To start things off, happy new year! It’s been quite a year for myself, and Verdant Village in general. I’ve said it before, but I can’t say I was expecting to be in the process of remaking this game at this time. A lot of the framework for the game has been laid since I started in a new engine earlier this year. We’re getting fairly close to the point where the more complex systems are in place and hopefully after that development will speed up a bit.

Now, as for what happened this month, I regret to say it wasn’t much. December is always sort of a weird month just because of the holidays. This year was busier than usual for me, and I also had the pleasure of being sick for a bit. I did make some progress on ranching, but admittedly this month was a bit of a wash. That said January should be far more normal, and I can return to getting things done.

While I didn’t get around to that much this month there are two major things that did happen, more so in planning than execution. The first is ranching. It’s the system that I’m working on at the moment and while in the process of setting things up I was taking a look at the actual gameplay systems and determined that I didn’t think much of them.

For anyone who hasn’t gotten to ranching yet in game I’ll explain. In its current state ranching is very simple, basically you just feed your animals each day and they will give you a product as a result. If you fail to feed them for too long, they starve. That’s basically it. There are some other minor things like automatic feeding, a pasture system, and a few animal variations like pink and brown cows as well.

All of this is alright as a base, but while I was considering ranching, I came to the conclusion that its sort of lackluster. Something I’ve tried to avoid in this game is systems that are nothing more than a button press. I prefer for there to be some nuance to everything so that this doesn’t just become a chore simulator. This is harder to do with some things, but ranching has plenty of opportunities for complexity. I’ve never raised livestock in person, but I’m guessing it requires more effort than just giving your animals food every day.

So, in that spirit, there will be something of an overhaul coming. In short, there will be more aspects to taking care of animals. Specifically, I currently have several systems planned, health, hunger, sickness, cleanliness, pastures, and wards. Each of these is pretty simple but I’ll explain.

Health is exactly what it sounds like, every animal will now have an HP value. An animal at full health is happier. Health can be affected by things like sickness or monster attacks.

Hunger is obviously how hungry an animal is. Feeding an animal each day will ward this off. However, there will be a few tiers of feed which have other effects. Treats will also be something you can feed animals. These don’t actually fill up an animal but can boost their happiness and HP to help them recover if needed. Sickness means, as you likely guessed, that animals can get sick. There are a few different types of sickness, that cause damage and even death if they aren’t treated. Disease can also spread if it isn’t taken care of.

Cleanliness is just a simple system where you’ll have to wash or groom your livestock every few days. Pastures are sort of multipurpose but ultimately a pasture serves to make livestock happier. A larger pasture will make the livestock in it happier.

Last is wards. This is related to monster attacks. Monsters can attack your animals each night and wards will keep your animals safe. They have a duration that they last so they’ll need to be replaced. In general, they serve to reduce the frequency and severity of monster attacks.

All of these things play into happiness. In other games like this, happiness tends to be something you build up over time. For instance, if you feed your animal each day and pet it the animal will like you more. This is usually a cumulative system meaning that once your animal is happy, you’d have to really just stop paying attention to it for its levels to drop. Generally speaking, I don’t like this as I think it sort of lowers the stakes for consistent care.

The plan for this system is that happiness will be a value that is determined each day based on the status of the animal. This happiness value will determine what you get from the animal. There are several tiers of happiness, the higher the tier, the better your rewards.

It should also be mentioned that these systems are meant to play off of and affect each other. For instance, not cleaning your animals lowers their immunity which makes them more likely to get sick. Letting animals into a pasture can make them happier, but they’ll get dirty more quickly. Being in a pasture will also provide the animal with food so you don’t need to feed them, but pasture feeding isn’t going to be as good as high-quality feed.

Aside from all these things all animals will have at least one to two transformations that you can change them into by feeding them certain special items. There are a few other things as well, but they aren’t worth really getting into. The hope is that with all these things raising livestock will be a bit more interactive rather than just a mindless task.

Now, if you’ll remember I said I had two major things to talk about. Last month I believe I mentioned that changes would be coming to the mines. The first is that it’s going to be closer to town. The world is getting a general makeover and one issue is that the mines are really far away. So no more winding mountain trails, or at least not as much of one.

That’s a pretty minor detail though. Much like ranching I’ve been contemplating the mining system for the game. Now, the act of mining itself is going to stay the same. The thing I decided to focus on was the mine itself. For those who haven’t played, or seen the mines, it is basically the same as other games of this genre. You enter and descend through around 100 floors. Each time you enter a new floor it randomly generates the layout to add some level of uniqueness to the area. The mines also generate a few different things like stamina drainers, keysprites, treasure chests, seams, lighting, buffs, etc.

The point of this was to vary the mining experience a bit each time you went in and give the player a bit of something to encounter. General combat encounters were also (and still are) planned for the mines. Looking at the mines I sort of came to a conclusion about the whole setup that I didn’t really like. To put it bluntly, it’s sort of redundant and it’s stretching a fairly thin gameplay mechanic across a large swath of game. Along with this the random things you can find in the mines combined with the random layouts means that rewards are sort of just laying around.

The older I get, and the more games I play, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that random generation is something that really should be used sparingly and in the correct circumstances rather than a replacement for level design. I had thought the mines would be good for this, but I think that was incorrect. Looking at the mines as they are right now, I see it as basically having 100 very subpar levels. The poor quality is offset by the quantity. So, the new plan is to rectify this.

Currently my idea is that there will be 10 levels to the mines. Unlike the current mine levels these will be far larger. Instead of random layouts they will each be handcrafted. There will be a boss enemy at the end of each level to keep people from simply rushing to the lowest floor. The biome will change every two levels and what minerals and gems you find on each floor will change.

The mines will be designed cyclically so that the end of the level winds back around to the start. This way when you want to come back via the elevator you won’t have to traverse the entire level again. There will likely be other ways to hop around the level as well.

Probably the most important part however is that each level will be treated like something of a dungeon. There will be plenty of ore to mine that is scattered about however your progress through the level will be gated by smaller puzzles, locked doors, or combat encounters. Once you’ve reached the end of the level and defeated the boss it will unlock what I’d refer to as a mining room. This would be a large area full of rocks you can mine so once you’ve completed the level you can come back and mine in a more traditional setting without having to run through a maze just to find mining nodes.

That’s the general idea. To be clear, I used the term dungeon earlier which makes me think of Zelda. To be clear, this would not be something as extensive as that. There’s already enough going on without adding a Zelda clone to this game.

I’d be curious to know what people think of this, so if you have an opinion feel free to share it. My personal perspective is that I would rather have 10 well-made levels instead of 100 forgettable ones. Doing something like this would also allow me to use the mines for other things potentially since there would be a static layout that I could tie to other things in the game.

Anyway, this post is already very long so I’ll wrap it up. I have plenty of work in front of me which I’m eager to start. I do apologize for not getting a ton done this month. I’m keenly aware that people have already paid for this game and are potentially waiting for me to get on with it. Granted, I don’t think there are people waiting with bated breath on this new version. However, call me old fashioned, I don’t like to keep people waiting, especially when I’ve already taken money from them.

I’ll hopefully have more to report next month. As for now, I hope you all enjoy your new years celebrations and start off 2024 on the right foot.