Reference and design: The farm house
Finding reference was an interesting challenge, and I learned a LOT from this. First of all, the visual inspiration, not mine:
To my surprise, two story house were very common in the prairie at the turn of the century! It's quite interesting. It's also important to note the cellar (useful to keep foods and to avoid tornado, wich yes, they WILL be an actual in game issue ;)). I also looked into how... Small, most of those homes are. Literally impressive, how many kids can pile up in one.
Here, a quick plan of the layout:
I was actually very, VERY decided having the house be a "cohesive" inside, and not like stardew valley, where it just expend and become serpentine. The game will features no house expansion mechanics, so everything you want to keep inside will have to compete with the current space, or your barn/coop, or your "garage".
But! To come back to the house!
The bottom plan is the firt floor. You can see the main door at the bottom giving way to a mud room, where on can drop their dirty stuff. Then, to the left, you walk into the "main area", where a big wood furnace is (the red square), to keep the house warm. There are also stairs that lead upstairs, and the kitchen is the to the right. There, you have a large sink that come from a tank that collect rain water, and a smaller stove to cook. There is also plenty of shelves and counter to put away.
Upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms. At each end of the house and using the heat of the two source of warm (the oven and the furnace), are the kids room, where they hang out two to a room. I want there to be a dialogue further down the line where the MC talk with her kids about how her and her husband where thinking of eventually changing the walls and letting each kids have a tiny, tiny room.
Meanwhile, the parents had the coldest room in the middle, but also the one with the view on the path to their farm. A good strategic position.
There is an outhouse outside the property, but I will not actually make it usable in any way! That's not necessary to the game. I might just make it a cute lil unmovable object.
So! That's the design of the building! And probably pretty final, wich is a relief. I will be able to do an accurate assets calculation on what is needed there :)
Ofc, scale is still a major issue at this point, but I hope that I will be able to figure that out once I start REALLY working on more "final sprites" and mock up. At this point i'm still in the writing/concept stage of the game.
I also REALLY want to talk about some of the more horror aspect eventually, aaaaaah I'm so excited!!!
(for vibes, I think the best way to describe my game is "what if Harvest Moon and Fear and Hunger had a baby, and that baby was raised by Frostpunk?")
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