Upcoming Update - Game Jam Update

As we near the end of the first week of March, I thought I should provide a progress update on the currently planned next Update.

I'm referring to it as the Game Jam Update because the Update is about getting the features into the game that were originally planned for the game jam submission, and fixing the majority of currently known bugs in the game.

This is also the first time I will have continued to work on a game previously made for a game jam with the aim of improving, refining and expanding the game.

Current Progress

At the moment I have resolved as many bugs as I am aware of, and implemented the Villagers and a simple trading system.

The last big job left to be completed for the planned update is adding Sound Effects to complement the user experience.

Once this has been done, I will be publishing the update, so hopefully in the next few days the update will go live.

The Villagers

2 Villagers have been added to the game to trade with.  The Villagers have names and when interacted with present dialogue and the option to either trade or exit the dialogue.

Their names are "Bob" and "Charlie", not very creative I know, but I thought it would be better than Villager 1 and Villager 2.

Bob can trade a random "premium" resource for 3 of your food items, and Charlie does the reverse.  The idea behind this is to allow the player to offload an excess of food items or, if food is low, have a way of getting food without gathering it normally.

Overview of Bug Fixes

So far about 20 Bug Fixes are to be included in the update covering most mechanics in the game.  Some of the major fixes are for sprite animations and enemy behavior.

As a result, Enemies will now move towards and attack the player if they get too close.  This changes up the gameplay a bit as due to a couple of coding errors, Enemies would move away from the player and would never really fight back.

A full list of Fixes will be included when the update is posted.

Future Updates

Over the next few months there is a series of updates planned to improve the mechanics, and the look and feel of the game.

The aim is to get to a point where the game can be expanded to include a story and multiple types of levels and dungeons.

With the next update planned being focused on improving the combat mechanics and improving the code base for player behaviour, I have also been thinking about how to integrate a story into the game.  As part of this I have also been thinking about the structure of the World in the game and how to make it fit into a narrative.

If everything goes to plan, by the time the updates are complete, it will nearly be completely different to it's current state.  The world and level design will be built around the story, every level and dungeon will have a purpose tied to the story.  The player will still have to gather resources and craft to upgrade, the play style will still be fairly open, but there will be a story to follow to provide an objective, with new areas to explore and world building to find.

I feel as though getting to this point with the game, making an update after the game jam is over, is an important milestone.  Not just for the game, but for my own journey through learning game development.  So far I have made a few small games for game jams, but nothing that could be easily expanded, so after the jams they got left alone.  This is the first one I have tried to improve, and finding the drive to do this without the ticking clock of a game jam has, at times over the last few weeks, been challenging.  I'm doing this on top of a day job and daily life, so it is very easy to find excuses not to pick it up, or to feel like I don't have the time.

Part of me hopes that by making this update that I can find the confidence and drive to keep it going and turn the current, narrowly focused game into what, to me feels like a proper gaming experience.