Hello everyone!
It’s been another quarter since our last development log. On behalf of our team, I’d like to give you an update on our current work progress.
First, let me put all players’ minds at ease: we have no plans to abandon the project, and development has never stopped. Over the past period, all our efforts have been focused on clearing up the technical debt from the Early Access (EA) version.
Technical debt is a metaphor in software engineering. It refers to when developers opt for suboptimal or makeshift solutions to deliver features quickly. While these shortcuts speed up development in the short term, they require extra time and effort later on to fix bugs or refactor code—to "pay off the debt". It can be likened to a drastic emergency remedy in traditional Chinese medicine called "jieji"(劫剂).
In the early days of the project, we had limited funding and our team lacked experience developing full-scale commercial games. To deliver a playable prototype of our herbal-themed gameplay as soon as possible in 2024, we adopted an extremely rushed development approach. We skipped thorough architectural design, and our design documents were constantly revised mid-development. In the end, we managed to release a functional EA build, yet the code suffered from extremely poor scalability. Even when we identified flawed gameplay mechanics, tweaking any single part would trigger ripple effects across the entire system, easily spawning countless new bugs.
Technical debt is not limited to code alone; the same issues plague the game’s balance stats, written lore, art design, and gameplay systems. For instance: the prescription gameplay in the EA version was little more than fixed recipe templates, failing to fully integrate the Four Natures and Five Flavors, meridian affinity properties, and herbal processing systems. The economic system prioritized blind realism over fun gameplay. We also had far-fetched storylines, overly MMORPG-styled art design, and severely inadequate multilingual localization support. All of these count as debts we must settle.
Fortunately, the content of our EA version secured us a seed round of investment. We finally got the chance to slow down and lay a solid foundation for the project. After careful consideration, we made a tough decision: to completely rebuild and restructure the game from the ground up.
This time, we have a complete, clear design blueprint. Every system, every logical module, and every gameplay mechanic undergoes repeated evaluation and cross-team alignment before development begins. Naturally, progress is much slower than it was for the rushed EA build, but every step we take is far more stable and solid. We have also filled key professional gaps in the team: we previously had no formally trained TCM professionals on staff. Recently, we’ve brought on a senior intern majoring in Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine at China Agricultural University, who will provide ongoing professional fact-checking and compliance reviews for all TCM-related content in the game.
While rebuilding Herbals Tycoon, we have prioritized growing our team’s capabilities first and foremost. We’ve trained our programmers to adopt configuration-driven data design, decouple UI elements from core business logic, and eliminate magic numbers and excessive nested if-else statements. Our art team has been guided to shift from generic MMORPG-style UI design to a refined indie game aesthetic. Meanwhile, we’ve started leveraging AIGC tools to boost development efficiency, allowing us to focus more effort on polishing core gameplay and professional TCM content.
During this validation and refinement phase, our first spin-off title Herbal Richman was born. It stands as a milestone achievement reflecting our team’s growth and technical upgrades over this period.
As a token of gratitude to all players who supported us during the EA phase, Herbal Richman will be permanently free to download for every EA purchaser. We invite you all to experience it and witness our team’s growth and evolution.
This spin-off incorporates major upgrades to core gameplay and balance systems—all of these improvements will be fully carried over to the official release of Herbals Tycoon:
Added authentic regional origin attributes to every medicinal herb, classifying herbs by their geographical producing regions.
Separated medicinal resources into original herbal sources and processed decoction pieces. In the original EA version, these two concepts were often conflated. In reality, different processing techniques or medicinal parts can yield multiple decoction pieces from the same original herb source. For example: Poria cocos and Poria cum Radix Pini both come from poria; Wolfberry fruit and Wolfberry bark both derive from Chinese wolfberry; Fresh ginger and Dried ginger share the same ginger source; Raw Rehmannia and Prepared Rehmannia come from rehmannia root. The Four Natures, Five Flavors, meridian affinity and medicinal efficacy of decoction pieces change distinctly based on processing methods.
Further structured herbal prescriptions under the framework of Monarch, Minister, Assistant and Guide, to reflect the synergistic effects of different herbs in a formula.
Established a correlation between illness incidence and solar terms, with unique seasonal epidemics triggering in different solar term cycles.
Truth be told, we want the official release of Herbals Tycoon to reach you as soon as anyone. But as the old TCM saying goes, Illness arises from overexertion. Rushing development by skipping essential, rigorous design and architectural phases will only leave the project with a shaky foundation—like trapping pathogenic factors inside the body, ultimately dooming the project to "chronic decline from overwork". We aim to take steady, gradual steps for the official build, consolidating the game’s core and nurturing its long-term quality.
If you encounter bugs or have any gameplay suggestions while playing Herbal Richman, feel free to leave feedback via the Steam Community or our official QQ group. We will read every comment carefully. As a young development team, we hope to keep refining our technical skills and building robust development capabilities and architectural thinking with your supervision and suggestions. Finally, we wish you all a great time playing Herbal Richman, and hope our small team continues to grow stronger with every step forward.
How to Launch Herbal Richman
Go to the DLC store page for Herbal Richman and click Download. The download process may automatically launch the base game Herbals Tycoon—please close the base game once it opens.
After the DLC download completes, return to the store page of the base game Herbals Tycoon. Click Play, then select Play Herbal Richman to access the DLC content.
By Huang Gaole, Producer