Hi there,
Thank you! That's how we want to open this dev log.
My wife and I are very excited, thankful and extremely encouraged by the
very positive response we have gotten from all of you towards Farmwand
and to see that not only you like our project but you also decided to
vote for it and get it into the top 100 for this year's Indie of the
Year awards.
Sincerely, thank you all 🙂
And to properly
thank you (as well as to encourage you to keep voting for us on this
round 2!) we have prepared a dev log packed with a little bit more
behind the scenes than usual, and some more interesting content for all
of you.
The characters in Farmwand
Early on when we discussed what we wanted from our game and the kind of world we were going to create, my wife and I agreed that the characters, the people and creatures that you as the player would find across your journey would be the backbone of the whole experience. A world is just as alive as the characters that inhabit it, and the player can feel as attached to the world as they do to their characters through the relationships they form with them.
Because of that, through all the months of planning before development started, we came up with a quite large (and still growing) cast of characters of all shapes and sizes that you will encounter across your adventures, each with their own stories, quirks, hopes and fears. Their unique personalities and stories may affect how they first interact with you, but from those first impressions it will be your actions entirely that will shape how they see you. Will you be a kind presence in the world, helping others and becoming dear friends with the people in town? Or will you become the kind of witch / wizard that parents tell stories about to scare their kids? Either way, it will be quite the adventure!
Some of the first characters we planned and thus the first ones
we will show you are Wilky and Elena, the tavern hosts in the game.
Wilky has a personality as big as himself, with a loud laugh but also
a quick temper only matched by that of Elena, his wife. While she is
much kinder and patient with most patrons she will not hesitate to scold
her massive husband whenever he goes too far. They are quite a match
and know all sorts of stories and legends about the world thanks to the
many travelers that visit them, which makes them an invaluable source of
information, clues and very interesting quests. Go for some ale, play a
game of Chained tens and sing some songs with the other patrons!
Or hear some juicy gossip, you never know what you'll learn 😉
Making animals for Farmwand
We have shown you before some of the animals we are adding to the
game. There will be plenty of little creatures to see in Farmwand, from
farm animals like hens, pigs, cows and sheep to small companions like
dogs, cats, ravens or owls and plenty of wild, magical creatures.
Whenever
we make a new animal for the game, it always starts with a piece of
concept art. We try to keep the designs simple, almost as if made by a
kid :
Then, we model them in Blender trying to keep our poly counts as low as possible, so that the game can work smoothly on the PC we are using as our minimum requirements baseline and finally paint them on Substance Painter :
And afterwards, they are ready to be animated!
Playing alone or together
We love to play together. Before we married we used to play a lot of co-op games online and through Remote Play, but whenever we got the chance we loved to play couch co-op games where we could more easily tease each other.
That's why we are developing Farmwand to accommodate all sorts of co-op experiences, be it on the same machine or through a LAN or further away, whether you want to play with your significant other and share a relaxing experience managing and decorating your farm, with your friends to fulfill quests and have adventures, participate in the local wrestling matches or have some magical competitions, with your kids to show them that a little magic can solve anything (at least in Farmwand!) or with whomever you want.
And if what you want is to play by yourself and build your own legend
without any distractions nor having to share all the glory with anyone
else, you can still do that and have a lot of fun while casting spells
left, right and center.
Thanks for reading this article, it was a long one, and thank you
again for voting for our game for this Indie of the Year awards as well
as for all the feedback you've been giving us across all the platforms
where we share our progress with the game. We hope to have your vote for
round 2 as well now that we are in the top 100, and that you continue
following us through this development journey 🙂
Next weekend we
will release what will be our last article of the year, right before the
Holidays, for which we are preparing a lot of very special things. Have
a great week, and see you all next Saturday!
