Harvest City
After many hours of trying to avoid making a farm game, I made a farm game. Or rather, the beginnings of a farm game.
I really enjoyed working on this, though I think I spent waaaaay too much time on creating the art assets instead of getting all the planned features in (more than a few nods to *Stardew Valley*, and much ❤ to @adamcyounis for his pixel art tutorials).
Essentially, you plant crops on your farm, harvest them when they're ready, then drive them into town to sell at the various places that want what you produce. Unfortunately, only one crop can be grown (wheat) and there's only one place to sell them at (the Mill). The sell mechanic doesn't work, at there's currently no way to obtain more seeds (there are plans to add a place to sell seeds).
I'm not happy with the driving mechanics, but I wasted too much time trying to get Unity's new-ish input system to cooperate.
There's also no sound or music, hence why I've opted out of the Audio category.
I think there's some potential here, but once again, planning and distractions stopped me from getting everything I wanted in. 🙄
I really enjoyed working on this, though I think I spent waaaaay too much time on creating the art assets instead of getting all the planned features in (more than a few nods to *Stardew Valley*, and much ❤ to @adamcyounis for his pixel art tutorials).
Essentially, you plant crops on your farm, harvest them when they're ready, then drive them into town to sell at the various places that want what you produce. Unfortunately, only one crop can be grown (wheat) and there's only one place to sell them at (the Mill). The sell mechanic doesn't work, at there's currently no way to obtain more seeds (there are plans to add a place to sell seeds).
I'm not happy with the driving mechanics, but I wasted too much time trying to get Unity's new-ish input system to cooperate.
There's also no sound or music, hence why I've opted out of the Audio category.
I think there's some potential here, but once again, planning and distractions stopped me from getting everything I wanted in. 🙄
Genres: simulation
Comments39
I'll admit that the driving part had more attention: making the city (including creating the buildings) was a lot of fun! (And wasn't that how Wil Wright invented SimCity?)
I have seen Pixel Architect, love his Ghibli-style work.
I like that you tried to add something to the expected concept by adding the driving part.
A good idea is to make a list of things that you want to add to the game, and then divide them into three lists: Things that your game absolitely needs,
things that you really like to put in,
and things that would be nice to have but don't add the most.
Then work on the most important things first.
It's ok to revise the list later on. Some things that you thought your game absolutely needed may not be that necessary, and things that you thought you liked to put in may be elements that make the game work in the end.
I usually have a Trello board put together before I start working on the game, but this time round, I inexplicably didn't do this until near the end of day 2 of the jam, which is really mad because I'd found them very useful (for the exact reason you said) in previous jams. Oh well, lesson learned 🤷
I keep a list of features sorted by importance and work on the most critical ones first, and then cut the less important ones as I start running out of time.
I see no problem with focussing on some aspects like sprites in a game jam as it should be a learning experience and it is very cool that you still managed to finish something that can be played! The farm has some serious Stardew Valley vibes :) At first I thought, that the city is way to big but when I returned to the farm I directly had a feeling of "coming home" so that would definetly work in the next version of the game!
into town while my wheat was growing in my farm (and it had just
vanished while I was gone?) so that was a little silly, the wheat
selling mechanic not working is a little sad, but I do like the art
you've put together, scoping it down a lot more and actually just
focusing on selling only wheat and maybe making the town even smaller
would have probably made it easier to finish on time :)
Either way, I hope to see you again in another LD! It's an interesting
setup, just needs a little narrowing down (and having the transition
between the farm and the town be smoother would improve the feel a
lot)
Good work regardless :D
@justin-c @t90 As I mentioned above, I'm usually a bit more organised, with a Trello board to keep me focussed, but this time I just jumped in without one until 2/3 of the way through the jam. 🤦
@xoreaxeax I won't lie that Stardew Valley wasn't a source of inspiration, especially for the art style; I really love that game! I'll keep in mind your comment about the feeling of "coming home".
@elmoeinstein The farmhouse was the last pixel art I worked on, and comparing it to the earlier buildings, I can definitely see a progression 😃 It's something I want to keep working on.
@profan Yes, there's no tracking what crops are planted during the scene swap, so it resets the farm every time you return. It's definitely on the bug list, and something I'd want to fix, especially with crops that take longer to grow. Definitely, building the city as large as I did took up way too much time (personally, I'm amazed I didn't try to make it bigger...). Will be back for LD53 in April 😃
I think there needs to be a little more work the system. I'm not sure why I couldn't "sell" the wheat once I brought it. Maybe I missed a step, but there were other bugs mentioned in other comments.
But, considering the effort you up in the art, it makes sense. The art is amazing, and I think if you had more time, the game would be much cleaner. Good job!
@toosalty0000 I'm not sure I'd describe the art as "beautiful", but it's very kind of you to say so 😊 Definitely learned my lesson on focussing on the gameplay ahead of the art assets. The sell system is bugged, not something you missed. It was one of the last things I implemented, about 2 hours before the end of the jam (for me, this meant 7am Tuesday NZT, and I'd been up since 6am the day before...)
@thunderchief Yes, the core part of the game design revolved around selling the harvests, so it's kind of missing that bit at the moment 🤦 Definitely have "plan ahead" top of my Lessons-Learned list.
Well done on getting a submission ready in time, even if all the features didn't make it. Each of the screens looked nice and seemed to each encompass pretty solid core gameplay ideas. As others as said, I feel fixing up priorities and massively reducing scope in the future would benefit immensely.
Well done :)
The driving in this game! It's slow and takes a while, and feels exactly like driving through town to get somewhere. This is a great mechanic to have in a farming game, I think. It creates incentives for the player to avoid going to town too often, because it is slow. So if there was more progression in this game, for example, a larger car inventory -- I probably would have gone for it! It would help me save time going back and forth, and so I would be directly incentivized to participate in other game systems, by a mechanic that makes narrative sense.
I mean, this is kind of seen in, say, Stardew Valley, where getting anywhere from the farm takes a lot of walking, and there is explicit game progression that helps you get around faster.
But I haven't seen it done with a car before, and it's a surprisingly effective combination. I think this is because, at least for me, I have personally experienced having to drive somewhat far away on a regular basis for work, while I have not yet experienced having to walk through the countryside on a regular basis (like in Stardew Valley). So it really is a more personal, and therefore more immersive, framing.
@honey-pony: There was certainly intended to be a progression in vehicles, so you could take bigger loads into town (the functionality to increase the size of the vehicle's payload is already in there!). I don't know if I could've articulated the plan as well as you have, but encouraging progression was certainly something I was trying to put into the game. Thanks for describing it so wonderfully: it's given me more ideas to consider (like putting the farm on the same map as the city, so you literally have to drive all the way).