One more news update for 2021. It’s been a long year with a lot of updates and changes throughout, but we’ll get into that later. There isn’t a ton to talk about for this month. December tends to be slow with the holidays taking over the latter half of the month. Still, I have been getting things done, just nothing spectacular, I guess.

Combat is still coming along. Monsters are mostly all squared away in terms of what they do. Bosses have also been setup in most ways, I think I’m missing an idea for 1 or 2 at this point. There’s also just been some general refinement of the systems relating to combat. The longer I work on combat the more I seem to simplify it. I don’t want to make it too straightforward obviously but some parts of the system in terms of progression, balance, and player stats were more obtuse than anything so they’ve been modified or done away with for what I think will make a smoother experience. This is a farming sim after all, not a super complex JRPG.

Aside from slogging through combat creation I’ve been working on some other things as well. There are several bugs that are being addressed. Outside of that I’ve got a few visual updates to the game that should add some nice touches. In the future I’d like to look into more things like this its just a matter of finding the time as usually there are more important issues to address. Aside from the visuals, I’ve got some new NPCs in the works. Currently, there are two that will be added next patch but there may be more depending on how things go. Both should also have a few quests accompanying them as well as two interiors because they can’t live/work in a black void, although it would admittedly be way easier for me.

I think that’s mostly it as far as things worth mentioning specifically. While I can’t make a guarantee I’m hoping there will be a patch in January. Its somewhat dependent on a few art assets being made, but I’d guess that won’t be a huge issue.

That marks the end of the new stuff. This next part was something I found interesting from a developer perspective. Given that it’s the end of the year I figured it might be a good time to look back. I keep daily backups of Verdant Village. So, I went back to what Verdant Village was at the start of the year to see the differences. I also looked back at the earliest build of the game ever which is a hilarious white screen with some moving blocks on it.

In any case I don’t pay a ton of attention to changes made over long periods of time. Once a feature is in the game, I eventually forget that it wasn’t there at some point. Looking back at the old build and the patch notes over the year I found it interesting to see what was actually changed. Below is a list of the bigger items that have been added to the game over the year. I apologize if this seems self-indulgent, I don’t mean to inflate my ego or anything I just found it interesting and thought others might as well.

Anyway, over the course of 2021 Verdant Village has seen the following changes.

-3 Zones (which I won’t name for spoiler reasons)

-4 New Archeology Artifacts

-3 NPCs (Petra, Isabel, and Graham)

-2 Shops

-10 Quests

-The Fermentation System

-The Buffs System

-Fisheries

-Fish Traps

-Hunting Refinement (smoking, drying, and marinading meat)

-33 Perks

-Minor Archeology Artifacts

-The Windmill System

-A Variety Of New Furniture

-A Set Of Fish For The Mines

-Cocoa Trees

-Barley And Rye

-The Mines Overhaul

-Fishing System Overhaul

-UI Upgrades

-Alchemy System Rework

-Buildable Silo

-Truffle System Overhaul

-Forage And Surface Ore Changes

-A Slew Of QoL

-An Even Larger Slew Of Bug Fixes

Listing things out like that makes it seem sort of small actually. I think condensing down “Bug Fixes” and “QoL” into two lines is the cause of that. Looking back at the patch notes bug fixes alone were pretty much always multi page lists. It’s also occurred to me while making this just how many things were reworked in large ways, which I can’t say I planned to do from the outset.

Looking back at this is a bit telling, I think. A lot of my time was spent fixing bugs or reworking systems. I don’t want to set myself up here, but I think 2022 will be far more focused on additions rather than fixes or changes. Of course, I’ll fix whatever crops up but I think things are reasonably stable, bar a couple of outstanding issues.

At this point most of the major systems are in place. Major systems are something I define as a system that will take me multiple weeks to code and setup. There were several of these in the past year, the mines rework, fermentation, hunting refinement, alchemy rework, etc. At the moment I can foresee a few more large systems, such as combat, the topic and general conversation/cutscene/romance system, one that I won’t mention because I haven’t talked about it yet, and the compendium, which won’t be hard so much as just a lot of stuff.

Keep in mind these are the large systems, it doesn’t constitute other smaller things such as animal breeding, secrets, tailoring, holidays, or other things. So, there is still a lot to do but the point is a lot of this year’s work was squashing bugs, but another huge part was just setting up or reworking very large systems. Since there aren’t as many large systems to work on going forward, I’ll have time to fill out the game in smaller ways, more NPCs, zones, and things to populate the areas. Essential a lot of what’s been done I would call framework. Once the frame work is in place its very easy to create things within it. So with any luck that means more content faster.

All that said I’m excited to get started on 2022. I think a lot of cool things are going to be added to Verdant Village this year. With any luck you all will have the same opinion. As always, thanks for sticking with me through the bugs and development process. I appreciate all the feedback, reviews, reports, and everything else. This game is something I’ve wanted to make since I was like 11 so I’m happy I finally get to do that and share it with people. I hope you all had a good 2021 (or as good as it could be with Covid), and I wish you all a happy new year as well.