As we approach our roll out of the additions mentioned in the last log, we thought it would be fun to take a look at the livestock in Reel Life for a bit.
We currently plan to have at least one unique livestock animal in each country (e.g., bison, camels, pigs, etc.). Before we can get to the fun animals, though, we need to establish a foundation. Rosenvale’s livestock are the basic farming sim trio: chickens, sheep, and cows.
Traditionally (in Harvest Moon and other farming sims), the impetus to own and raise these animals is mainly money or items for gifting or cooking. Of course, if you like having cute animals around, that’s another good reason!
Our original chicken design wasn’t very cute, so we worked hard on updating it to where having chickens on your farm might bring a smile to your face.
Tradition also dictates perhaps one special color of animal per animal type, though this isn’t as common as it once was. Now it’s common to find livestock in all sorts of colors for variety, and Reel Life is no exception.
Right now, there are three basic colors of each animal to collect. But we’ve been working on a lot more!
First are common colors…
Then uncommon colors…
Then special colors in cotton candy pink and blue!
We will be implementing these colors in a later update – we just wanted to give you a sneak peek. You’ll be able to buy these other-colored livestock in shops if you’re lucky, or by breeding the colors through the pregnancy chance board.
Unfortunately, the special colored animals won’t give you special-colored yields (e.g., pink wool, strawberry milk, blue eggs, etc.) because we already have so many item definitions in the game – with plenty more to come with additional countries! We will, however, be implementing (ETA undecided) a way to feed certain things to animals to win certain items from their slot machines the next day. For example, feed a rock to a chicken to get omelets, ice cream to a cow to get milkshakes, and so forth. We think this mechanic will be really fun so we’re looking forward to it – we’ve just got so much else to add first!
The last thing we want to touch on is the pregnancy animation for the cows. If you’re at all confused as to why they’ve been drawn like this, it’s an homage to the very first Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo (or, in our case, the Gameboy game because it was cheaper to buy and play).
The image of that cow has been burned into our brains since we were children and we thought that it was such a fun detail, let’s include it in our game, too!
We’ll have more to discuss with livestock later – especially after we get started on prep for the next country – but we hope you had fun looking at what we plan for them right now.