Another month of development has come and gone for Verdant Village. What did I do this month? I honestly have to look; things have been a bit crazy lately. Most importantly 0.4.7 and a subsequent hotfix went live this month. These were both relatively small patches focusing on QoL for some things I’d been meaning to get around to.

That said I think, fingers crossed, that we are out of the woods that was this spring. Over the past few months, I’ve been incredibly side-tracked when it comes to Verdant Village. I’ve been working as much as I always do, however my attention has been divided to say the least.

In short, there have been lots of bugs and suggestions that have been posted over the last few months. If you were someone making those posts, thank you. I appreciate feedback that helps to make the game better for everyone to play. At the same time, feedback tends to send me spiraling into hosts of smaller issues and mechanical changes that prevent me from working on whatever is coming next. I don’t mind any of this, I just wanted to explain where my time has been going.

Outside of this work I’ve recently started making real headway on the compendium so that is what the near future holds as far as content. Hopefully I can explain what’s planned here. So, let’s see here, a few days ago? Weeks ago? I don’t remember. A friendly person asked if there was a roadmap that was available to look at for the game. I promptly remembered the roadmap I once made about 3 or 4 years ago that I might as well have set on fire for how well I followed it.

Still, a roadmap is a good thing to have, I’m just bad at organizing my thoughts onto paper. So, I drew one up that is posted in the game description page. I have made this one in a way that I can actually follow it as well, so it will actually be indicative of what is coming. I think I’m going to make a sticky for it in the steam forums and discord as well just so it can be seen easily.

The sticky will have more (and some of the same) info attached, but I’ll also elaborate a bit here. To be blunt, the roadmap is the definition of vague. I’ve left swaths of detail out in order to allow myself some freedom in what I tackle in conjunction with what is listed.

The map shows the major additions I’d like to add for each patch. A lot of these additions are map zones and NPCs as those are the long-standing things that are being added slowly. In addition to these things most patches mention some sort of larger system, the compendium, combat, etc. If the system is mentioned here, you can expect that is a significant system in the game on the level of something like alchemy for instance. Aside from these major additions I will be doing other little things, but I’ve left the details out as to when. For instance, breeding animals, more quests, letting animals outside, adding steam achievements, more exchange shops, etc. all constitute little things that aren’t listed here.

At the moment, I am planning to have these things just added in as little surprises when these larger patches come out. The space between patches will be reserved for hotfixes, or if a patch is taking a particularly long time, I may break it up with a smaller patch. Hopefully I’ll move fast enough to avoid that. One last thing to note, as looking at this it feels, well not that impressive to me at least. I guess I’d keep in mind that the systems mentioned in the roadmap are hilariously compressed. For instance, “combat”, is one word. Combat involves, well actual combat, I think around 50 enemies with variants plus bosses, what is looking to be a rather in-depth crafting system, and a leveling system.

Another example is “secrets”, which I’m specifying because I’m not just being secretive, I actually mean secrets. At present I’ve got close to 100 ideas that will be scattered through the world. These ideas serve as little mysteries to solve or things to interact with where you get a reward. While a couple of puzzles repeat with minor variants these are meant to be mostly be unique things to find. The rewards are mostly unique as well. There are a few repeats (IE Max Stamina Upgrade) but none of them are just items or gold, they involve getting something you can’t get anywhere else.

So, I mostly just wanted to put that out there as something to mention that the roadmap is a little deceiving. It does tell you what is coming next but as I said before it is hilariously simplified. In part because I didn’t want to write all that, and also because I like for there to be a little mystery to what is coming next.

Anyway, I think I’ve gone on enough about all this. I hope you are all enjoying the game, and thanks for your continued support. I’m going to go back to making the compendium work now.