Devlog #21 | Big Month!
Meowllo everyone! May was such a busy month. We got our Steam page up and running, we were showcased in a Tumblr spotlight, we participated in the Wholesome Direct, and we started a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the development! That's a lot of stuff, huh? We've also been doing a lot of dev work, too!
🐣 On the Ranch
We can finally talk about the ranching now that Wholesome Direct is over! So far, we’ve added chickens and cows that you can keep in your barn and get resources from. They can all stay in one barn!
The feeders will have a badge affixed to it once you have livestock, so you can see who has eaten and who hasn’t! Every barn is equipped with two egg incubators, a birthing pen, and four feeding pans. Each barn can have up to four animals, and you can freely move them between barns easily through your Journal.
Barns and livestock are randomly given a name, but you can always edit these later as many times as you’d like in your Journal. We’d like to add a “randomize” button in the near future so you can go through the different names if you’re not very good at naming things (like me). One of our Kickstarter tiers lets you submit a name to this database! You’ll be able to choose a name and what kind of animal it’ll be attributed to (or all). So if you haven’t checked out our campaign yet, there’s more fun rewards like that!
Our favorite part about the ranching system so far is the feeder – you can put in any edible goods and it’ll be magically turned into feed! So if you have any extra turnips or wild berries laying around, you can always put them to good use. Different foods will move that little arrow a little farther to full, though. Putting in a little berry will fill up the machine much less than say, putting in a bowl of ramen.
✨ A Little Bit of Polish
We've also added some new little sparkles here and there to really make the game feel and look better. The main menu's UI style has changed to match the rest of the game, including pixel icons that do a little jiggle and light up into color when hovered.
We also updated all our portraits to be more consistent and have a bit more contrast! This cleaner style is easier to see in-game, and it's also easier to draw with consistent results. This also allows us to give the villagers a bit more variety in their poses for their different emotions, which is a big plus!
Our last little thing is the title screen! Dale North has been doing such an amazing job with Snacko's music, including the title theme. We wanted to do it justice, so we put together a proper title screen that will go through the map while you relax and listen to the music. The best part? It reads data from your first save slot, so you'll be able to see what you've grown on your farm, the villagers and their houses, and all the hard work you've put into your island!
🥗 Order Up!
And last, but definitely not least, is the restaurant mini-game! We wanted to add in little bits of gameplay to break up farming and exploring with something that makes you feel like you're more apart of your island community. So...we put in this mini-game! It turns out it wasn't very mini, as it was a lot of work to get it all working nicely together, but we're proud of the result.
We're looking into slight variations of these in the future - like a cafe and a family restaurant. But currently it's a diner! Each day, the menu will change and the fridge will be stocked with the ingredients to make those dishes. Patrons will come through the door and request dishes, either by name, or by an attribute like "sweet" or "spicy". You can choose to go by the menu, or if you're a pro chef and know some recipes off the back of your paw, you can choose to cook up something with what's available in the kitchen that also matches their request!
We added sitting sprites for all the villagers!
We changed cooking so it wasn't just the crafting menu but with food - now you have to hold the ingredient and pop it into a cooking station. They'll float and bubble around until you're ready to cook. If you make a mistake, the kitchen has a convenient trash can to throw away your blunders or your accidental fridge pickings.
Doing good work in the kitchen and serving the guests will net you a nice Cocoa Bean payment for your time and maybe a reward to take home!That's all for this week, thank you for reading and supporting us! 🐾
Double special thanks to all our patrons that make our development possible 🎵 While we do have a Kickstarter campaign going, and while 100% of the funds are going to development, it's to pay for outside help like the music to make Snacko the best it can be! So patrons are still an instrumental part of our development that allows us to pay for our own dev costs, like hosting this website. Thank you to all of these lovely patrons who have and continue to support us through this long Snacko journey 💕
