Faraway Lands: Rise of Yokai cover
Faraway Lands: Rise of Yokai screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Adventure, Indie

Faraway Lands: Rise of Yokai

#Devlog-End of Demo,Current Progression
Hello guys, hope you are well & safe!

I will first talk about how the demo experience was for me and then inform you about updates.

Demo




  • It has been a month since I published the demo,It was a pretty crazy week for me, I was late for the festival, couldn't manage to finish the demo in time.After 3 stressful and sleepless days into the festival I managed to release the demo.And...I got my first crash report in a few mins from the playersːsteamhappyː
  • There were a lot of bugs so the first people who played the game probably quit & never returned, but I managed to fix them rather quickly, so after a few days it was running fine mostly.I kept updating the demo, fixing,changing & adding few things based on feedback & my observations.
  • Overall, it was a great experience.Even though I missed most of the festival, it got the attention of a few youtubers which has gained us quite a bit of new players(We are at 4.5k whishlists right now)! It gave me a chance to observe how people play the game, which I noticed can be quite different than I intended.
  • The demo was supposed to last during the festival only, but I decided to let it stay for a while.Today I am going to take it down after almost a month, we are down to 2-3 demo downloads per day and it is a hassle to keep both versions running among other reasons.I hope to make available again some day.

  • I want to thank everyone who participated in the demo and I hope guys had fun.
    Note:You can still contact me and I will happily send you a key for the demo.


Updates



I have noticed a lot of people have an hard time to manage their villagers and often can't find the ones they need.So I have implemented two solutions for that.
First one is a list of buttons that shows how many villagers are assigned to each job

It is an easy tool to navigate through villagers(No more lost villagers, yay!)

Second one is a list of villagers, this is more complex but it also shows villagers traits and you can change their name, this one is useful to pinpoint your target villager.


Save system kinda broke while I was rushing things for the festival, so I started fixing it.Lucky for me my game engine recieved another update which made the old data structures I used for saving absolute, so I rewrote the entire save system which took a week.But it works much better now, and I know the save is one of the most important things, nobody likes losing their progress!(Technical note: old data structures were not garbage collected so it let to memory leaks and other kind of problems if I forgot to delete or something)
I have added 6 manual save slots, also 1 more for quick save and 2 more for auto saves(which happens every day and after important events)


Researching
I have changed the system from a tree to an exploration based mechanic, which I think suits better to the game.The system works like this:You assign your villagers to become librarians in the dungeon libraries and gain research point as they work there.You can then use those points to research scrolls/books.You come across those rare books throug secret rooms in the dungeons,trading with other cities, or some islands on the map(I will come back to this)
Those researches are permanent and grant bonuses based on their rarity(From some minor buffs to new technologies, new villager or soldier skills,buildings etc)


Islands
I have added a new concept, you can come across mysterious islands on the oceans,to which you can send your soldiers and explore.These are like little side quests, you get a book from each of them and some small rewards.I have planned 4 for now and I don't intend to include more as I need to finish the core game first.
Here is a sneak peak at one:


Dungeons
Previously there could only be 1 stairs per level in the dungeons, which limited the layout.I have rewritten the dungeon system as well,villagers are smarter.Now I can make more interesting layouts.I am also working on a system so that I will be able to create 3-4 slightly different layouts so that if you restart the game the rooms will be placed slightly different.

Couple notes about that layout(which is just an example), vertically expanding the dungeons introduced another problem: long walking times between surface and dungeons.I think I have fixed it by dividing the dungeon into 3 sections.After you kill the sections boss a portal appears to another section, which is connected to all other portals.So you can directly travel to level 4 of the dungeons through the main ground portal.It also makes the design look more interesting!I will post more on dungeons in another devlog.

Next Up
So as I observed from people playing the game there were two major issues:Selection of villagers & long travel time between stockpile and buildings.I fixed the first one, and now I am working on the second one, which has been nightmare.I made it so that people deposit resources to their respective buildings(lumberjacks to woodcutter's camp instead of stockpile) and I changed the "ore_carrier" building to "Carrier's Hut" so that workers there grab resources from the connected buildings(woodcutters,fisherman,blacksmith etc.) and deliver it to the stockpile.
When you build a new building it connects itself to the nearest "Carrier's Hut".You can later delete the building from the connection list and connect it to another hut.The carriers will start going to buildings once there are enough resources stored in the building.You can change the minimum required resource amount for the carrier to move too.But it introduces another layers of problems and can be quite complex mechanic for many players so I am trying to simplify it..If anyone have any suggestions,I would be more than happy to hear it!
Once I hopefully finish that part of the game,which is a big part even though it might seem minor, I will make the enemies smarter, they currently have targetting issues.And then I will start adding more enemies and filling the dungeons and ocean.

I will announce when I make a closed beta, but don't expect it too soon.I am done giving dates since I fail to meet them.I am sorry about that but things take more time than I initially thought!:/

If anyone has read so far, thanks a lot, you win my love!
Have a great day!

Demo is up for grab!
Hello guys!

First of all I am sorry about the big delay.At first I couldn't publish the demo as it wasn't quite finished and contained major bugs(It still might have, but I tested it with as many people as I can and fixed the stuff)
And yesterday I finally uploaded the demo but it showed an empty folder, I just managed to fix it now.

As for the demo,it is just to show you the core gameplay loop.It lacks some quality of life features such as minimap and other little things,and also lacks enemy types and bosses.

In the demo you will have 2 days(Which is about 48 minutes in real time) to build stuff and explore around, after that the enemies will attack your village and the demo will end.

The vision I have about this game is to give you the joy of exploring new stuff and also she satisfaction of building a village and successfully defending it.

Please report any bugs or suggestions in our discord channel or steam forums.

Thanks again, have a great day!

Devlog #5 Port,Buildings,Delay
Hey guys, I hope you are well, staying safe and healthy!

Sorry for the late update, been busy fixing some bugs and adding features as well as real life stuff.But still, it feels to me time goes by so fast these days :O

So I have a bunch of gifs for you if you are interested in how things work.

I made it so that villagers need to carry required resources in order to build stuff.And I have added building animation and particle effects.



Upgrades and decorations such as lamps gets built instantly at the moment for convenience, but I might change that if people think it breaks the immersion.

I have made it so that you can assign people to work on the Port, they will generate gold when idle, and will perform various tasks:Building a ship, carrying back the resources gathered by fishing ships, load the trading ship with required resources for trade routes.

You start by building an exploration/war ship, to which you must assign soldiers.




And then select locations to explore on the map and send the ship


You can send fishing ships to fish after you assign them with villagers.


And they will drop the gathered fish at the Port and go back to fishing.


You can upgrade your ships, I plan to have 3 upgradable versions for each type of ship.This Atakebune ship below will probably be the max level exploration ship.I have also redrawn the old pirate ship model to make it smaller to fit the size of my new ships.

I am still working on the naval combat and how the melee and cannonball types should work.But I am kinda tired of working on the ocean part of the game, so I will get back to it after working on another part of the game.But I am open to ideas on how we can make the naval combat fun!


Here is a night scene with Port fully upgraded



To Do List

I liked the concept of assining people to work on buildings.So I want to add a bit more of those, such as blacksmith building and a sawmill.I need to create a minimap, add random events, fix code(This I must always do somehow lol), work on research tree, add a main character with skills, keep adding new trade routes and a few ocean monsters, puzzles and secret doors at dungeons, and probably bunch of stuff I can't think of right now.

Delay

So I wanted to release the game by the end of Q3 but it seems really hard at this point.Things take longer than I expected, and I try to fix stuff as I go instead of just doing things roughly.And I get stuck on small details being a little perfectionist which is a major issue :/ So I am sorry for the delay.There is a game festival between 7th-13th october, I will hopefully participate in it and have a demo up for 1 week.But I still want to do a closed beta before that if I can.
Believe me there is nobody else but me who wants to release this game as soon as possible.But it will be ready when it is ready, I don't wanna release a half baked game.

I encourage new ideas or criticism from you guys, so that I can fix/implement stuff before it is too late into the development.

Thanks a lot if you have read through this long post, and it's okay if you haven't, I still love you.Have fun!