How quickly this year has come to an end! There have been so many changes this year that it just flew by.
First of all, we would like to thank you all for your support over the years! Every comment, every wish list entry, every sign of life, no matter how small, is a great motivation factor for us!
Continue to be patient and stick with us!
Life in the forest as indie developers
We moved to the centre of Sweden and now live in a small village in the middle of the forest, an hour away from the nearest small town, and got married.
You often find game studios in the centre of big cities. However, we are not fans of such cities and like nature and also the possibility of being able to work from home at any time.
For us, the location in the middle of the forest is perfect. We see a lot of wildlife (birds, deer, foxes, rabbits), we have snow in winter and it's quiet. At night you can hardly see the stars more clearly as the light pollution is not very strong. This leads to a good work-life balance. We also have the chance to see the Northern Lights here.
And we also support life outside the cities. Young people in particular are being drawn more and more to the cities, which is a pity.
Magical Harvest
It's hard to believe, but we've been working on the game for 2 years now. Starting in Unity, we have now switched to Unreal Engine 5. Our Unity game version is now officially a prototype.
But from the beginning:
The year started with a focus on adding animals to our Unity prototype. The first daily routines of the NPCs were also implemented and with them the first part of the city.
The character creation feature and the creation of new character models took up a lot of time. This took almost the entire months of March and April. This was followed by a lot of visual revisions:
The farm trees, the grass, more items in decoration mode and the ability to colour decoration items.
This was followed in August by the seasons in the game and the models & icons of all farm plants (except flowers and trees).
The dialogue system was expanded and adapted to the mood of the NPCs and made more dynamic.
But then came the radical change. In September, the game engine Unity introduced a new payment model and destroyed the trust of many users. We took this opportunity to try out Unreal Engine 5 and immediately fell in love with it. From October onwards, the game has been developed in UE5. This has the advantage that previous elements in the game can also be improved - in addition to the graphical jump forwards.
At the same time, we started to be part of the "Sweden Game Arena Coaching Programme"! Since then, we have been receiving support there, which is centred around setting up a company and putting together a team, in addition to information on how to get financial support.
Through the programme, we were able to take part at the "Sweden Games Conference" in October, where we were also a nominee for the best "Indicator".
After the successful conference, things were a little more quiet from our side. The reason for this was that we focussed fully on the implementation of game features in UE5. In addition, the company "Moon Flame Games" was officially founded, which is now our game studio. Additionally, we had interviews with interns and are happy to announce that our team will grow by two artists in January and two in March.
We are really looking forward to it!
The whole process will take Magical Harvest to the next level! Especially visually.
Over the year, some of the Bachelors have been illustrated and we still love our artist Lura for this wonderful work!
Outlook for 2024
Production has now started and we hope to implement all the basic features in 2024 and, of course, to be able to start with the story content beyond that.
The progress of the game depends heavily on when we receive funding. The more we get, the bigger the team can become.
Of course, you don't get financial support just like that. A lot of preparatory work has to be done and that takes time.
However, we are very confident and are working hard to achieve this goal!
We are also planning a playable demo for April/May and are already very excited! We don't want to reveal anything about the scope at the moment.
The game will definitely be playable at the Nordic Game Conference in May.
We're also planning to be at the Sweden Games Conference again in October and maybe even at Gamescom in Cologne - but that hasn't been decided yet.
End of the year
The year has now come to an end and we are heading into the new year with a positive feeling!
We wish you all the best from the bottom of our hearts and thank you again for your support!
Special thanks also go to our Patreons on https://www.patreon.com/moonflamegames !
With warmest regards,
Isa & Marie Hellström
Moon Flame Games