Hello World!
This is the first of many devlogs to come as I continue to develop It Takes a Village. If you are reading this, let me first thank you for your support from the bottom of my heart. Its always been a dream of mine to be able to create on a game for people to enjoy and I hope you find that in It Takes a Village.
For this first devlog, I thought it'd be good to give a bit of context on the project and myself as I develop the game. First off, my name is Brandon, and I live in London, UK working full time at a fin-tech in town. I work on It Takes a Village in my free time, and I have been working on the project since I got married last July. I am a solo developer who has worked on the modeling, coding, and marketing for this project. With all of these hats, patience is a virtue in seeing progress with this game.
But what is "It Takes a Village" really? Well, its really a love letter to my childhood. I remember growing up and getting my first Game Boy. My family was moving from one state to another and to smooth over the whole uprooting my social circle as a fragile Kindergardener, my parents got me a Game Boy and Pokemon Yellow. Ever since then, I've been fascinated by games and the impact they can have on people. 30 years and a Computer Science degree later, I too wanted to be able to have that same kind of impact upon others through my own works and ideas. This is where It Takes a Village starts.
My two favorite games growing up were Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Animal Crossing. One allowed you to be the hero you aspired to be in real life. You fought through hordes of baddies and had to solve some pretty intricate puzzles. The other allowed you to slow down and play a more comfortable game. Make your house your own. Pay off that greedy Tom Nook at your own pace. Build a community that you could be proud of and show off to your friends. I wanted to create a game that blended these two elements and could tell a story in the process.
Now when I created the notion page and spec'ed out the feature list for these things, I realized that's quite a big endeavor to take on. Something the industry calls "feature creep." This was not going to be an easy project nor was I immune to the likely scenario that I would lose focus and ultimately give up on the project altogether. Regardless, I put in a few safeguards to prevent this sort of burn out and began work on the project.
Since I started the project in July, I have charted my work and laid out the systems needed for the game. You can see my current progress here:
In future devlogs, I'll go into how I chart this progress, but its safe to say I've got around 60% of the major systems completed and about 15% of the content done. Its a weird split, but I reckon it works quite well. For example, I've completed the base inventory system for the game so you as a player can equip, use, and store any item you find in the game. This is 100% complete from a coding perspective. But, I only have a few items that I've used for testing in game. There are many many more that still needed to be added, but I can add these once I've finished the foundation for the game. This is 5% complete from a content perspective.
Over the next weeks, I'll be keeping you up to date on the progress of the game and the work that I am currently doing. It may be a bit slow as my wife and I are enjoying some much needed rest in Thailand at the moment, but once I get back home, I plan to continue to flesh out the combat system for the game. At the moment, I can get Villagers to attack Bandits and Bandits to attack Villagers and the player, but its still clunky at best.
If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading and for being interested in my game. I hope to reach as many people as I can, but I am thankful for everyone who has thus far climbed onboard for the ride. Thank you for your support and see you soon!
Brandon