Hey friends!
As some of you might know, Mudborne was the result of me taking part in #FletchFest, a 1 week creative jam hosted by @FletchMakes!
I've always joked about making "APICO but frogs", but it's never been much more than that. With the jam having a theme of "pond" I felt like it'd be a great opportunity to imagine what that concept could be like, and the sort of things I could do differently within a similar menu-heavy crafting sim world.
And so, Mudborne was borne!
(NB: This is a summary blog of the development, but if you're interested in more details I live tweeted during the entire week in this thread here! You can try the demo right now here on Steam or over on itch.io)
Day 1
To start with I planned out the basic gameloop: ur a frog, u catch frogs, breed frogs, get more frogs etc until ur drowning in frog.
I wanted to play more with the trait + inheritance stuff APICO has to have traits directly effect the frog you get - you can see some of the ideas here in my AAA-rated game design doc:
In APICO I've always done everything together, BeeA + BeeB might = BeeC if conditions are right. I wanted to try breaking this down to split out the conditions + new species gameplay into two distinct halves - first gather mushrooms that only bloom in certain conditions, then use the mushrooms combined with mud to make a potion of sorts that would buff a give frog trait +1 or -1.
Rather than have diff. frogs combine to form diff. species, I wanted those traits to be the cause - getting a 1 or 5 in a trait would turn your frog into a new species.
With that out the way, I started drawing out a small concept sketch! I like to try and visualise how the game will look at the end so I can try and make the general palette all cohesive as well as see all the different mechanics and extras I'll need to code.
my son is borne
The idea of you actually being a small frog keeping smaller frogs was hilarious to me so kinda ran with it - I also had a vague idea of making it clear the game is set inside a giant pond but never got that far!
I then drew out all the items I would need for the game, borrowing generously from APICO where appropriate (I did only have 7 days after all!)
a bunch of the final sprites changed for the items but the frogs/mush stayed the same for the most part!
As I mentioned originally i was thinking it'd be cute to show several progressively zoomed in scenery shots showing the game takes place at a tiny scale inside a pond - but I didn't think it was something i could realistically do in the time! (this whole jam was a great exercise in ruthless scope cutting)
Instead I changed tactics and decided that I'd have the player sleeping when the game starts + in their dream they have an overly dramatic vision of some deity that gives them both the book (the in-game guide) as well as the general goal (find all my frogs pls)
thus space frog god was born
possibly the most high res pixel art i've done to-date?
Outside of the menus for the various "machines" in-game, at the end of day 1 I basically had everything drawn ready to go, which meant I could just fully get stuck into the mechanics while already having a great picture of what everything would look like!
Day 2
So with my sprite work done I opened up GameMaker and got to work! First up I setup a tilemap of all the different grass/mud/water tiles, plus some scenery, and fleshed out a rough game map
this is the standard GM "room editor"!
For the mushroom spawns, I wanted there to be a clear distinction between a mushroom patch, and a mushroom in bloom, so for each mushroom I drew a scenery tile that would represent that mush
truly the pinnacle of animation
I then added lil foliage patches to the game where mushrooms could potentially spawn (inheriting the tile they are on). The game then checks occasionally if there should be more of each mushroom, and if so places a baby one ready to bloom when the conditions are right (i.e. night-time + mud + raining, or day-time + shallows + not raining)
When in-game these foliage patches would just be generic scuffed terrain pixels, but then once a mushroom baby spawns it shows the tile mushroom, then when blooms creates a mushroom.
You can see the distinction in-game here, along with some trees I added to help finish off the basic nature scenery!
blue + red mushrooms in bloom (black outline) then various mushroom babies waiting for the right conditions
I added a basic mouse + highlighting system, a basic day/night cycle with a shader to make a nice blue night-time shade, and then some rain and fog to give some atmosphere to the swamp!
Every day the game would rain - originally I planned to have a little weather radio you could check but due to time this got replaced with a small tooltip in the bottom-left of the screen.
starting to feel like an actual world now!
I then added the start of the show, our little frog player! As the game was using tiles I could easily check which tile the player was under, and show walking / wading in water / wading in mud animations respectively (and later little PFX splashes)
I then also added in some little "spores" to the mushrooms when they bloomed just to really bring attention to them
To finish the day off, I then coded the most important feature - tiny little frogs!! I spent a bunch of time messing around with different AI patterns but eventually landed on something that was silly and effective.
They'd jump randomly on their own, do occasional ribbets (that would later have a SFX), and also jump when the player tried to get near them - just to add a bit of fun to catching frogs with the net later!
also some speed slowdown when walking in mud!
Day 3
After a long sleep dreaming of frogs I got started drawing up the various menus I need - my game style is very menu heavy so the core mechanics are usually in them! First up a bed to let people skip time, as well as revisit dream frog for a progress check
Next up i wanted a large storage option as I already knew just how many frogs + spawn people will hoarde, so I designed a little "barrel" will let people have multiple sections of storage to use as they like (frogs or items or both)
why doesnt APICO have this? i dont know honestly
To get into the "meat" of the game, the cauldron lets people take buckets of mud and the mushrooms they found and stir together into magic mud that would be used to affect traits later!
I wanted to add one of my "mechanism" minigames here just cos its like my whole schtick and i thought it'd be a cute way of including one! the spoon stirs as you drag left + right on your happy cauldron friend
he's just happy to be here
For getting frogspawn I did a simple breeding box (which i have named a "spawner" because you can't be going around having an item called the "breeder" online in the year of our lord 2023)
Frogspawn will take a mix of trait vals from both parents used, Punnett Square style as i'm contractually obligated to do - but ultimately it's not a big part of the game in a way it really needs to be talked about much, as the mushroom modifications are how you ultimately get new species
Then for the final step in the process, I wanted a nursery where you put water, magic mud + frogspawn together and sort of "layer" them (like the sand in a bottle crafts!)
Based on the mud used, the frogspawn will get a +1 or -1 to one of the 5 traits. if the trait is now a 1 or a 5 (min. or max.) a different species of frog will appear instead, with a guide in-game giving hints of what frogs you might get, and what mushrooms might do.
With all the menus done I could again just get stuck into coding - this is generally the pattern I have with all my gamedev, try and perfect a visual of what it'll look like in-game, then work on making that in code.
I setup some basic menu/slot objects + the player hotbar/inventory - slots were just instances that store the item info data + sprite to draw (if any). I then did some basic interaction stuff to make it clear the tool you're using will have an effect based on what you're hovering cos I love an icon
later magnifying glasses would also show you the item sprite for a given mush/frog too!
I then spent a big chunk of time messing with some smaller things, like being able to move items around, drop items etc - bit fiddly but luckily ive done this before lol
I also worked on the frogs to give them some extra fx, like an "in mud" visual, and their little ribbet frame! I also did a lot of stuff that doesn't look cute or fun behind the scenes, mainly around getting all the menu slots to work nicely and let items have a total or durability - plus added in all the usual mouse suspects; right-click to split stack , middle click to gather all etc
I then added in menus - I had very lofty goals for getting through all menu logic in one day lmao!
I managed to finish off the bed, which in it's defense was always going to be a more "complicated" one as not only did I have to first add the concept of buttons to all menus first, but then also do some special fx with the sleeping transition
Unlike APICO, sleeping would move the time ahead entirely - along with any "machines" running. For example if you had a spawner with frogs breeding in, and slept for a few hours, the spawner would now be "done" - it's a small game so i didnt want a lot of empty time waiting around, and I didn't think there was any downside to letting people choose to skip ahead as they needed!
and the tiny little Zs so precious omg
I did manage to get out another menu, the spawner, towards the end of the day. Here you can put two frogs together to get some frogspawn (sped up for the vid). I also worked on some general "error" message + state bubbles for the objects cos you know i love a system status visual
With that done Day 3 was done, and while I hadn't done everything I'd hoped for I'd made a big jump ahead and setup a lot of stuff that'd make the other menus easier to create!
now kiss....
Day 4
So I might have underestimated how much time it was gunna take to do the menu system setup, but with it done I was confident I could get through the last 4 menus on day 4 and then be able to test the proper loop all the way through
I felt that'd be a good midway point to check the whole thing end to end and be able to be like okay yes this is Confirmed FunTM or whether it was naff and still have time to tweak things before submitting.
First up I added the barrel menu, for which I already had the concept of "active" slots from the player inventory. When open all slots are active, when shut only the hotbar slots are. Using the same idea I could create "pages" of slots for the barrel, activating and deactivating the slots on each page as needed - the rest just worked magically!
seriously why doesnt APICO have this
I then moved onto the cauldron, which was probably the most complex menu of them all as I needed to add some new types of GUI for the tank and the mechanism, plus make the mechanism move left and right when dragging!
plus I had to get that lil cauldron man stirring just right for the vibes
I also went and finally gave the magnifying glass a purpose now I had all the drawing stuff I needed for it - hovering any frog, mushroom patch, or mushroom gives the "item" sprite shown so you know exactly whats what (plus its super cute running around with a lil mag glass)
I then spent a bunch of time writing actual words not code (gross), which was basically just fleshing out the names of all frogs, their "likes" (a reward flavour text for discovering them), the mushrooms, and basically just mapping out what mushrooms would do what and where they spawn etc
zoom.... enhance....
Once I was done with that I added in my fav game mechanic - tooltips! I'm a big fan of showing the "status" of any system, so tooltips are a no brainer for me.
While adding them I also added a basic little trait panel popup for the frogs/frogspawn so people could see the values they currently had VS what they might want to achieve (i.e. catch some frogs and see which ones have 2s or 4s already to save buffing multiple times)
the 5 traits are Pizazz, Ribbet, Chonk, Stink, and Grump
I then finished off the nursery menu!
This was the final piece of the loop, letting you use the magic mud you made in a cauldron + frogspawn to get new frogs and modify traits in the process! I also added some extra tooltip info just so it's clear as mud (the mud, that is)
look at them go!!
As you can see in that last GIF there was also a little house now! This was just a static scenery sprite with some layering trickery to make look real when walking around/into it plus some basic collision tiles to make it all feel correct and solid!
I didn't really want to spend time adding placable walls/tiles, as I definitely wouldn't have the time and I didn't think it was important for the core concept
You can see some of the menu objects here that changed from the original drawings!
I then pissed around a bit getting all the different frogs in the game as well as their tiny overworld counterparts to work properly, and also had to change how some stuff worked to use a seperate "dictionary" with all the info in
I liked the idea of not only picking up frogs but being able to place them down, sort of like an unlimited overworld storage (that admittedly hops slowly to a different location over time but it's still cute)
I then finally built out the world and all the resources, as well as added, lilypads, that would act as the main resource with logs for crafting everything!
Similar to the mushroom "foliage" i just did little lilypad spawner tiles to create new lilypad items as needed, based on a global count - that way they always respawned and you always had enough.
the mostly final world design in the room editor in GM, pink are foliage/lilypad spawners, red is collision
I also then made an attempt at the "discovery" animation - it was basic but my plan was if I have time I'll add some easing/bounce to various elements to make it a bit more jazzy, however I did lo-key love it being terrible for it to then reveal the silliest looking frog (which, spoilers, I ended up keeping and leaning into by adding a really ridiculous sad party blower sound on the reveal)
I think i struggle a lot with stuff i can't easily visualise, and for bigger animation stuff it's easier to make it inside gamemaker - all the other things I've done so far have p. much all been taken directly from aseprite, so more animated stuff i find a lot harder!
I ending the day with a little crafting! It was super basic but it did the job and meant the base game had everything in it to play through the core mechanics, so I could do some testing of the main loop and check if it was fun (for me at least)
Day 5
To start with on day 5 I sketched up all the book design!
I only really needed 3 pages, one to explain the main mechanics, one to keep track of frogs and view hints/progress, and one to keep track of mushrooms and their preferences (day/night/weather). Later I'd add a 4th just to explain the 5 traits and re-iterate how you got new species.
truly a masterpiece
For frogs/mushrooms I just wanted a simple page with all of them visible, black if not discovered, and hoverable for info/hints. For the "mechanics" page i wanted a sort of diagram with the same hoverable stuff, but instead it's game items, so you can see how everything fits in with a little flowchart style set of arrows to give you an idea of how to follow the process.
I got to work drawing up the sketches into what they'd look like in the game! First up the frog book:
i added little background sketches of in-game items to give it some vibes
I did the same thing with the mushrooms, and added little hints at what the effects would do of the mushroom. Even though discovering a mushroom would unlock the tooltip to tell you outright "+1 Grump" or whatever, I liked the idea of having some symbolism for certain traits shown on both the frog + mushroom pages
For the final (and actually first) page, I wanted the discovery / guide page to have a tree of sorts that you could follow along, each icon giving you info on that thing/obj/mechanic
Then I'd have some little unlock states for that sweet sweet game progression, there's quite a few steps but broken down this way I felt would prevent things being unclear OR overwhelming (APICO's books truly suffer with the latter)
I wasn't decided whether I'd do a bunch of "random" blobs as the backings for the icons, or just go with circles to have some neatness
The blobs had some some charm to be sketched out but overall I felt it might feel too messy, so I turned them into circles in-game to make it a bit clearer/neater on the hoverable sections. The book was essentially just another menu, so it was easy to just define the menu and add the gui (hoverable bits) and buttons (left/right page arrows)
plus some classic ell pun quest names
I set up a basic script that checked the stuff for the "quests" to be unlocked, and then linked the mushroom/frog status to being picked up - later on I'd add little notifications to encourage you to check the book when you did and to make it clear when you'd found something new!
With that done I felt like the game was in a good place - all the core gameplay was in and there was an actual guide to help give you a path to follow and progress to check so next up was the GOD FROG, which ended up being the most painful part of the whole game tbh!
A lot of tears later, I had a sequence done for the dream mechanic - I needed two things in this, one was the "intro" for the first time someone plays to give the player the book, and to general set the stage for the game, I then also needed it for the general "check my progress" option which was when you choose to dream at the bed.
This needed to be a shorter sequence and then just a summary of the 10/10 frogs you'd found (which would then also be the trigger for the "win" and credits roll once you get all of them). I had a font I'd drawn for another concept a while back that was bigger and more gothic than my standard font and loved the idea of having the god speak in a different font (ala Terry Pratchett)
With that done, and the save/load being sorted, I did a basic lil home screen!
Outside of music/sfx/testing i was actually p. much done at this point, so it meant I could then start to work through a list of "nice-to-haves" that I'd been putting aside while working on the main stuff, while Jamie did some testing for me!
Day 6
So with everything that had gone on yesterday I kinda had everything done for now!
I added a small settings menu mainly to allow the game to be paused, SFX/music volume, and have a small controls panel just to make sure it's clear whats what. I definitely spent way too much that i should have checking all possible pause game fuckups (+ still prob missed some lmao)
With those done my day was essentially just adding in the SFX for everything (for which i'd kept a list during development of all the things + interactions that would need a sound!) plus adding in placeholder music tracks to check the game's "jukebox" system of auto playing tracks at different times, and then finally some testing!
When it comes to music i'll be the first to admit that I suck ass at it, so I didn't even try and instead enlisted the help of my dear friend @MothenseMusic who you may recognise from being the composer of APICO! You can listen to a couple of the tracks they made here and here.
the final night shader + classic twin circle indie game lighting
I didn't (and still dont) have a good way to record sound so you'll just have to take my word for it that the ambience + general SFX were all done and sounding lovely (I mean you could just go check out the demo rn too)
I then polished off some last little bits and little FX, and then spent some time creating some nice screenshots for the itch.io page! It was wild to think at this point I'd finished off a small concept game that was only a sketch a week before!!
Later in the day Moth polished off the last track, so I added them in the game, built the game for Windows/MacOS/Linux, and uploaded everything for itch.io and posted it publicly to submit to the gamejam!
Day 7
And finally, I rested!
One thing I'd been undecided on during the jam was whether I'd want to turn this into a full game at some point, but I'd already had so much fun working on it the first 2 days I was like sod it I'll make a steam page for it. Worst case, it'd be £70 down the drain (steam page fee), but best case if people like the game I could funnel people to wishlist it on Steam so I that I'd a good idea of interest.
I setup a basic page and submitted - I mentioned before you can get away with some really rough looking screenshots and still get a page approved, so I was able to get the steam page up in time for the game being released on itch, and add a little "wishlist" button to the homepage!
After the initial wave of people playing, I fixed a couple bugs and then submitted it to Steam also, meaning I could get the demo up on Steam too and have a wider audience start checking it out, might seem wild for just a gamejam game but I really think the concept has (frog)legs, and there's lots of ideas I have for a full game, including:
- mud pools / nursery pools for tadpoles (so splitting out the nursery into 2 distinct processes, the first for frogspawn to mess with traits, and the second to care for the tadpoles and give them the conditions they need to grow into big stronk frog)
- more expanded nursery puzzle to let you add multiple layers of things that all effect the final frogspawn outcome
- ways to display your cute frogs, like little scenery pieces you can place that when you put a frog on them they won't hop away, essentially acting as overworld storage of frogs (tiny frog spas, tiny frog zen gardens etc)
- custom houses with upgrades but also decoration stuff (build smaller houses, bridges between islands, terraforming etc)
- digging more into mushrooms, specifically the spawning positions. I'd like to look into making it the players responsibility to create small patches mushrooms can bloom on, as well as collect spores to experiment with growing your own mushroom combinations
- mushrooms that have multiple effects, i.e. not just +1 or -1 but could do like x2 A but -1 B
- expand frog traits to be 1-7, and have new frog conditions be all sorts of different combinations, i.e. max stink, max grump and max chonk, or like a 6666 frog
- something more indepth with the biology of frogspawn, perhaps being able to use a microscope and modify some traits to remove some of the recessive ones
- exploring the "dreaming" mechanic and perhaps have an alternative dream world you can visit to do things that effect the real world + vice-versa (ala Link To The Past)
- pet frogs that can follow you???
So there we go, making a small game from start to finish in (just under) 7 days! I had so much fun making this demo, and really learnt a lot (especially in comparison to the way things APICO does stuff!)
If you're interested in checking out the result you can get the demo right here on Steam!
Would love to hear your feedback if you do, and would love to turn this into a full game if people are interested! <3
~ Ell
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/