Jan 1, 2024

Harvest Island - yobob

Happy New Year!

Harvest Island will undergo Version 2.0. The game engine Harvest Island uses is called RPG Maker and it is extremely limited in what features I can add to the game.

Players have voiced their problems when playing Harvest Island and it's something I'm having difficult fixing because of the current engine. It is out of my current development power.
-Bad UI
-Grid based movement
-Noi Minimap
-Non traditional farming UI
-Clunky gameplay
This is all inherent based on the engine.
(playing on the controller is a lot better)

So, I will be porting the game from RPG Maker to Godot. This will allow the game to be extremely smooth to run with added features. Like watering in a 5x5 space with a charge effect.
Features that I plan to add with this new powerful engine.
-Porting to ps5 and switch
-Overhaul UI
-Overhaul Character Movements
-Overhaul Game Mechanics
-Better performance
-Voice acting Jap & Eng
-Traditional farming UI elements and features
-More Animations/higher framed animations
-And more game mechanic features

But this will be a side project for me. So expect development time to be 1-2 years or so (Could be more). The reason is I have to remake this entire game in a new engine. And that takes serious time. I'm also going to be working on a new game, so this V 2.0 is going to really be a side project.

Harvest Island will drop in base price from $25 to $15 for Harvest Island V 1.0. Once V2.0 comes out, the price will jump back up to $25. Price take effect after the Winter Sale. So, getting the game now during the winter sale is a very great deal, especially if you want to try it. And also purchases will help fund 2.0. If more sales happen, then the development time will become shorter as I will prioritize getting V 2.0 out.

The reason I'm dropping the price is because it might be too expensive to a lot of people for this indie game. And I just want people to play the game and enjoy the storyline. I can't stress enough how great the story is.

Because the game will drop in price to $15, some of you who bought the game before the base price might be a little upset and could've waited another 3 months in buying Harvest Island. But! Your early purchased really helped the game out a lot. You guys are the sole contributors that helped Harvest Island be better than when it was first released. I was able to add a lot more content to the game because of that extra funding. I was able to add that Extended ending and commission a few more illustration for a proper ending. I was also able to add a Story B to the game to help bring more tension to the early parts of the game, and I was able to add more content, specifically more horror content to the game. And many many bug fixes as well! I sincerely thank those early contributors. Those early purchases helped elevate Harvest Island to a new level of polish.

It's very worth the game to try and to experience the main story line. And! Leave a review if you liked the game!

Jan 1, 2024

Our Life N&F: 2024 Intentions

Our Life: Now & Forever - GB Patch

[Adorable guest art by dreamtydraw on Tumblr]

Welcome to 2024, everybody 🥳️

This is the year of Our Life: Now & Forever (and 2025 will be too, but let's not get ahead of ourselves that much). After a good five odd years of making Our Life: Beginnings & Always content, it's amazing to look ahead and see only the progress that will be done on this new game. Qiu and Tamarack are the center of the GB Patch Games universe now. But even though I'm not creating any new OL1 scenes, there may still be some exciting developments for the existing stuff. Cove hasn't been forgotten.

💚❤️️💙

Honestly, 2024 is gonna be the most basic year in a very long time, haha. There's not gonna be major launches of new DLCs, or a full game going live, or any bonus Moments. It's simply making progress on OL: N&F. That's pretty normal for game development. It's just not something we've had to go through since 2019. But we're hunkering down for the long haul on this one.

Specifically, Step 1 will be fully completed in 2024 and I'll make as much headway into Step 2 as possible. There will be two updates to the public demo, one probably in May and another sometime in Fall/Third Quarter 2024. Those will focus on Step 1 scenes still. I can't guarantee we'll be able to rework the Step 2 part of the demo with new content this year. As it is, the content was made to be a demo preview. A lot is gonna change for the complete version.

And that's about it for our main game.

Every year I'm amazed I can continue to do this as my fulltime job. I'm always wondering when that will end, but I'd be lying if I said I could see that point. The support GB Patch Games has gotten, and still gets each day, is more than enough to for it to continue for the rest of OL2's development.

I'm pretty confident in assuming that when that game does launch it's going to be successful enough for Project W to go into full production. It's a truly wonderful thing. Thank you so much for being here. We'll do our best with the time and attention you've given us.

Happy New Year 🥰️

Jan 1, 2024

Talking about the Future

Svarog's Dream - lynxbird

Starting from January, we will take a longer period of time to rest.
We have worked on this game for four years and provided support to players after the release, and now it is time to refill our energy. Don't expect new updates in the first part of 2024.

What comes after that?

The game received so much love and positive feedback from players, which has made us want to make an expansion to the core game.

The expansion would have two main goals:
1. To give more love to the Old Gods.
They are imagined to be morally ambiguous, like nature, and while nature can be cruel, it can also be beautiful.
We would love to expand more on that positive side of Old Gods, with new quests, new main story quest paths, additional game endings, and more unique interactions with the Old Godss.

2. To expand on everything you loved about the game and make the world even more immersive.
The idea would be to add more world events, more living world (roaming traders, roaming beasts),
to expand on the housing, war, crime and on the mercenary systems.
The expansion would also bring a new island-like area to explore.

If there is something else you would really love to see being a part of an expansion,
feel free to suggest it over Discord or Steam forums, and we will take it into consideration.

If the game continues to receive love and support, as it has so far, expect more info about the expansion in the second part of next year.

We wish you a healthy and successful year of 2024.

Best regards, Dev Team.

Jan 1, 2024

Happy New Year!

Lost Marbles - Hairy Cabbage

First off, id like to wish everyone a happy new year, and I want to thank everyone who has purchased a copy of Lost Marbles so far.

I'll be honest though, 2023 didn't exactly go as planned with regards to the development of Lost Marbles. Various real life event ate up a lot of my free time, which was a good thing for me, but not so much for my free time, which is when I get to work on the game... Because of this, I feel like I underdelivered in updates, which is something I fully intend to make up for in 2024!

My goal for 2024 is simple; to leave early access and release as a "complete" game on Steam. Obviously this is a lot easier said than done, as this will require the delivery of a number key game updates. Lets talk a little about about each of these updates now...

Challenge Mode

I'm sure most of you reading this will know at this point that challenge mode was supposed to be a big update in 2023. It is very clear that I missed the mark big time with this update, and for that I can only apologise. I missed the target level goal set out in an earlier dev post quite significantly, and I did not update any of the UI to accurately reflect the mode. Then to make matters worse, a recent bug forced me to temporarily remove all Gem Arena maps from rotation whilst I investigate the issue.

I do very much still believe in the concept for challenge mode, so expect to see many improvements to complete the game mode in 2024. I wont say any more about this, as I think my previous dev posts still fairly accurately describe my intentions for the mode.

A Complete Level Set

This one pretty much goes without saying, but the game needs its full selection of base game levels. My goal for this is roughly 10 levels per difficulty, though some difficulties may see a few more depending on where boundary levels land during difficulty rating.

My goal for Gem Arena maps is around the 10-12 mark, and I'm hoping to add a little more diversity into these levels compared to what is currently available.

Finally, a complete level set will allow me to finalize the difficulty and full game arcade playlists.

As mentioned in my previous anniversary post, I have chosen to save levels for larger content drops as opposed to drip-feeding levels into the game. This allows me to build more hype around each update, and prevents me constantly dragging players back to a game for only a small amount of content.

Customisation Rework

customisation in Lost Marbles is currently severely lacking, with only a hand full of skins to choose from, and my inability to create and release seasonal cosmetics on time (I still have not made the Christmas 2022 skin yet).

My goal is to completely rework the customisation portion of the game, and to create a large number of skins for players to choose from. This will include significantly more base marble skins, as well as the various unlockable skins hidden throughout the levels and achievements (they aren't in game yet, so don't bother looking ;)).

The Level Editor

This was initially a pipe dream update for me, and certainly not something I ever thought I would be looking to include as a requirement for leaving Early Access. A lot of my early work for challenge mode really opened this up as a viable update though, which is very exciting.

I have already put a decent amount of work into the update during the final months of 2023, and as I promised in my 1 year anniversary post, I will be posting a dedicated dev blog for this progress soon(ish).

To give a quick overview of the update though, it is basically an in-game level editor (duh) that allows players to share their creations online. The sharing will also be done in-game, allowing for potential cross-platform sharing in the future, should that become necessary.

The update is a fairly huge undertaking for a solo developer, so I will refrain from giving any release windows, but I am confident that it can be done within this next year along side everything else listed here. I do plan various beta tests for this feature, so stay tuned for when those are coming if it is something that sounds interesting to you.

Menu Rework

This one isn't essential, but I would love to modernize the current menu for the game, because I cant help but feel the menu is a little dated and bland.

This would also put me in a position to finally finish the missing pages in the 'Player Profile' portion of the menu, such as a proper stats page etc.

Game Polish

Similar to the menu, much of the gameplay lacks the polish of a finished game. This includes the small things like sound effects and particle effects. I don't have a huge amount to say about these, but expect to see these appear along side content drops.

Additional Game Modes

Anyone who has been playing for a while (Pre-public release) may remember the two asynchronous multiplayer modes that existed in a previous version of the game; Scavenger Hunt and Capture the Flag.

I would really love to bring these two game modes back, but this is not essential for the full game release. The two game modes heavily rely on having a somewhat active player base, so this will likely be the determining factor on if I devote any time to re-implementing these modes.

Marketing and Communication

Not so much a game mode, but still two very important things that I have to start taking seriously if I want to shift more than the 100 units I have managed so far.

Going forward, I will be taking a much more active approach to marketing and advertising each update as and when they drop. This will also include proper patch notes for every update.

The Demo

As a piece of final news, it is with regret that I have decided to remove the demo from the store. It is no longer viable to maintain, and it appears to serve very little purpose in its ability to convince players to pick up the full game. the vast majority of players who purchase the game do so without even trying the demo, and a large number of demo users either play once, or continue to play the demo with seemingly no desire to upgrade.

Because the demo contains many of the server-side features of the full game (leaderboards, online multiplayer, etc.), it requires constant updating to remain in working order. I hope you will agree with me when I say I feel my time is better spent working on the updates listed above instead of having to dedicate time to a demo that serves very little purpose.

I will look into the possibility of a stripped down version of the demo in the future.

I think that just about covers everything I have planned for 2024. Hopefully I have not bitten off more than I can chew... :)

I hope everyone has an amazing 2024!

Jan 1, 2024

Version 3.1 Update Notes

Just Drive a Lil: It's a Mini Racing Game! - ladypsyren

Change Log for Just Drive A Lil. Build Version 3.1

-Minor Bug Fixes
-Fix Pause Menu Sprite

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Change Log for Just Drive A Lil. Build Version 3.0

-Bug Fixes

-New Tracks Build!

<|>Tracks<|>
-Added 3 new race tracks
-Pumpkin Row
-Autumn Alley
-Snow Valley

<|> UI <|>
Track Preview
-Resized Track Previews. Bigger in size.

<|> Credits Screen <|>
-Changed Font size.
-Condensed text lines: is now Music and Voice Acting

<|> Race Results <|>
Screen Panel
-Turned up the Opacity on race results screen
-Added Panel Animation to race results screen

<|> Main Menu <|>
-Added Moving Panel animation on Play Awake.
-Building Track Panel
-Turned up the Opacity on Building Track Panel

<|> Building Track Panel screen <|>
-Change color from green to blue on every track scene.

<|> Sedan Sports car <|>
-Changed AI car color from Red to orange.

<|> Obstacles <|>
Added various obstacles in each track. They are not meant to get the
cars to a full stop, but to only slow them down.

<|> Cairo Speedway <|>
-Added 2 new obstacles
-Turned down lights and added red light tint

<|> Elin Riverway <|>
-Added 2 new obstacles
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<|> UI <|>
----------------------
Start Screen
-Added Text "Build Version 2.0".
-Added Text, "(Press (A) or LMB).
-Replaced Background preview video with updated video.
-Resized Company Logo.
-Resized Game Logo. Repositioned to the top left corner.
-Replaced button png.
-Resized font.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.

Main Menu <|>
-Replaced Background preview video with updated video.
-Removed Proxy Animation.
-Removed Logo/Car Animation.
-Removed Main Menu Text.
-Added Ticker: Made to give the player hints on how to play the game and
information about future version releases.
-Replaced button png.
-Resized font.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for start screen button.
-Added new Menu Special Thanks.
-added see-saw animation to text.
-Added (Play Game) text above Toy Box button.

Toy Box <|>
-Repositioned Choose Track button
-Replaced button png for Back, Start Race and Choose Track button.
-Resized font.
-Added Text, "New Tracks Coming Soon:
-Pumpkin Row
-Autumn Alley
-Snow Valley

-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png to each button.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.

Choose Track <|>
-Replaced button png for Back and all track buttons.
-Resized font.
-Changed Close text to Back Text

-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.
-Added 3 New racing tracks with coming soon text layered on top of them.

Credits <|>
-Removed "A FT Gamers Game" Text and game logo
-Repositioned Game Developer, Music and Voice Acting Text To the middle.
-Repositioned Rio the dev andLady Psyren text.
-Repositioned Back button
-Changed Close text to Back text.
-Repositioned "in Memory of Marcus L." to bottom middle.

About <|>
-Replaced button png.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.

How to Play <|>
-Replaced button png for Back and all buttons.
-Resized font.
-Changed Close text to Back Text

-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.

Keyboard Menu <|>
-Replaced button png.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.

GamePad <|>
-Replaced button png.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.

Pause Menus <|>
-Replaced button png for Back and all buttons.
-Resized font.

Thanks For Playing <|>
-Replaced button png.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to red when not hovered for Back button.
-Repositioned Proxy model
-Repositioned Green Text closer to the left.

Building Track Screen <|>
-Replaced button png.
-Added hovering animation.
-Added background color to png.
-Png background color gradient changes to green When hovered,
gradient resets to yellow when not hovered.
-Added Text, "(Press (A) or LMB).

<|> New Menu <|>
----------------------
-Created Special Thanks Menu.
-To show thanks to those who contribute to the project at that time.
-Added 2 names to the list

<|> Racing Opponents <|>
----------------------
-Reduced speed of formula racing car to normal speed to give the player
an equal change to come in first.