Author Topic: [KICKSTARTER: 30% FUNDED!] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!  (Read 22094 times)

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #60 on: September 04, 2017, 07:33:13 AM »
As 'promised', this week's edition of the VMD3 is late, and it'll be quite brief. I'm keeping descriptions to a minimum and instead focusing of a screenshot blitz.

First up, some usual housekeeping: September has begun, and with it begins the most important month of my entire life. Nearly a 9 months ago I quit my day job to pursue this dream of creating games, and this month will be my first attempt at making it a viable.

On September 6th I'm releasing the Alpha 1 demo of Village Monsters. This is an enormous release that builds upon everything I've done in the last 9 months.

A week later, on September 12th, I launch my Kickstarter campaign that'll run through September and into the appropriately spooky month of October. I'm very excited and anxious for you all to see what I have cooking.

Ok. Enough words. Onto the screenshot blitz.



More village changes have been enacted. The still-unnamed Treasure Chest merchant - run by Skunkworks, the Mimic - has been converted into furniture-only...



...while a new General Store (run by Bottes) has been constructed to sell food, potions, and other sundries



Nearly a month ago I renamed all the months of the in-game calendar, but until now that has only existed in an Excel doc, not the game. That has changed



New interiors have been added to all new home. That has also prompted me to add more furniture, floor and wall types



This includes new homes + portraits and dialogue for the new villagers introduced last week.



These WIP icons for tools are still ugly, but I added numbers to each to make it a bit easier to keep track of. You can also press the number on your keyboard to quickly bring it up instead of rotating to find it



There's so much I can and want to show you, but some stuff I gotta keep under the hat for now. Here's a short clip from the upcoming Kickstarter trailer. It'll be strikingly similar to my first trailer, but like everything else it's been heavily iterated and updated. Hope you're looking forward to seeing it!

That'll do it for this week. With any luck I'll be back on a more regular schedule this week, but things are going to be pretty crazy for awhile.

It's been a wild ride. I hope it never stops. Thanks for joining me on it! <3

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #61 on: September 04, 2017, 10:50:03 PM »
Nice :) Good luck with everything, and let me know what I can do to help.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #62 on: September 06, 2017, 10:25:42 PM »
Happy Full Moon, Y’all
A new full moon means a new version of Village Monsters for you to enjoy. I’m happy to announce that the latest demo, Alpha 1, is now officially released.

Go download it now!

This is a big release, so I included the patch notes in a whole other post - go check them out if you're into that kind of thing!

It's a great milestone, but with the Kickstarter coming up next week there's no rest for the wicked quite yet. My attention now shifts toward finishing up the loose ends in the Kickstarter.

However, there is other good news - because I want present the best possible demo for the Kickstarter (and for you, of course!), you can expect another release within the next week that contains even more features and polish.

Feel free to leave your feedback here, or send me an email at josh@warpdogs.com. Thanks guys!



Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #63 on: September 06, 2017, 10:54:36 PM »
Awesome, great work :)

I'll try and carve out some time to play it at the weekend, but can't promise much within the next week as I'm currently dying of paperwork and house-hunting!
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #64 on: September 10, 2017, 09:09:05 PM »
Hello monster friends!

It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)

The marathon continues! This past week saw the release of the latest demo, and it was a big one.

www.warpdogs.com/were-release/

I want to thank all the people who took the time to share feedback! You are making Village Monsters a better game. You can expect another release tomorrow that contains more features and bugfixes reported via feedback

The Kickstarter is coming soon. Real soon. As in, in the next 48 hours! I'm so pumped. And nervous. Mostly pumped!

As with last week I'm going to keep the text at a minimum and make this a screenshot blitz. Let's get to it


I did a fair amount of work on the last hobby prototype, Cooking. It's far from where I want it, but it'll improve over time


Remember the potion system? I went and combined it with food effects to open the door for all sorts of goofy fun. Snowberry Shrooms now properly chill you to the bone, while Spicy Shrooms put an extra kick in your step


A new area, the forest, has been implemented. This is also your first chance to investigate some of the glitches and faults ruining the world outside the village


The first of many quests have been added - meet all villagers in town! There's no reward for finding them all (yet...), but it's a good way to track your progress


Finally, more helper text has been added to Home Customizer mode. You also are automatically placed in this mode when placing a new piece of furniture
« Last Edit: September 10, 2017, 09:46:18 PM by Jubal »

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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [Kickstarter: September 12th] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #65 on: September 12, 2017, 06:09:09 AM »
Hey guys, another quick patch went up tonight in advance of tomorrow's Kickstarter campaign.

Like Alpha 1.01 it's a small patch, but it contains many more changes and even a couple new features, so it's worth checking out if you haven't exhausted the previous demo yet.

You can grab the latest it and read the patch notes right here

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #66 on: September 12, 2017, 07:47:15 PM »

Oh, hello there! Village Monsters is now officially LIVE ON KICKSTARTER! Come, help me build a village!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/389391560/village-monsters-a-monstrous-life-sim-game

There's also a new OP (the old one was getting pretty stale) and a new trailer!


Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #67 on: September 12, 2017, 11:54:54 PM »
Well done, great stuff :)

News frontpage done (Read all about it! Read all about it! :) )
http://exilian.co.uk/index.php
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #68 on: September 13, 2017, 10:11:32 PM »
Well done, great stuff :)

News frontpage done (Read all about it! Read all about it! :) )
http://exilian.co.uk/index.php

That looks so good! Thank you so much for all the support!!

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #69 on: September 13, 2017, 11:36:55 PM »
No probs :) Will attempt some social media advertising too!
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #70 on: September 14, 2017, 01:00:51 AM »
Phew, what a whirlwind the last 36 hours have been. I'm not exactly sure how much sleep I've grabbed since this thing launched, but it's surely not a lot!

Hopefully I'm not being too annoying spamming this, but I'd be remiss not to include a link to the Kickstarter at the top of this post :)

A few notes!
  • I am super insanely happy to report the game has reached the 20% funding mark! There's still plenty of campaign left, but I cannot even properly express how much gratitude I feel toward people that have backed already. Thank you!!!
  • A number of tiers have sold out already, but the Early Bird tier - where you can grab the game for $12 - still has ~60 slots
  • Today I also added an additional reward I'm calling Village Younger. The Village Elder tier - the reward that allowed you to design your own monster - sold out very quickly on the first day. This new tier is identical to Elder with one difference: the monster you design will be added to the game after launch. This is so that we have enough time to design and create a really cool monster without impacting the overall schedule of the game
Things will most likely slow down from here on out if previous Kickstarters are any indication. I'm actually ok with that, as I'll use the 'downtime' to resume working on the game. I'm hoping to get out several new releases between now and the end of the Kickstarter, though of course they'll be smaller in size than the previous bi-monthly demos.

Thanks as always for following along!

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [KICKSTARTER IS LIVE] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #71 on: September 14, 2017, 07:28:12 PM »
Added my own pledge :) Unfortunately not a big one, as a grad student budget is what it is! Glad to see it's gotten off to an OK start.

The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

WarpDogsVG

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Re: [KICKSTARTER: 30% FUNDED!] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #72 on: September 17, 2017, 01:34:41 AM »
The whirlwind rages on.

It's stressful, sure, but there's also something fun about running around like your hair is on fire - it makes the days feel a lot more productive

I'm foregoing the typical weekend digest this week because a) I don't have time, and b) I didn't really do a whole lot on the game this week/ Still, I do have a few things to chat about, so let's make like a gun and bullet.

Oh, and again, I'd be silly to not link to the Kickstarter at the top of the post! If you like what you see in this topic and want to support me, then please consider sharing or making a pledge.

Regarding Kickstarter...
  • Early this afternoon I crossed the 30% funded mark, which is a tremendous milestone. Thank you to everyone who has backed the campaign! Your support has given me so much motivation.
  • The Early Bird tier is just about sold out - as of writing this there's only ~15 slots left. Act fast if you want to get the game at the lowest possible price
  • The newly introduced Village Younger tier has slots left as well. If you're interested in a monster of your design being added to the cast of Village Monsters then please take a look
  • I've started posting longer looks at the various systems and features of Village Monsters on Kickstarter. The latest one is on the Mysteries system. They're view-able by anyone - no backing required

Regarding the Game...
  • Another Alpha 1 released today. You can grab it right here. Alpha 1.03 brings with it some more bug fixes, but more importantly it's the first demo that includes Linux support! You'll see a separate link on the Downloads page for Linux. I haven't forgotten about you, Mac - it's just a lot harder to get you up and running on Virtual Box
  • Alpha 1.03 also re-implements the ability to swap your gender - a much requested feature
  • Finally, Alpha 1.03 makes it a bit easier to send feedback. It seems some people were having some issues, as my inbox has been full of feedback emails that look like the below. That should hopefully now be fixed :)



Well, that'll do it for now. Hopefully this coming week is a bit slower, as I'll be able to get more done on the game - including more dev streams!

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube

Jubal

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Re: [KICKSTARTER: 30% FUNDED!] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #73 on: September 20, 2017, 10:53:13 PM »
Glad to see it's going well - over a third of the way now by the looks of it! :)
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [KICKSTARTER: 30% FUNDED!] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #74 on: October 05, 2017, 01:10:45 AM »
Sorry that I've dropped off the face of the earth! People always told me Kickstarters were hard work, but the real word is distracting. I've had a hard enough time trying to keep up with my dev work, and I've fallen out of habit keeping topics like this updated!

There's just a week left so I'm in the final stretch. I think it's going to be a photo finish, but I'm going down swinging!

Kickstarter: Back Now!
Trailer: YouTube