Devlog #26 - Fall Cleanse
Meowllo everyone! Happy spooky season! As the end of the year draws closer, the more we - the devs - are freaking out. We did something this month we haven’t for years…we took a break!
We haven’t had a weekend or time to ourselves to de-stress in a very long time, and we really needed it. So, we took a week off in October to unscramble our brains. What prompted this break? I tried looking for our rice cooker in the trash can.
🔑 I’m a-shrined I can’t pass these puzzles!
We started playing around with some puzzle mechanics and making some sample puzzle rooms. We had a rough idea of what we wanted the shrines and obelisks to look like, but the assets never really reached our expectations.
Well, this month, we finally buckled down and settled on a look and vibe that we feel like suits the lore behind them.
One of the first mechanics we started testing are logic gates and buttons. They function like gates in a circuit! Each gate has a symbol that changes depending on what’s required to activate them. We aren’t quite ready to show it off yet, but…soon 👀
🏡 A mew house
House upgrades! What’s better than having more room to decorate? One issue we ran into while implementing house upgrades is that the original (very old) house design wasn’t upgrade friendly. It’s cute, but it didn’t give a lot of room to expand on. We still like the style, so we’ll keep the idea in mind for a house style variation in the future!
Now we have this little starter home…complete with a balcony. It still retains the charm of the old house with some more room to grow! Oh, and of course, it still has a dyeable roof.
Did you notice the colors looking a little brighter? You’re right! We tweaked the overall look a little bit to really make those colors pop! 🎆
✨ Refining what’s there
We decided to change our old menu-based cooking system to something a little fresher. Instead of choosing what to cook in a boring ol’ menu, cooking is just like the restaurant mini-game.
You grab your ingredients from your rucksack and pop ‘em into any cooking station. Once you’re ready to start cooking, all the ingredients will come together into a dish.
We’d like to add cookbooks in the near future that you can buy so you can refer to them when you forget a recipe.
We also needed to revisit our starting cutscene a couple of times. It’s any player’s first interaction with Snacko, so we want to take extra time to make it super-duper great.
Striking a good balance between showing players the game and the mechanics without keeping them from playing the game is hard to do! We’re trying our best!!
That’s all for this month! Thank you for reading, and extra thank you to all of our patrons that keep Snacko going!
