Hello gardeners,
It feels as though July has rushed right past us this year. While work has been ploughing on as ever - with lots of proofreading, coding, designing, and music mixing - it has also been good to take a little break from the hot weather this month.
Let’s take a look at what’s been happening around The Garden Path this July.
Some Streams
Recently my streaming partner-in-crime, Fern, made me aware that it has now been over a year since our first Twitch stream for fromcarrotcake. 24 streams and 283 followers later, it’s been a real treat sharing art and time with you all as we’ve discussed just about everything from how to create peaceful UI’s to “theoretical banana societies”.
More recently I've dipped my toe into a less scheduled format for streaming, where last Friday I hit the 'stream' button while working through mastering and mixing the game's soundtrack. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, it was fun sharing my thoughts, and made the time fly by. These ‘lazy streams’ might make an appearance every now and then, so make sure you’re following our channel if you’d like to be notified when we go live! Follow us here: twitch.tv/fromcarrotcake.
And of course, if you want even more The Garden Path streaming content, you can find us on TikTok where our wonderful community manager, Alex, goes live every other week as well as sharing all sorts of fun content. Have a look here: tiktok.com/@fromcarrotcake.
Game Updates
With last month’s update being feature-focused, much of the work this July has been under-the-hood in preparation for big changes to come.
My priority for the upcoming 0.5 update will be a revisited tutorial and new-player-experience. I’ve been hard at work drawing up designs for a tutorial system that feels rewarding, unobtrusive, optional, and scales its information depending on how much the player wants to learn. This has been in-the-works for some time, and I’m eager to invite new players to try out the game for the first time, and hear how they get on.
Work on local multiplayer, our second stretch goal, is now in full swing, as we figure out camera, UI and controls to suit two players working side by side.
The game’s code is being changed in big-ways to accommodate multiple player characters and their respective data that’s collected while playing the game. Once the new systems work for single-player, it should be a simple step to drop another player into the Garden.
Plans are in the works for an interface that works across two smaller screens, with both shared and player-specific elements, and a control system that adapts to more simple devices (such as a single joy-con).
A small UI change has already made its way into the public build of the game - the new ID Card which helps provide more details for the item you’re inspecting in the game’s different UI elements. It’s been redesigned to better take advantage of vertical screen real-estate, allowing more room horizontally on-screen for single-player, and better fitting the slimmer split-screen views when multiplayer is ready.
Also some exciting news - a Nintendo Switch Dev Kit has been approved and will be on its way very soon! Hopefully, we’ll start to see some very real Nintendo Switch footage of the game in the coming months. Watch this space!
Your usual reminder!
And as always, here is your reminder that you can join our official Discord Community server, which you can join here. Here you can chat with the team, meet fellow backers, and help me shape The Garden Path. And of course, we encourage you to share your real-life gardening with your fellow gardening gamers. 🪴
Until next time…
Louis, carrotcake
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