Now Working on Falaise!

Official blog of Lorem Possum.

[falaise-game]

Hi and welcome to the grand opening of the Falaise dev logs! 🎉

We are Lorem Possum, a French and American team of two! 

Today is the second anniversary of the development of our game Falaise, and so we decided to start to post weekly about our progress, tips and tricks we learn, and such. 

Falaise is a farming game about identity, what it means to belong, and the value of hope and rebuilding instead of longing for what was lost.

We aim to make something truly different, a game which centers its focus on the role of food provider, and the challenges that brings. Falaise is both a complete rethinking of the genre and a love letter to it; a demonstration that it can be so much more.

See you next week for more info!

– Zola & Mabel

[falaise-game]

Devlog #8

Today will be short, it has been a looooong week! 

We have been hard at work on some core backend stuff, and don’t really have a lot to say this week, but, next week we will have plenty! 

See you then!

[falaise-game]

Devlog #7

I’d like you to take a step back and think about something we often forget. Who taught you your hobby? Who wrote the tutorials you followed? Made the videos you watched? 

Falaise addresses something often forgotten: what a community is made of and for. Who tilled the soil of the vegetables you ate? And who drove all of that to your grocery store? Who worked on that fridge you’re using to store all of these? Someone worked so you can have the things you have, do the things you enjoy. A lot of people, even.

Falaise is a story about how the cogs in the machine that is the village work together to create the comfort and security they are in. How every single person contributes, no matter how small, to the benefit of the other, even if it isn’t always shown as labor. A child teaching you about a bug they found is as important as the carpenter who made your bed.

We really hope we can get the message across with Falaise.

We will see you next week, and thank you for reading us.

[falaise-game]

Dev log #6

Last week we talked about shows, this week, it’s games that inspired Falaise! This week in a list format because it looks better…

Dwarf fortress, which is in my opinion THE simulation game. It is one of the richest games that deserve its status as a classic. 

Fallout & Elder Scrolls, a great mix of sandbox and  emotionally-captivating storytelling mechanics. Falaise draws inspiration from them, or at least the base idea, like our inventory and dialogue system.

Harvest Moon & Stardew Valley & Rune factory, the original farming games and the best of them (if you disagree we love recommendations). The core idea of our game is after all inspired by these games, and so was its creation in the first place. We studied them especially to understand the genre, its appeal, origins, and the message it wants to convey.

Animal Crossing, for the decorating part mostly, and the sense of community. I have spent more time on New Leaf than any other game in the franchise, and getting my small village to look cute and cozy with all my animal friends was my favorite part.

The Legend of Zelda, from OoT to BotW & TotK, it had the biggest impact in my life in general, and some of the most fun games I’ve ever played. Captivating storytelling, impactful cutscenes, and memorable NPCs, we can’t help but get inspired by it.

Honestly looking at all these games they don’t seem to have a lot in common, but this is what is going to make Falaise a good game. Learning from what we love and embracing it.

We will see you next week !

[falaise-game]

Dev log #5

I’ve been watching some donghua recently, it has been a great source of inspiration for me. So today I decided to talk about our inspirations in general, and shows I’d recommend.

Our most important inspiration for us is Mononoke, by Kenji Nakamura. Set in the Edo period, it is a surrealist mystery drama with beautiful animation and amazing stories. If you want to watch something different, I highly recommend it. We strive to reach their level of both aesthetic and impact on culture. Nothing has ever made me feel the way Mononoke did and still does.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a classic of animation for multiple good reasons, we want to be able to make something that is both as beautiful and meaningful. Frieren Beyond Journey's End with its unique magic system has been one of my biggest inspirations when writing about magic and its uses and users. Fairies Album is one of my most recent watch, and a great example of a protagonist that is extremely flawed (not even KIND!) and yet grow attached to. Mushishi is last on today’s list, whimsical and dark, it has always a place on my mind, a recommended anime for some haunting but quiet moments.

Do you have any show that ever made you crave creating something?

See you next week! 

[falaise-game]

Dev log #4

Next week, chocolate will go on discount… Finally, my favorite time of the year…

This weekend I decided to talk a little bit more about our animals and their mechanics, because it’s something very important in a farming game. Producing milk, eggs, and more (the stardew valley rabbit foot dropped by rabbits will forever be one of my favorite funny mechanics that doesn’t make sense), animals are also there to look cute on our farms… so we are making them very nice to look at.

Imagine your chickens following their rooster. Babies following mom. Goats jumping on your horse. I’ve always wanted this feeling of animals feeling a little more alive. For now, we don’t have a lot of animals planned, but we made sure it was of course easy for anyone willing to learn a little JSON to make one from scratch.

Alright. We have cats. Cats are solitary animals, who like to be left alone, hunt field pests, nap a lot, and purr. All of these are called behaviors. If someone wanted to create for example a pokémon mod in Falaise, they can easily. All they have to do is to find a bunch of behavior they like, and add it to their little new companion. Hunting, vocalising, liking being in groups, love food… all these behaviors are separate from the NPCs themselves (yes, NPCs, bugs, and cows use behaviors too), making modding ultra modular. Nothing will stop you from creating a living chair that meows at midnight (maybe don’t. Your poor neighbors!).

On that fun note, we really hope to see a lot of creativity for Falaise, on top of ours. We come from a modding background, and it is very important to us to make sure anyone can have fun modding to their heart’s content. Even Thomas the tank the dragon.

See you next week!

[falaise-game]

Dev Log #3

As the weekend starts, new projects for Falaise are brewing! We hope you’ve been enjoying the dev logs so far, we’ve been excited to read about your opinions on the mechanics from last week.

Speaking of which, as a designer, I do like having mechanics be perfectly in line with the story and lore. I don’t know about you, but environmental storytelling for example is so much fun to theorize about!

So in our game, we made sure stuff aligned together. I’m sorry a lot of you will be sad, but no fat harvest moon cows in this game! Our setting is a fantasy world primarily based on various locations from across Asia (the village for example is based on the Anhui region, in China), so we decided to go with the gyr, a kind of Indian cattle. Their little floppy ears are so cute… I mean look at them!

Having our game set in a different area and time from most games is something we really care about. We have been learning a lot about the fauna and flora of Asia and its extremely rich and diverse culture, and we cannot wait to share more with you.

Do you have a favorite plant or animal/bug only found in Asia? My personal favorite is the Atlas moth… they look so huggable.

See you next week !

[falaise-game]

Dev Log #2

One of the things that has been in the game since the very early days of writing it, was currency. There isn’t really any. Even as a teenager, I always wanted a farming game that was more focused on the actual farming and social aspect, than the “buying seeds to sell crops” game loop. 

At first the idea was to have the game being focused on “curing” people, you were supposed to be a kind of pharmacist, and the “currency” was the ingredient base of all of your cures and thus a lot more valuable than gold: honey. 

Things have changed a lot since then!

We removed all currency, to explain it shortly, everything is traded by its value: 4 chairs for your living room might cost 50 apples, native to the region and growing in big quantities. 

If you’ve ever played Dwarf Fortress (one of my favorite games!), this is how the economy kind of works. 

Do you personally like the “growing rich” mechanic in games? 

Thank you and we will see you next week! Hint, it might be about lore…

[falaise-game]

Dev log #1

We know and love our simulation games, including the classic farming game: growing plants, taking care of animals, making friends with a wide range of characters, marriage and children…

While Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley are the Big farming games, we wanted to try new things. We are keeping the core of the genre, after all we all love our little routines in these games, but we also wanted to try to enrich the experience and change it a little.

We started with the aspect of the Farmer in these games. In Falaise, you play as a fraudulent “mage” who was sent to save an entire village from starvation. They think you can save them overnight with magic and powers, but things cannot be that easy, sadly. Especially when you're very bad at magic.

So instead, you work in the fields, because what says solving hunger more than growing crops?

Your character has a job like anyone else in the village, making it better and helping it recover from what's plaguing it. That means the people around you will not only ask you for your help, but help you in return. Need a new hoe to dig the soil? Ask someone who knows their way with metal! They might accept to help you craft a shiny new tool for free, or maybe they might ask you to get them some ore or even a snack to get the job started!

Thank you so much for your support and we hope to see you next week!