Another small patch for today. This patch should address a few of the more egregious bugs that have been pointed out or that I’ve discovered myself. This message will also serve as an update for what is happening in terms of development and where the game is heading/what I’ve been doing all this time. If you want to see the actual changes to the game scroll to the bottom, otherwise strap in. Oh, and before I forget happy Thanksgiving! And if you don’t celebrate the holiday happy November 26th I guess?

First, a slightly personal note that has bearing on the development of the game. I don’t care to delve into my personal life online, but this sort of effects development so I figure an explanation is due.

For the past year and a half or so I have been developing Verdant Village full time. Game development is a never-ending learning process and I’m still a novice. The lesson I learned this time is that finishing this game would take far longer than I imagined and cost more than I would have thought. All that said, I’ve basically come to a point, financially speaking, where I need to find a full-time job again just to continue funding the project.

How does this relate to the game? Well, full time work will obviously eat into dev time to some degree. I’ve worked on game development during nights and weekends in the past though so it’s hardly a foreign concept. The upside is, I’ll be able to commission more artwork and finally get an actual patch out. So, it is sort of a mixed bag, I felt it was worth mentioning just to give an understanding of where I’m at as a developer in terms of time and money. I have every intention of finishing the game. That shouldn’t be a problem. This is just a bump in the road in terms of how much time I can devote to development every day, and I thought it worth mentioning.

But enough about all of that. Let’s talk about what has actually been done and what’s coming. So, to preface this, the things I am mentioning here are done. The problem is related to what I said before, a lack of money means no art. So truthfully the hard part is done, I just have to drag and drop assets in once they are made.

First, the things that have actually been done since the last time I did an update like this. Spoilers ahead if you’d rather be in the dark for this stuff.

-Fisheries, which are buildings you can raise fish in

-Fish traps, that you can place in the world to catch fish automatically. They are a bit more labor intensive than just set it and leave it there forever

-Five more quests, so far

-Drying racks, to make jerky out of hunted animal meat

-Smokers and marinades, to make, I guess, better meat? I don’t really have a term for that, but its another way to refine hunting meats

-Food buffs have been overhauled and some have been given additional buffs

-A visual UI for buffs

-More buffs in general, around 15 I think

-A new fishing system which you’ll see in this patch as I can’t undo it really. I actually did it twice during this stretch but decided that my first idea didn’t work well. The art assets are mostly tolerable, but you’ll have to bear with it for now

Those are the things that have been added, they are ready to go, I just need sprites. Now there is something else I’ve been working on that is big. In fact, I’ve been splitting my days in half because of it. The first half is used to make things similar to what is listed above. I.E. systems, quests, zones, etc. The second half of my day I use for the impending dialogue system, which sounds kind of ominous now that I read it a second time.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll restate in brief. The general idea I have for dialogue is something that I hope is more organic. Throughout the course of the game you will do certain things, actions you take, discoveries you make, etc. These will sometimes open up topics of conversation with various NPCs. These topics can be anything from a personal detail on that character, to their opinion on something that happened, or even lore regarding the world.

Aside from that each character is planned to have a short story relevant to them. These serve as the meat of conversation for each character. If you’ve played Stardew Valley imagine the conversations and events that existed for the marriage candidates. Each character will have something similar to those.

On average so far these stories consist of around 5 or so events. Completing these will grant the player rewards. Some of these will grant more generic rewards, unless I can think up other things, but many, I think around half of them cause more tangible changes to the game. Things like the construction of new buildings, adding new zones, unlocking systems, dialogue changes, adding new characters to the town, etc. These conversations that you engage in also allow you to make dialogue choices. I would like to say though that these are just cosmetic and hopefully allow you to roleplay a bit. As much as I’d like to have branching story paths and meaningful decisions, even I’m not crazy enough to try to implement that. Still these will hopefully allow for some interactivity during conversations.

To clarify all of this, this is a massive part of the game. Like probably one of, if not the largest, things I’ve ever added to the game. Looking at the relevant word document, it is sitting at about 28,000 words at the moment. At time of writing, I have made 4 main stories as well as 56 smaller topics. For reference, including extra character that show up to town, there are around 50 characters in the game.

I’m throwing all these numbers around to hopefully give you a scope of what this is. I don’t want to give the impression that this will be done in a week and ready to go. It will likely take me a while. By the time it’s all done it will probably have the word count of an average sized novel. I haven’t decided if I will add these topics in a more piecemeal fashion or all at once. Piecemeal seems like the way to go, but it will involve working to make sure everything patches correctly. In short, how it gets added to the game is still up in the air.

As for what is next in terms of systems, my current projects are perks and secrets. The perks, as anyone who has played thus far, are a bit lacking. It was always my intention to add more I’ve just been swamped with other things I’ve deemed more important. It also helps to have most of the systems in the game now so I actually have stuff to make perks for. Ironically, I just paused to write down two more perk ideas. At the moment, there are 11 perks in the game. By the end there will probably be 44. Why 44 you ask? Because that’s how many can fit in that box of course. At the moment I think I have about 30 more planned so I just have to consider a few more, then I can start putting them in.

As for secrets well that’s next. The map is big, as you might have noticed. At the moment, it is also somewhat empty cough western fields cough cough. There are things to do in most zones, but for the most part its empty space. While some other additions will hopefully go towards fixing this, I’d like to plug the game map with small puzzles and secrets that give small rewards. These will mostly be relegated to the zones that are farther away from town. The hope is that these will serve as smaller distractions or things you can stumble across and get some sort of permanent item from. With any luck it will give another reason to actually explore the map a bit.

So, all in all, that’s about it. Plenty of stuff to come. Once I have a steady income at my disposal a content patch should come soon after. Once that patch is out of the way the next major one should be the combat system, which should be sizable as well. In the background of all this, I’ll continue to write more dialogue which will see the light of day at some point. I’m personally excited for all this, I hope the rest of you are as well.

I’ll be trying to do these updates on a monthly basis I think just to keep people informed on what is happening. It seems like a good interval to go with from what I can tell. Lastly, I wanted to quickly say thank you. If you purchased the game, I understand that trusting early access is something of a leap of faith. I hope you feel you already got some of your money’s worth out of Verdant Village. In the future, I hope this will be something you can see in your game library and feel like your money was well spent. And now, without further ado, if you read this far, the change log for this hotfix is below.

Verdant Village Patch 0.3.5 Full Changelog

-Revamped the fishing system entirely. Please bear with the graphics, most of them are temporary and will be replaced as soon as possible, apologies, and thank you

-Homogenized visuals for tints when building a structure

-Fixed a bug regarding path placement misalignment

-Fixed a bug regarding dismantling placed paths

-Fixed a variety of bugs regarding dismantling objects with a controller

-Adjusted the sell price of hunting items to accommodate for the new hunting systems that are coming soon

-Fixed a small visual glitch with Caleb’s portrait

-Changed the “Blazing Snapdragon” quest to unlock the recipe for macaroni noodles in addition to the previous reward. If you already finished the quest this patch should unlock the recipe for you as well