Merry Christmas & Year recap
And soon a year comes to an end...
We've been working on Magical Harvest for a year now, and we're further along than expected and not as far along as originally planned (which is good though - more on that later).
Personal
Besides working on the game, a bit has happened in our lives as well.A little review about this year, what happened in our personal life:
- Since spring, Marie has been working on Magical Harvest only in her spare time because of her main job (we have to live from something). And for that she helps me immensely!
- we attended the next Swedish course (12h per week) from February to June and I attended again from September to November, but unfortunately it took too much time for too little progress (the pace of the lessons was too slow)
- in summer we got engaged and will get married next July <3
- we had planned trips to Germany to visit our families, but had to postpone because of Corona
- Vet! Thanks to our cat, we have been there often because he has a food allergy. That cost time and nerves....
Magical Harvest
In general we have worked a lot on Magical Harvest (I partly 70-80 hours per week), but of course many things came in between. Nevertheless we are satisfied with our progress.
The demo, which we focused on between June and November, has brought us a good deal further, but also cost us a lot of time. Based on the knowledge gained, we have been able to develop, among other things, a style for the game world that can run without problems on SteamDeck, for example, and we are even more confident than before that the direction of Magical Harvest is the right one.
Programming-wise, I have implemented all the core features of the farm, the animals are currently still being worked on, but will be finished this year (programming-wise), except for the mini-game to crossbreed animals.
Also, the logic for translations is already implemented and some other points that were implemented thanks to the demo and otherwise would have found their way into the game later (which would have been a lot more work).
New character-artist: Lura
With such a big project you are not always confident, especially with such a small team. I, in particular, often vacillate between "there's still way too much to be done" and "oh, soon all the features will be programmed - then the progress will be more visible!".
And then there are moments like in November, when we were contacted by our new character illustrator Lura, asking her to draw our Bachelors/ettes. Because of her motivational skills and abilities we accepted her into our team (and especially because of her skills of course!) and fitting for Christmas she finished with the bachelorette "Thalana", a Nereid (sea woman) who is afraid of water .
Lura adapted her style according to our wishes and showed real talent! We are very happy to welcome her to our little team!
Marie is currently working on the design of the city, which is divided into 3 different districts with their own architectural style. This is also motivating as the world is slowly being given more and more life. Each district belongs to one of the game's factions. The player can also apply the building style to his own house later on.
Financial
Unfortunately, we still have basically no financial support, but we will try to launch a Kickstarter campaign in 2023. Possibly not until 2024. Something like this takes a lot of time of preparation and also nerves and until then we definitely need to be able to show something more. Indie-game-marketing is of course also a difficult point. As long as too few people know about our project, such a campaign doesn't make sense either and to be honest, we are not the most talented social media users. But we will try to make this a bit more active and interesting in 2023 (including the things we show).
If you want to support us right now, check out Patreon: >>>.
This will allow us to invest more in the development of the game (art, soundtrack, [...]).
We would also like to thank all the Patrons who already support or have supported us, even though the world market prices are currently rising (which of course also affects us...).
Outlook
We definitely want to be "feature-complete" by mid 2023! At least with the base logic of the game. That means that "only" the base logic of the NPCs has to be programmed, the character-creator and the minigames. Of course, that's not all, but those are the bigger parts.
Besides programming, I'm also creating assets for the game at the same time, so I'm not spending 100% of my time on programming. In the end, we try to get as far as possible!
Thank you for your confidence, support and interest! We hope you have a good time and enjoy the holidays!
Let's hope that the world will be a little better in 2023 and that everyone will be healthy and happy through the year!
Your Magical Harvest Team
Lastly, here's a little video showing the development of Magical Harvest over the year.
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