playtest of Dandelion Void has now hit over 40k views! A huge thanks to everyone who’s watched the video and told us what you think of the game; we are truly touched by this response![/p][p]Spoiler label: this post reveals major worldbuilding details and discusses the gameplay components of our trait system.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Our character builder is currently separated into three steps. The first two are mostly narrative, while the third is mechanical:[/p][p][/p]

1. [p]Your Upbringing is the human culture you were raised in. [/p]
2. [p]Your Circumstance is the event that stranded you in the perilous Virgo module[/p]
3. [p]Your Traits are a set of perks and debuffs that define your character mechanically![/p]

[h2]Upbringing and Circumstance:[/h2][p]Explaining the Upbringing requires a bit of a lore drop. Some readers may already know that the starship Pergola is separated into separate modules which spin around in a ring formation. The spinning creates artificial gravity through centrifugal force, and the interchangeability of the modules provides redundancy in case of mechanical failure.[/p][p]Time has been hard on these modules over the centuries, and in the present day the vast majority of the human population has retreated into just one: Taurus. The other modules (in which our game takes place) have been overtaken by jungle, suffered life support failure, or succumbed to even stranger fates. [/p][p]Taurus is an isolated, backwater module, intentionally sealed off to protect its inhabitants from the jungle. Life on Taurus is dull and hard, but largely safe from the uproots. Your Upbringing defines which culture you grew up in on the module you left behind:[/p][p]Developer Note: Our narrative is as much affected by iteration as our game mechanics! These descriptions may not be fully story accurate to the final game[/p][p][/p][p]Backgrounds largely exist for role-playing purposes, but they do have some mechanical effects as well. For instance, selecting Hornkeeper starts you with a few special items:[/p][p]This isn't just any old acorn -- it has a history![/p][p][/p][p]For their own safety, all Tauran cultures maintain a strict taboo against intermodule travel. Despite these efforts, the game begins with the player finding themselves on the jungle-choked Virgo module, with no way back. How exactly? You get to decide by picking a circumstance![/p][p][/p][p]Like your upbringing, your circumstance also has small mechanical implications. If I choose Exile my character will spawn me at low health, while Lost players begin low on food and water.[/p][p][/p][h2]Traits[/h2][p]Character traits are where we get to the real gameplay meat of the character creator! Like many games in this genre, you are given a small budget to spend on positive traits for your character; buffs, skills, and other advantages. You can also increase this budget by choosing negative traits!  Developer note: for this first draft, traits use the same layout as the upbringing and circumstance screens. We plan to redesign this screen to show more content at once and have a custom icon for each trait[/p][p]
Character traits are a load-bearing mechanic in Dandelion Void! Here are a few things we think about when designing new traits: [/p][h3]Replayability [/h3][p]Like classes in an RPG or upgrade paths in a roguelike, the choices you make when creating your character will significantly define your experience. When you roll a new character, this presents an opportunity to try a different playstyle! Experimenting with different character builds is a great way to keep the game feeling fresh.[/p][p][/p][p]Truly memorable traits will alter the player’s behavior. Taking “Stress Cleaner” might lead the player into a tidying frenzy, while “Insomnia” will force them into dangerous night expeditions. A well-designed trait should feel almost like a minigame unto itself.[/p][p]It’s still important to have some simpler, bread-and-butter traits like “10% more health,” but these offer less replay value because they have less of an impact on your playstyle or goals, so you often forget that you picked them. Whenever possible we try to design traits with a strong sense of identity.[/p][p][/p][h3]Role playing[/h3][p]As a simulation-driven game, playing Dandelion Void is a form of storytelling – and what's a good story without a good protagonist? The best characters across fiction media are invariably defined by their quirks and imperfections, and picking traits allows you to define your character’s personality.[/p][p][/p][p]Developer's note:"received as a gift" refers to a system that has not yet appeared on this blog -- keep your eyes peeled for mysterious structures built in miniature...[/p][p][/p][p]Perhaps you will play a cowardly, weak-stomached underdog who must overcome their squeamishness to survive in the wilds. Or maybe your character is strong and resilient, but harbors a secret sentimental attachment to an item from their youth. Downside traits are ideal for this type of gameplay: what's more compelling than a character flaw that must be overcome?[/p][p][/p][h3]Customized difficulty [/h3][p]Many of our players are coming from games famous for their difficult and punishing gameplay, while others hail from a more general survival games audience. We intend to tune our base difficulty on the higher end, but the character trait system allows hardcore players to ramp it up even more. [/p][p][/p][p]For instance, Prone to Cramps players might have to exclude entire food groups on their runs. Perhaps the bravest of you will even attempt challenges like an “all negative traits” run![/p][p]In some ways you can view character traits as built-in "mods." When you feel like you've gotten a good sense of the vanilla gameplay, they allow you to create and enjoy your own customized version of the game![/p][p][/p][p]One topic that we didn’t cover today is the actual appearance of your character. We are starting with the mechanical and narrative side of things because they will require more iteration, but a fully featured visual character creator is certainly on our roadmap. [/p][p]In the meantime, you can learn a little more about our player character designs in this previous post![/p][p][/p][p]That’s all for today! We will see you all again in mid-December. Take care everyone, and have a great week! [/p][p]- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive Team[/p]

[p]Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void dev blog. This week we have a special feature – MrAtomicDuck has streamed an early version of Dandelion Void! This is more gameplay footage than we’ve ever shown publicly. Don’t worry if you missed it live -- you can watch the whole stream below.[/p][p]You might know MrAtomicDuck from his regular coverage of Project Zomboid updates, his tutorial videos for other survival games, or his recent ARC Raiders content. He also featured our Project Zomboid mod Save Our Station in one of his mod lineups! We chose to give him this exclusive first look because of his vast knowledge of the genre, and his expertise in showing off work-in-progress content. We greatly appreciate his interest in Dandelion Void![/p][p]Spoiler label: This video shows quite a lot of Dandelion Void gameplay![/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]As developers, we always have our little theories about what will be fun, but there’s no replacement for observing actual player behavior. Every playtest teaches us something new, and Duck’s stream was no exception. Below we've compiled some of our major takeaways![/p][h2]What worked:[/h2]

• [p]Leap Attacks: Last week we added a new leap attack for our “uproot” plant enemies, and we’re liking the gameplay so far! [/p]
  • [p]Previously the uproots were a bit too easy to kite; players could slowly walk backwards, use knockback to keep them out of striking range, and leave most encounters without taking any damage. [/p]
  • [p]The leap attack breaks this pattern by allowing the creatures to quickly close gaps, forcing the player to either move or take damage. We liked that this added texture to combat encounters and created a feeling of unpredictability.[/p]

[p]An uproot winds up before a leap attack[/p]

• [p]Story Rooms: Over the past month we’ve been varying up our environment with what we call “story rooms” – unique points of interest sprinkled across the map that reward exploration. Right now these are static, but in the future we plan to distribute them dynamically.[/p]
  • [p]The “survivor hovels” are little scenes with bedrolls and improvised furniture where now-perished survivors made their home. In addition to their narrative implications these provide little “starter bases” for players, which worked out perfectly in this test. Duck set up shop in the hovel in the Northwest corner of the map![/p]
  • [p]When Duck entered the “rat room” he was greeted by a half dozen rodents all furiously escaping into a hole. On their way they dropped a number of “rat axes,” tiny rat-sized implements improvised from a toothpick and a razor blade. Keep your eyes out for more rat content in the coming months.[/p]
  • [p]Other story rooms included the mini-library, the room with the “LAND NOW” pamphlets, and the locked computer mainframe area. We hope to continue adding more story rooms to discover![/p]

[p]A little reading nook![/p]

• [p]TwigSnapper: We were really happy with how our new enemy performed! You might remember them from our last blog post[/p]
  • [p]Our intention with the TwigSnapper was to add more tension to the game. The basic uproots are hostile “on sight” and often ambush you by camouflaging against the ponic grass. The TwigSnapper is more dangerous, but it won’t attack you unless you fulfill specific conditions. This created tense moments where Duck was tiptoeing around the creature while trying not to wake it up.[/p]
  • [p]We do think there’s more that we could do to communicate that the TwigSnapper is specifically sensitive to the player stepping on vegetation. Part of the issue is that the TwigSnapper is currently using temporary art (just a recolored uproot body with some little whiskers drawn on top) so there’s not yet a marriage of form and function. We are also interested in being more deliberate about spawning them at locations with just the right amount of vegetation, forcing the player to make tough decisions on how to proceed.[/p]
• [p]Terminals:[/p]
  • [p]We want to make sure there are exciting goodies and interesting systems to interact with via the terminal, but we want to balance that with good tutorialization that teaches players unfamiliar with command line interfaces on how to use them. [/p]
  • [p]While there's more to do in this regard, we were happy that the hints provided by our error messages -- combined with Duck's instincts and hacker skills -- were enough to help him breach the terminal-controlled door[/p]

[p]Typing on the computer like it's 1979[/p][h2]What We Need to Improve:[/h2]

• [p]Bleeding: Bleeding is a recent addition to our demo, and right now it feels a bit too much like a death sentence.[/p]
  • [p]While there are bandages you can find in the world, they are for the most part confined to special medical crates that are hidden behind locked doors. [/p]
  • [p]A big player expectation in this type of game is to be able to tear up clothing to make makeshift bandages, which are less effective but easier to access. We’d like to enable this gameplay.[/p]
  • [p]Bleeding is currently coded to be nonlethal; it chips away at your health over time, but it won’t deal a death blow on its own. We like the gameplay of keeping the player at low health to raise the stakes of every combat encounter while bleeding, but the metaphor is unintuitive. [/p]
    • [p]On one run Duck spent a long time waiting to bleed out so he could reroll the character, and it was confusing that he wasn’t dying. The current way bleeding is tuned would probably make more sense for a poison-based affliction.[/p]

[p][/p][p]Hurt, starving, tired, thirsty, and... bored?[/p]

• [p]Boredom: Our “boredom” mechanic needs some rethinking overall[/p]
  • [p]We like the idea of your character having to navigate a whole “Maslow hierarchy” of desires, where the player must satisfy both bare survival needs as well as entertainment and enrichment. But right now this has some gameplay and balance problems.[/p]
  • [p]Boredom is tuned too aggressively; it comes up almost as frequently as hunger and thirst! There’s some dissonance where your character can be “bored” even during life-or-death combat. A better design might have boredom only come up in between combat encounters[/p]
  • [p]We would also like to improve the user experience for reading books (the text often disappears before the player can finish reading it), as well as adding more ways to relieve boredom outside of books. [/p]
    • [p]There can be a conflict where if we’re making the player read too often, the player’s intrinsic motivation to discover the lore is subsumed by the extrinsic motivation of just trying to get the stat down.[/p]
• [p]Camera: [/p]
  • [p]We recently added in the ability to rotate the camera, but without a smooth transition between the different angles it can be pretty disorienting[/p]
• [p]Terminal:[/p]
  • [p]While we felt the terminal had enough for this playthrough, we’d like to hook more ship systems up to it! We’ve got a few of our own ideas cooking, but we’d love to hear what you would want to access with the Pergola’s terminals.[/p]
  • [p]The locked mainframe area was a bit confusing in that it had one door which was terminal-controlled, and one door that was broken and had to be manually destroyed. The broken door had a cracked texture, but it didn't show up very well in the red lighting. The assumption was that both doors would be terminal-controlled, and this created some confusion.[/p]
• [p]Minor Bugs: While the build was quite stable overall, we did see a few bugs that we want to address![/p]
  • [p]Sometimes the player will get stuck navigating to perform an action (e.g. when the player right clicks to harvest a tuber across the room).[/p]
  • [p]The worker uniform can clip into the pressure flight suit[/p]
  • [p]Uproots chasing you will attack doors in their way, but they won’t abandon the chase if you leave the area. The doors take a while to break, and this leads to some nuisance sound effects playing in the background[/p]
    • [p]This is especially pronounced during the time fast forward while you sleep![/p]

[h2]Overall Next Steps for the Game:[/h2][p][/p][p]Having covered the individual elements that did and didn’t perform well, here are our high-level priorities for development over the next few months:[/p]

1. [p]Authoring more unique environments, story rooms, and rewards for exploration![/p]
2. [p]Adding more enemy types to vary up combat[/p]
3. [p]Designing more “plant-y” and “spaceship-y” mechanics that lean into the unique setting of the game. We want to do more to differentiate Dandelion Void from other games in this genre![/p]
4. [p]Filling out the game with structurally important systems like crafting, character creation, experience gaining, save/load, etc.[/p]
5. [p]A few more surprises that we’re not quite ready to tell you about yet![/p]

[p]Our new survivor hovel area got some nice airtime in the stream, so we wanted to give you all a better view! [/p][p]New models by Manzanita Interactive's Dara Insixiengmay![/p][p]The art direction here was to create the feeling of a cozy space with furniture improvised from materials found elsewhere in the ship. You might notice that the orange cushions on the bedroll came from the couch model, the orange base of the lamp is the wire coil junk item, and the spit roast is composed of various parts from a storage shelf.[/p][p]Combined with our dynamic grime and plant system, these assets tell the story of a place that was once home to somebody. They woke up every morning on this bedroll, but one day they simply never came home. Where are they now?  [/p][p]That’s all for now. Everybody please have a great week, and look forward to our next post at the end of November![/p]