Harvest Island: Beginnings
New Demo Update!
This past two weeks has been hectic for me that I forgot to post a new demo for the indie fest. So, I've uploaded a new polished demo for you guys to take a look and play! Hopefully I'm not too late. I'll also upload a broadcast sometime soon this week as well for those of you that just want to quickly glance at the game and check out how it is. I'll talk about the game development in my broadcast.
As for the game update and how it's going. I would say it's 95% complete. I just need to wait on a bit more art, make a bit more music, and have a few more testers to play the final version of the game one last time. Very very very close to being done. In my next post, I'll give you a confirm release date of when Harvest Island can be played. It really will be released this year!
Here's the list of new things:
-Game scale (You can now zoom into the game 2x since people had a hard time seeing the game)
-Text box animated to come from sides
-Clear petting Objectives (This reduces confusion and helps balance the game when you feed, tend to the animals, and pet them)
-UI Art implemented
-Animals have Favorite foods (I'll let you figure the secret out :))
-New Heart Emoji
- New fish animation
-New coconut animation
- New bugs animation
- New Well watering Animation
- New cotton animation
- New apple tree animation
- Replaced a few old object arts (Like logs, twigs, mussels, apples)
-Refined part of the story's writing so that it doesn't feel repetitive.
- New Character Portraits (Lot's of new expressions added)
- Fast Travel added (There's an entire new world in that fast travel!)
- Balanced food consumption and energy consumption for "Tutorial" part.
- Extended the demo just a little bit more so that the game has a resolution and finishes the game's "Tutorial" and premise.
-Added 3 children's story books (Read it in the father's room once you journey along the game a bit)
-New Translations added (But this is a bit incomplete since I'm still working on this.)
-Added Nap Feature
There's probably a lot more which I can't remember from the top of my head since I'm just working purely in getting the final game released vs keeping the game updated to you guys. There's a lot of changes and I know you'll like them.
Bugs Crash Fix
-Fixed a lot of grammar issues/Improved dialogue
The Cute Chimera-Dragon VTuber Kaimeriss Plays Harvest Island
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1292500/Harvest_Island/
I have taken over this blue page and as such, I, the cute chimera VTuber
will play Harvest Island. You may call me the lovely Kaimeriss.
What makes me happiest is spending time on Twitch and YouTube,
hanging out and playing games with my chat! They are precious to me.
Rawr! Talk to me and I'll give you lots of love and a warm place to hang out.
I like to play Final Fantasy XIV and I love-love-love to play cozy games.
Sometimes I like to play things that are... chaotic. That's when things get dark,
and a little... well, you'll see what happens when my chimera instincts take over.
But, if I'm super happy, I'll play anything!!
Oh! I love to draw too! I love drawing, it is the most fun thing in the universe.
So visit with me and watch me draw! Did I ever tell you I'm a super good drawer?
I'm very good. Very professional indeed. You'll be surprised!
My 34% dragon instincts tells me that you like to collect 'treasures.'
I like to collect treasures. You look like a treasure to me.
Join my big pile of shiny treasures!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo - Love ya!
The Cute Chimera-Dragon Kaimeress
Socials
Twitch - https://kaimeriss.hopp.to/twitch
Youtube - http://youtube.com/c/kaimeriss
Vtuber Twitter - @kaimeriss
Arti Twitter - @TastyPeach_INC
The Game's Release Date
Anyways, the game is very close to competition and I just need a few more months to release it. I'll give an exact release date once my game enters 95% completion since currently right now it's at around 70-75% done. Maybe 80%. I just need to add a bit more music, finish programming the story, and bug test the game. Not a lot to do in terms of list, but a lot of work since it requires tons of hours to implement. It's safe to say that I can finish this game early next year.
I've also been updating the demo a lot and making sure that the gameplay is smooth and fun to play with lots of objects that isn't fetch quest. A lot of the time to make this game comes from design, so I hope you guys enjoy what I created when the game gets released. I can say that this farming game is very different from the farming games other indie devs make. It just branches off from the traditional design of the other farming games. Hopefully you guys will like it and I'm very excited for you guys to play it! Anyways, look forward to the stream as I'll play beyond what the demo restricts you to play. I'll show you guys the buildings, fishing, and even a little bit more of the story!
It's not a dating game!
2 months before the steam festival and I'm starting to transition from game development to marketing. I'm doing this because I'm a solo developer and the game still needs more awareness. I'm still working on the game, but not as much until the steam festival is over. It's going to take a lot of time for my game to be on the front page of steam so planning ahead and producing content will help me get there. This will probably sacrifice my development time but I think it's worth it since it'll help me in the long run.
Here's another video about how my game is different from the other farming genres I've seen. Enjoy!
Harvest Island Demo Big Update
Alright, that's pretty much it. I hope to see youtube video! Enjoy the 30-45 min of content!
I made a music video of a meme
Potato farming in Indie Game Sucks
It's been a while but I have good news! I'm seriously starting a youtube channel to help promote Harvest Island more. This is a good thing for you because I'll be making Harvest Island Content! So, some of these content will reveal new areas in Harvest Island, but it's purely comical. Sometimes I'll post developer progress but most of the time, I just want to make you laugh. It's something I can do while developing Harvest Island at the same time since I know you guys have been waiting for this game for a long time. If you followed me in the super early stages, that's 2 years!
As you may have read the title, potato farming in indie game sucks. Not really haha. It's the title of my youtube video that I'm showing you!
I hope you enjoyed that video! And I really encourage you to follow me on youtube. Like and subscribe too! I've got a stockpile of videos that'll last me for two months and I'll continue to do this until I release my game. I'll be uploading frequently.
As for the game Harvest island. I know the biggest question is when will it be finished? Well, I have the entire game development road map planned out and I have a set date when I want to finish this game. This is pretty much what I have left to do to finish the game.
This is literally taken out of my notes from the big canvas I have written... But I'll explain more after you take a quick glance at it. (The sloppy writing is from me using a mouse lol)
The main art which is all of the environmental art is 85-90% done.
The illustration is probably 20% done. This isn't a big deal since I have someone else working on these. So it shouldn't affect the release of the game.
Water tides is a code for me to say that, replace all the water in the game and be sure to add low tides and high tides. Pretty much a rework of the beaches in Harvest Island. This is maybe 10% finished. I still have to program a few things before the tides are final.
And then there's the secret animal map. That's pretty much is a secret :) But this is 0% done. If people have been following my dev log on my website, wild animals are really important.
Next we have Eventing. This just means to me that I have to create cutscenes for the game. Particularly the main story. And I'm talking about the ending of my game. So, you can say that the entire game's cutscenes is about 50% complete. The other 50% is the game's end game. This also implies other background programing I have to do like achievements, quests, and NPC Dialogue.
Story is 90% finished. All I have to do is write the game's lore. Which will take a while. And also write the the game's ending which is already planned out. I can't finish this without finishing the art so this will take a while for me to even start writing the game's ending. Plus there's the illustrations I have to wait on as well.
Testing. This is pretty much 0%. I have tested the game while I was developing it. So if things broke, I would fix it quickly, but small bugs that I wouldn't even think of testing would take some time for me to find them. Plus I'm going to find friends and have them play the game blindly. You can consider testing as polishing phase. Which will take a huge amount of time from me because I would be playing the game beginning to end like 100x to find bugs with different style playthroughs. And the game is pretty long and kinda open world. Would you even consider stardew valley open world? Well, you can say my game has the freedom to explore.
Easter egg island. That's just code for me to design the game's easter eggs. Yeah, it's pretty much self explanatory. If you guys played the beta, I'm sure you found game references. This island is pretty much answering those references. This is at 0% but I already have planned everything out for this.
And finally music. I'll be writing a lot of music. The game's music is probably 40%-50% done. Writing music is pretty quick for me unless I have to write a 5 min orchestral piece. We will see how my testers say about my music. If it's bad, I'm upping the level of music. If it's good, You can expect the game to release sooner. Also, I'm thinking about adding a singer which I already have lined up.
And that's pretty much everything currently with Harvest Island. So when will the game get released? I'm too afraid to give you the date because this is a lot of work, but I made deadlines for myself to finish. (Hopefully in a understandable time frame that doesn't kill me) This lets you peek into how soon Harvest Island will be finished and I hope that this is enough to keep you waiting.
And be sure to subscribe on youtube if you haven't yet!
Harvest Island: Beginnings Demo Update
If anyone hasn't seen the new Harvest Island Trailer, give it a watch.
[previewyoutube="dN-WMOTrgbE;leftthumb"]
As for the game development in general, it's a long journey and I thank you guys for patiently waiting for the release. I've been pushing the release of the game, but it keeps getting delay. Mostly because I'm a solo developer doing 20 jobs at once. I just don't have the dedicated time to focus on the game, but the silver lining for this is that I get new ideas and add more content to the game. So that might be a good thing for you. More hours to play and more depth to the game.
Also, I've added an email list that you can sign up! I talk about my game development journey. You should sign up!
Join the Email List!
Harvest Island Demo is out!
[previewyoutube="dN-WMOTrgbE;full"]
I've decided to do an email list of Harvest Island specifically and the process of developing it. You'll learn about my development journey through these emails. Sign up!