Dev Tidbits #1 : A magical purse
Hello everyone! It's been a long time. While we've been extremely busy this year with both real-world shenanigans and the development of the game we sadly haven't had the time to put together regular devlogs (as you have most likely noticed). Every month has its struggles and its
Hello everyone!
It's been a long time. While we've been extremely busy this year with both real-world shenanigans and the development of the game we sadly haven't had the time to put together regular devlogs (as you have most likely noticed).
Every month has its struggles and its successes, but not every month has news worth sharing in the form of a journal. Still, since we know plenty of you do follow the development closely in here we want to give you something really interesting, some neat way to know Farmwand better.
Because of that, we're starting a new series of devlogs that we hope will be far easier to write and publish on the regular, as they will focus on specific features of the game, corners of its world and whatever portion of our project that we believe may be worth bringing attention to, regardless of scope.
Some will be short, some may be long, but (hopefully!) all of them will be interesting.
Today we start with a little look to one of the core items of the game: the Magic Purse.
Inventory fit for witches and wizards
When we were first designing Farmwand we knew that every part of the game had to feel just right. We wanted to streamline what we could to reduce friction and make things more fun, while not removing so much friction that the game lost stakes or became too slow. The inventory certainly played into this philosophy.
We thought for long and had many discussions about whether an endless inventory was the right fit for the game, having been frustrated plenty of times with the puny little ones available at the start of certain games we otherwise love (looking at you, original Titan Quest).
Yet removing all size restrictions didn't seem right for the kind of experience we were trying to build. We wanted to encourage exploring, little quests that would take you to faraway lands, situations that would force you to prioritize and think about how to prepare for your next adventure...all of which required you to not be able to carry everything but kitchen sink with you.
So, we needed an inventory that could be big enough at the start to carry a whole lot of things. One that could be expanded, as any good RPG inventory should. And crucially, one that would fit right into the world of the game rather than being just a panel. Something with personality.
And the magic purse was born, allowing you to join the ranks of Merlin in the Sword in the Stone or Mary Poppins and countless others. A little notebook to its side, your journal, ready to show any additional information. Though it took a little while to get there...
The old version of the magic purse looked a bit different...
Split into multiple categories, each with pages full of slots to fill. Pages that would grow in number as you progressed into the game and expanded your purse's size. The exact number of slots carefully tailored for each category, to balance ease of use vs required strategy.
Potions for example, you can carry only a few. Knowing which ones to take before every trip and encounter is a skill that we want you to master, something to think about. Ingredients, decorations, crops...those you have plenty of space for. We decided that even animals should be carried around inside, so that moving them from one part of your farm to another could be done without fiddling with any cumbersome (and potentially annoying) herding mechanics.
In a game where we have put so much care on letting you choose your own appearance, it seemed odd to not let you customize such an important item. Thus, we worked on it too.
Once we had the purse designed and animated, we noticed that the front flap could be far more than just an ornament that you saw briefly as you opened or closed the inventory. It could be its own focus. It could probably be where we would display...
The Magical Skill trees
Have we mentioned we love RPGs, and that Farmwand is one of them? Skill trees and classes are a massive part of some of our favorites. Yet no one likes to be boxed into a choice they made before they even knew the possibilities.
While we have different skill trees and you do pick your "Mastery" at the start of the game, this only changes which one of them gets a head-start. Afterwards, it is how you play and what you do what determines how fast you travel through any (or all) of the different tree branches.
The four skill trees in Farmwand are:
Farming and Crafting
Spellcasting
Potion-making
Care of creatures
Each one unlocks special abilities, items, gameplay possibilities and more. While we do not have a visible skill-points system, every action you do counts and the game will try to reward you with the skills that you most need for your style of play.
Go on adventures and face different challenges around the world, and chances are you will find the grimoires containing new and more advanced spells. Farm, raise your cattle, gather magical ingredients and build decorations for your home, and you will unlock new skills to craft all sorts of complex stuff, grow better crops and improve the life of your animals. And so on.
The skills from the Potion-making skill tree...
Just like that, etched as a tapestry of runes across the front of the purse, the many skills you would need and the promise of a massive set of gameplay possibilities.
But that was not the last bit of use for the Magic purse. It still had one last trick to pull...
The Charms
The belt in the middle of the purse has a few empty slots, similar to those in the inventory. These slots are our very own implementation of the Charms and Amulets mechanic that has been core to so many of our most beloved games.
Charms can offer protection, they can boost your own magic, or they may assist you in other special ways as you explore the world. Some may help you with your farming, and some may just boost your luck.
In Farmwand you will find these amulets and charms hidden away in all sorts of places. The greater the risks, the better the charms. But we didn't want to just lock them away waiting for the daring. That would, after all, push you to play our way instead of yours.
If you master your own skills enough, if you master your crafting with care and patience...you may be able to craft your very own, highly powered charms.
Some final words
There are more things that we considered while designing our inventory, yet we don't have enough space to talk about in depth. Honorary mentions are: how easy and fast would it be to save / load the game with more or less stuff stored inside; which layouts are easier to navigate with a gamepad (less motions & presses = more fun and less troubles for people with limited mobility); the size of everything for good readability...even the descriptions of the different items have a lot of thought behind them. Clear, concise, some of them funny, all within one or two sentences.
Still, we hope that you truly enjoyed reading this devlog with this brand new focus, as it was really fun for us to write. There are many more topics to explore, from how spellcasting will work in the game (the mechanics themselves, hunting grimoires, how it integrates with the RPG and the farmsim elements...), the worldbuilding behind some creatures such as the goblins and their tribes, how story influences a building...
So please let us know if you liked this, and which topics would you be interested on next. See you all in Farmwand soon!
