Village Monsters News

Happy Halloween! From now until 10am tomorrow, you can grab Village Monsters at a terrifyingly good discount of 50% OFF!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/679830/Village_Monsters/

In addition, from now until November 2nd you can enjoy the special Halloween Event in-game. Look for Pun King Jack, new music, candy, and many spooky surprises.

My work continues from sunrise to moonrise on v1.0. It's been a while since I've been able to release something new for you to play with, and although it's gone on far longer than I'd hoped, I can say for sure it'll all be worth it.

Just hang in there a little longer, humans! Believe me, these monsters aren't going anywhere.

Halloween is almost upon us and the power has flickered 4 times since I started this post. I guess Fall is officially underway, huh? Hope you're enjoying these stormy autumn days as much as I am.

Onto the update!

[h2]Progress Check[/h2]
Before anything else, let's look at the chart.



I'm down to 71 remaining required tasks. v1.0 is getting closer every day.

[h2]Cutting the Crust[/h2]
This past month has involved just as many removals as additions. This is because I've been liberally cutting features and content that aren't up the snuff.

And it has felt great.



If you're worried that I'm cutting important features or story content, or that I'm doing this due to time constraints, rest assured that is not the case. Village Monsters is a big game, but that means there are many things that are incomplete, tedious, or just plain shoddy.

Here's an example.

Until recently, each in-game week was 8 days long. This is because I wanted my world to feel unique compared to other games, and a slightly longer week - which also happens to be a power of 2 (you'll understand later) - was a small way to do it.

But this "small" feature was a constant headache. It just never felt right! Play testers would regularly report that it kept tripping up their internal clock, and that weeks actually felt too long.



The main storyline of Village Monsters takes place over 2 years, so an extra day a week meant an additional 32 days, which translated to ~8 extra hours. That's a lot of padding for something people didn't even like.

So I cut it. The calendar is now a much more standard 7 days long, and a small removal of uniqueness has resulted in a far cleaner and more intuitive game.

[h2]Background Daemons[/h2]

Next up, I want to talk about Patchlings. These magical sprites are mysterious little helpers, and you'll need that help if you want to save the village.



True to their name, Patchings are able to patch up the broken parts of the world. In fact, they are the only way to clear any Glitchwood corruption you stumble upon.

Fixing corruption is how you advance the story, access new areas, and unlock shortcuts. You can even repurpose the power of corruption to unleash your very own game-breaker powers.

In short: you can never have too many Patchlings.



Patchlings are attracted to acts of kindness, and just about any positive action you do in the world has a chance of spawning a Patchling. This includes making friends, bettering yourself, restoring the village, performing odd jobs, and more.

From a mechanical perspective, Patchlings allow me to gate content behind an all-purpose resource that can be balanced for all playstyles. So long as you are improving the village or your own character, you will see a steady supply of new Patchlings.

---

That's all for now! Have a Happy Halloween, villagers!

This week, I reached a very exciting milestone: there are now less than 200 items remaining on my "Required for v1.0" to-do list!

There were once over 1,200 items on this list, so being below 200 is a really big deal and signifies we're close to the end.

To celebrate this milestone, I'm doing something I hope you'll find pretty cool: I'm making my entire Trello board public!

This means that anyone can follow along as I grind down the remaining tasks for v1.0.

[h3]Wait, what's Trello?[/h3]
Trello is a project management tool that many developers use for tracking tasks, ideas, goals, and other things needed to make a game.

You can think of it as a big, virtual to-do list. And because it's virtual, I can easily share it.

[h3]Whoa, there's a lot there! Too much! What should I pay attention to?[/h3]
Most people will want to stick to the cards in the first column of the board. They are labeled "Read This First!" and "Burn Chart"



The Read This First card will explain what you're looking at and how to parse my crazy chicken scratch.

The Burn Chart is probably the most meaningful thing here. This is a graph that tracks how many items are left on the Required for v1.0 list on a day-by-day basis, as well as a forecast for future days.



This number serves as a countdown, and when it hits 0, that means Village Monsters is ready for release. For example, the above chart predicts completion by September 9th.

Of course, some items are much harder to complete than others, and cards are constantly being added, modified, or removed from the list as new things are found and priorities shift.

So don't be too surprised if you see this prediction swing wildly around. What we really want is for it to be consistently trending downward.

[h3]Does this board contain spoilers?[/h3]
Sort of. Like I said, this is the same exact tool I'm using to keep track of development, so it's bound to contain info or hints about features and things you haven't seen yet.

However, almost all of it is in my shorthand and wouldn't be easily recognizable unless you know what you're looking for. Still, if you want to go in fresh then you shouldn't let your eyes wander too much.

---

That's all from me for now! The march to v1.0 continues, only this time you get to watch me marching from the comfort of your own home.

It's been awhile since I've released an update, huh? I wonder if I still remember how...

That's not entirely a joke! You see, my laptop of 6 years finally gave up the ghost last week. Luckily, I was able to quickly replace it, but it's been a bunch of work to reinstall my developer tools and sync over the files for Village Monsters.

I need to make sure my new PC can successfully update Village Monsters across all platforms, and I definitely don't want to find out there's an issue just before the big v1.0 release. That's why I opted for a tiny little release, just to shake the rust off.

Speaking of which, work on v1.0 is still hard, fast and furious, and I'm on track for an end-of-summer release. Look forward to it!

[h2]Change Log[/h2]

• Fixed rare crash issue when tending to plants during the first day of Autumn
  
• Fixed infinite looping issues when interacting with instruments
  
• Adjusted versioning and feedback details
  
• Fixed a number of typos and awkward phrasing
  
• General system stability improvements have been made to enhance the user’s experience
  

Today I want to give everyone an update on the schedule of the upcoming Village Monsters version 1.0 update.

I'm moving the release window from Spring 2021 to Summer 2021. Given that I'm posting this on the literal summer solstice... well, it's probably not a surprise.

The game is in very good shape, and this decision wasn't easy to make. However, this small delay is ultimately best for Village Monsters and for myself, even if it's somewhat embarrassing to have to announce.

Keep reading if you want to know more about the reasons behind this move.





[h2]So, what's taking so long?[/h2]

Since April I've had real life friends and family playing the final game. It's been a ton of fun and extremely valuable, but their feedback has caused my "Required Before v1.0" to-do list to grow by leaps and bounds.

By May, I realized that the math wasn't working in my favor. I put off announcing a delay in case I could crunch my way to victory, but it hasn't been sustainable, and it's not healthy for me or for the quality of the game.

Villager Monsters is my first game, and it's incredibly special to me. I've been working on it full time for 4 years, but even years before that I was dreaming and doodling about the game.

I know it's a fool's errand to chase perfection, but I still want it to be the best game it can possibly be. It has to be something I'm proud of, even if it means it takes longer to come out.




[h2]What's next?[/h2]

My main goal is to finish work on v1.0. Everything else takes a backseat until then.

However, relaxing the release schedule also means I can stop crunching as hard, which will give me more time for social media, Discord, and dev diaries.

It's a somewhat tragic irony that the closer I get to the release the less time and energy I have to talk about it, so being able to to catch my breath is actually very important and valuable.

I have a group of playtesters that I'm going to have play v1.0 in the upcoming weeks and months. This group will expand as the game gets closer to release, so if it's something you're interested in then keep an eye out.

Until then, stay cool, villagers!