Village Monsters News

Let's talk Early Access.

One of the biggest flaws with Early Access is how broad of a classification it is. Some games in EA can barely be called tech demos, while others are practically all finished and just need a bit more polish. It can be tricky as a consumer to know which variety you're going to get.

While I can't speak for other games, I can speak for Village Monsters. This dev log will dive into what's available in EA so you can make an informed decision come November 12th!

Did I mention November 12th is when Village Monsters releases? That's right. 11/12. Has a nice ring to it.

November 12th.

These are features and systems that have seen the most work.


Village Monsters is a game about goals. You have small goals, like "I want to catch a bigmouth bass", and big goals, like "I want to mend this broken world so my monster pals can be happy."

It's up to you how you want to play the game, but everything you do contributes in some way to accomplishing a goal and improving yourself; talking with villagers makes you better friends, fishing makes you a better fisherman, and so on.

Achieving goals earns you rewards that in turn let you progress in the game or accomplish other goals faster.

I'm calling this the core game loop and it is (as you might expect - or hope!) one of the more finished aspects of the game.


All four main hobbies (Critter Collecting, Fishing, Treasure Hunting, and Mushroom Gardening) are implemented in the game, though some features are more finished than others.


The simulation parts of Village Monsters were the first things I worked on and are some of the most complete.



There are 128 days in a Village Monsters year split across four seasons. Each season brings about new tile sets, weather, decorations, dialogue, flavor, and much more.

The days themselves are split into four chunks (morning, afternoon, evening, and night) with many things also changing depending on the time of day.


There are 30+ villagers to befriend and all of them are available at launch. Each one has their own unique personalities, relationships, likes & dislikes, and secrets to hide.



They also have a lot to say - there will be over 2,000 lines of dialogue at release! Dialogue is highly contextual and is designed to rarely repeat even on subsequent playthroughs.


The village itself is quite large, but that's only the start of your little adventure.



Of course, the world in Village Monsters is in rough shape. You'll need to find a way to fix things before you can go too far.

There are currently 10 areas outside the village for you to explore. Each area has their own look and feel, things to discover, and lots of unique critters, fish, and treasure.


Each season has four tracks (one for each time of day) and many areas have their own unique tracks as well. They're all very good, and I can say this because I didn't make any of it - Josh Woodward did!


There are many ways to make a game world feel alive. I'm just one guy, so I can't rely on things like visual fidelity or complicated physics. Instead I've focused my efforts on injecting flavor into the world of Village Monsters.



For example, let's take something as simple as a rainstorm.

• You can hear muted rain sounds while inside
• You track mud when coming in from the outside
• Puddles form on the ground
• You can catch a cold if you stay out there too long
• The fish bite a little bit faster in the rain
• Certain flowers don't wake up without sun - and certain villagers don't even leave their house.

The game is full of these kind of details, and because I'm an absolute madman I'll be adding even more.


These are features that need more work and will benefit the most from Early Access.


I mentioned above that the core game loop is mostly finished, but what I left out is that it still needs a great deal of balance.

How many Patchlings should be required to fix a bridge? Is the economy working right? Is this item too rare or not rare enough? What about this fish? How long should it take to tame a Pocket Horse?

These are questions that are very difficult to answer as a solo developer. Much of this balancing work will be accomplished through Early Access.


Each area outside the village looks and feels pretty different, but they still need a great deal of work to be considered complete. Some areas may go through radical changes, and a few areas don't even exist yet.



The same can be said for villager homes. I want each house to have multiple rooms bursting full of personality, but I'm a ways off from accomplishing that.


Hobbies are some of the biggest activities you can do in the game. While all four of them exist in general terms, there's quite a bit that still needs work.

For example, you can grow mushrooms but you can't mutate or hybrid them yet. You can unlock fishing abilities, but there's only 3 abilities to start.


While you can purchase a home, it's missing many of the upgrades I've planned for the future. You'll also be able to customize much more than just your home in the future, but none of those features will be available at the start of Early Access.


UI work is always difficult and annoying, though I'm hardly the first person to share that sentiment. I won't make any excuses for the UI, but I can promise to continuously work on improving it while in Early Access.


The way I do art seems to be different than most others. I like to implement art early and then iterate over it constantly until I'm satisfied. These aren't quite placeholders, but they also aren't finished.



It works for me, but the end result is that the game still has a bunch of rough art assets that will be improved with time.


There are plenty of story elements and lore to find (especially among villagers), but the "main story" and the ability to roll credits will have to wait until the final release.

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Hopefully this dev log will help you understand what is and isn't finished in Village Monsters for its upcoming Early Access release. If you ask me it's a very fun game already and will only get better, but I'm perhaps not the most objective reviewer.

See you on November 12th!

After three years of hard work (and hundreds of energy drinks) I am so dang happy to announce the release date for Village Monsters:

NOVEMBER 12TH, 2019!

It was back in January 2017 when I decided I reboot my life and make a major career change into indie development. An impossible amount of things have happened since then ranging from a successful Kickstarter for Village Monsters to the birth of my son (aka my first playtester).

Now I'm getting ready to release my dream game into the world. It's an overplayed expression but yeah, life really does come at your fast.

Humans? Where we're going, we don't need humans


When Village Monsters launches on November 12th it will do so in Early Access.

This decision wasn't made easily. Despite me crunching hard since May it became clear that Village Monsters would not be fully finished by the fall. At this point Early Access emerged as the best possible option for everybody:

• I now have breathing room to finish the game without resorting to unsustainable crunch or cut features
  
• The community can influence and shape the game before it's finished
  
• It's much easier to test and iterate over new features and content
  
• Supporters can start playing the game right away and I can begin supporting myself

More info on how Early Access will play out will be available as I get closer to launch. Thank you all so much for your love and support!


In truth this trailer is actually from the summer (and it's been on the store page since then, too), but I never actually made an announcement. That was silly of me, let's rectify that mistake right now!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thanks for reading! Hope you're as psyched for launch as I am!!

- Josh

I really love the passage of time in video games. Day / Night cycles, seasonal changes, NPC schedules, and so on – I eat that stuff up.

There was a time in the late 90s and early 00s where it seems every game – regardless of genre – included the passage of time as a big bullet point. It was fantastic time to be alive!

I’ve no doubt already spoken at length about the time system in Village Monsters as I’ve been tweaking and perfecting it since the very start, but I’ve yet to put it all in one place in an easily digestible post.

Until now.


Let’s start with how time is structured!

The calendar of Village Monsters is kept purposefully familiar: there are four months in a year which correspond to each of the four seasons. Each month has its own distinct vibe and flavor that makes them dramatically different from each other.

A month has 4 weeks which in turn consist of 8 days. Here we deviate a bit from reality to include an ‘extra’ 8th day called Baldursday. This new day is sandwiched in between Saturday and Sunday and is meant for relaxing and catching up on projects. It’s often the day of the week that village holidays and festivals fall on.



A day in Village Monsters is split up into four main slices – Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. While it’s far more granular behind the scenes, I purposefully kept it simple so it’s easier to keep track of things like villager schedules, critter spawning, and other time-sensitive tasks.

The exact length of the day is incredibly important and is something I’m constantly tweaking. It currently sits at 12-15 minutes. This’ll be constantly adjusted right up to release, but my goal is a length that isn’t too rushed.




As in real life, a ticking clock and changing calendar means big aesthetic changes. The sun rises and sets which changes the lighting. The tiles change with the season, as do the look of vegetation and buildings and decorations. Even the music changes to fit the mood.



It’s not an exaggeration to say that every single piece of the game is dependent on the time and season. Here’s some of them:

• Which types of of critters and fish you can catch change with the days and seasons
  
• Villager routines and shop schedules depend not only the time of day but things like the weather, whether its their day off, and so on
  
• Some tasks – like growing mushrooms, training critters, and building / upgrading your home – require time to pass
  
• Each season has unique weather systems and frequencies
  
• Visitors come and go throughout the year, and some may even show up during festivals
  
• Speaking of festivals, each season has multiple events ranging from town-wide celebrations, feasts, villager birthdays, and so on!
  
• Certain areas transform dramatically depending the time of day or season
  

Villager schedules have been a big priority these past couple weeks as it’s one of the last technical hurdles I have. It’s a humongous task and unfortunately I’m not yet ready to share what it looks like, but even the incomplete (and wonky) system has breathed so much life into the game.

The final system is going to be pretty rad.




The biggest draw to time cycles is creating a strong sense of immersion. But this is still a video game – and in the case of Village Monsters, a video game that’s canonically coming apart at the seams. That means it’s ok to break some 4th dimensional rules every now and again.

There are a number of special items you can buy or craft that control how fast or slow time passes.



You may also find certain areas of the world that aren’t playing by the same rules of time; some areas may be locked into a certain season all year round. Others a certain weather pattern. This can be especially useful late game when you’re trying to find specific items or critters, fish, and mushrooms.

Finally, here’s a question I get a lot: is there a time limit as far as the story goes?

The answer is no! Story beats (and progression in general) are independent from the passage of time, so you won’t bump against any kind of restrictions. Take as long as you’d like.

There’s no way to actually prove this, but I’m pretty sure more people have played fishing mini-games than have actually gone fishing.

You can fish in Zelda, in Nier, in Red Dead Redemption 2, in Pokemon, in Deadly Premonition, in Torchlight, in Yakuza. You can hardly walk into a Gamestop without tripping over a pile of rods and tackle boxes.



And of course fishing is especially prominent in life sim games like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Stardew Valley. Village Monsters is no different – fishing was one of the first hobbies I added to the game.

There’s a lot to draw inspiration from, and if it seems the tone of this post is overly negative it isn’t because I don’t like fishing mini-games… it’s because of how intimidating they are! With so many different standards and expectations there are almost too many options, and this left me feeling paralyzed when designing the system for my game.

The good news is I’ve finally settled on a system, and I’m super excited to talk about it.

But first let’s talk about how bad of a designer I am.


I prototype every feature – often before I even analyze or document it – and fishing was no different. In a lot of ways prototypes are ‘meant’ to fail (seeing what doesn’t work is more valuable sometimes than seeing what does), but my fishing prototypes took the word ‘failure’ to a whole new level.

My very first prototype was similar to what you find in Breath of Fire. You’d be presented with a side view of the body of water you’re fishing in and your goal was to guide your hook to a fish and reel it back to shore.

1st Prototype, 2017

It was… fine. It was certainly unique compared to my contemporaries, but the more I played with it the more I realized this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It was equal parts clunky and boring, and I scrapped it shortly before the Kickstarter.

The prototypes that followed were all over the place. I experimented with “fish HP” and “rod HP”, I put in timed button challenges, I tried out things like line strength and fish stamina and generated all sorts of random numbers.

Another fishing prototype

I wanted to capture the full cycle of fishing – the relaxation of waiting, the excitement of hooking, the struggle of reeling in a big one – but nothing I tried was working. You might even say I was floundering… heh… heh… ugh.

Then one day inspiration struck. Perhaps it was Poseidon himself that whispered in my ear, or perhaps it was that 4th Monster energy I just drank. Whatever the case was, the outline of fishing should look like revealed itself before me anchored by three words…


Fishing in Village Monsters can be broken up into three distinct phases which I lovingly call Dash, Mash, and Clash.

After casting your line in a body of water the music dims and you can let your mind wander as the outside world fades into the periphery – that is, until a fish bites. That’s the Dash, referring to how you must quickly hook the fish before it gets away.



After hooking the fish it’s time to Mash, which is exactly what it sounds like. Your job is to reel in the fish as fast as possible. There’s no subtlety required, so mash that reel button as hard as you can. A little fishing meter tracks your progress.



Of course, most fish won’t be too pleased about the hook in their mouth and they’ll often try to fight back. This leads to our next stage, Clash, which finds you being challenged with a series of button prompts as the fish attempts to get away.

If you miss a prompt then you’ll start losing the progress you made reeling the fish in. Miss too many and the slippery fish will make their escape..



However! If you manage to get a “Perfect” during this stage then the fish’s defenses are shattered which makes it much easier to reel in. This gives the clash stage a high risk / high reward component and acts as a test of skill compared to the previous test of stamina.

These two stages cycle back and forth until the fish is caught or gets away. How often they cycle and for how long depends on the fish. Easier or smaller fish need less reeling in while legendary fish require several clashes before they submit.

And there you have it! Fishing is finalized in forthcoming folly, Fillage Fonsters.


Finalizing any gameplay mechanic is sorta like writing the 1st draft of a story – it’s a great feeling of accomplishment, but there’s lot of editing and polish to do.

Now that I have all these levers and nobs to play with it’s time to give each fish a “personality” – heavy fish that are hard to reel in, fish with extremely quick ‘hook windows’, and so on.

There’s also an entire range of possibilities for upgrades: lures that attract fish faster or rods that make reeling in easier. Then I can start looping back into other parts of the game, like a potion that slows down the clash stage, or a mushroom that attracts rare fish when used as bait.

You’ll be able to play with the new fishing system yourself once the latest Village Monsters demo hits later this month.

This is a big month for ol' Village Monsters. A new and gigantic demo, rebanding including a better (actual) logo and new trailer. etc. etc.

But today? Today we're talking shrooms.

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About a year ago I revealed what was then a new in-game hobby – Gardening. As I worked on the design I realized that while I knew what I didn’t want – I didn’t want it to be like Harvest Moon, and I didn’t want it to be just a mini-game – I couldn’t nail down what I did want.

With no clear vision the work on Gardening unsurprisingly stalled. Later this year it fizzled out completely and I considered just cutting it altogether.

Then one day I happened to be working on the village currency. I figured that monsters would be unlikely to use gold – that has way too much human baggage, right? – so I went with silver. Seems appropriately monster-y.

It was then that it hit me. Monsters wouldn’t grow turnips or flowers as hobby. Ridiculous! They’d grow mushrooms!

https://i.imgur.com/ndXnvde.gif

In this week’s dev diary I’m going to talk about this newly overhauled hobby.



https://i.imgur.com/UfWhCT3.gif

So you want to a Mushroom Gardener.

Well first you’re going to need some spores. You could buy them, sure, but you can also forage mushrooms out in the wild and use them in your garden.

Spores must be planted in a designated mushroom plot, but apart from picking a soil type it’s pretty low maintenance. You won’t need to water them or pick any weeds.

Instead of focusing on the more mundane aspects of growing I wanted to free up your time to instead work on the fun stuff – things like cultivating hybrids, discovering bizarre mutations, and cooking up all sorts of interesting effects.



https://i.imgur.com/nF6d6tH.png

You’ve already seen many examples of effects in the form of potions, but I’ve since overhauled the system so that any item has the ability to create some kind of effect. Mushrooms are now the primary way to access these effects.

Having trouble catching a fast critter? Bait your traps with a Snowberry Shroom and you’ll chill (and slow) the critter that eats it. Use your mushrooms in Cooking to make a meal that restores energy, makes you move faster, and slows down time.

(How can a mushroom slow down time? Ask you parents.)

There’s a huge amount of effects to discover. Some are practical, others are just weird. Some break the game. They’ve been fun to program and test, so I really hope you can enjoy them!



I love the idea of making plant hybrids. It’s like playing mad scientist, only instead of frankenstein you can make a seedless watermelon that resists the cold.

In the world of Village Monsters mushrooms as highly malleable. This means that a talented mushroom gardener can create brand new species with just a bit of effort. All you need are two fully grown mushrooms in the same plot as an empty tile. Then you just let nature take it’s course…………. if you know what I mean.

https://i.imgur.com/B0bUTyM.png

Mushroom plots always come in sets. So long as there’s both fully grown mushrooms and free spots in the set then hybridization is possible

The most practical benefit of growing hybrids is that the resulting new offspring can contain the attributes and effects of its parents. For example, a Spicy Shroom is a fast grower and it can pass down this benefit to its offspring.

There’s also breeding for aesthetics, like rare colors or glows effects. You can grow some pretty funky mushrooms, but some will require generations of hybrids to unlock.

Best of all you can usually process hybrids for their spores allowing you to plant your new strain indefinitely.



There’s one other thing that can happen to your growing gardening – mutations.

Mutations are similar to hybrids in that they create unique mushrooms, but mutations are more unique, more bizarre, and certainly more unpredictable. Mutations also don’t require a ‘parent’ mushroom and can occur to any mushroom that’s still growing.

https://i.imgur.com/UsaQ37Q.png

You can influence mutations by the type of soil you use and some unique upgrades. Like hybrids you can usually grab the spores from your newly birthed creation to permanently add it to your garden journal.

I’m considering adding a touch of procedural generation to get some truly weird mushrooms that even I can’t predict, but that might have to wait for a future free update.

That’s enough mushrooms for now. You’ll be able to play with them yourself when the next demo releases later this month.