Devlog #60 - Quantity Of Life
Meowllo everyone! It’s the 60th devlog! That feels like some kind of milestone. The big six zero! This month, there’s a lot of little things that all add to the game in a big way. We combined a list of feedback from our producer, à la angry Steam reviewer, and triaged them based on how much impact it would make versus how much time it would take us to implement.
So let’s get down to covering some of the things we’ve done!
🐦 In the Wild
The world felt a little empty and quiet when you walked through it. Sure, half of that might be because I forgot to vertex paint the trees that are in the farm and town so there was no wind effect, but also because until you invite a couple of villagers, it’s just lonely.
One of the things we did to try alleviate this crushing loneliness is by adding wildlife. Now, there’s bugs, birds, and other Snacko fantasy creatures that inhabit the world.
The birds(?) fly from one tree to another and fly away when you get too close. The bees…don’t sting you, so don’t worry.
Bro’s chilling.
📑 Lore of the World
We also added more interactable spots, cutscenes, quests, and other bits like that with either stories, items, or letters that make the world feel more alive.
Our hope is now, there’s more to look at and learn about the world of Snacko outside of the main story cutscenes. In the past, we had a lot of lore locked behind befriending certain NPCs, but now there’s also bits of that lore spread across the world.
I don’t want to spoil anything, so you get the most uneventful text box as a preview.
📽️ Cinematic Trees
I’ve always had a little cinematic introduction when you first set paw into the plains, but I uh, never did it for the rest of the biomes you can explore.
So I fixed that. It was a lot of fiddling timing. A couple frames here, a couple frames there…before I knew it, it’s been 30 minutes! Scary.
📦 Small Tweaks
The bulk of things were also focused on smaller things, like finishing up UI screens and elements that were unfinished, binding keys that most players would expect (like M for map, or J for Journal).
I also realized there were a few things that didn’t have tutorials. I tried to make them as out of the way as possible. For example, it was never explained to you what the box beside your house was. You just sort of had to eventually guess that it was the overflow storage - where everything goes once your bag fills up.
Now, the first time you interact with it, a tutorial popup tells you about it. I also added a shipping container beside your house, so you don’t have to walk all the way to the other side of the planet to sell your turnips.
The reason why the shipping box is by the path to the town to begin with was so poor Mikan can easily get there in a set amount of time regardless of your farm’s set up. But it proved to be a pain. So now there’s just two of them.
Ehh, the rest of it was a combination of fixing VFX glitches, making so you could click to advance text with your mouse, and other small bits like that. When you hit the tree in the fall, it used to spawn green leaves instead of fall colored leaves. Things like that.
They’re small, but I bet if we didn’t fix them somebody would notice;;
We’ve also tried making small tweaks like adding an option to disable the flashing in the game’s story intro, and making it more obvious when you can’t place an item by making it REDDER.
And that’s all for August! I’m proud of all the work we’ve been able to finish this month. It definitely polished up the game a lot more. Thank you for reading until the end! See you next month~
Extra thank you to our Patrons and Ko-fi supporters! Without you, Snacko development would look very different. We appreciate every one of you 🐾
