Building a Village, 11/24/2018 – Clash of the Cods

Hello Villagers! There’s no way to actually prove this, but I’m pretty sure more people have played fishing mini-games than have actually gone fishing. You can fish in Zelda, in Nier, in Red Dead Redemption 2, in Pokemon, in Deadly Premonition, in Torchlight, in Yakuza. You can hardly walk into a Gamestop without tripping over […]

Building a Village, 11/05/2018 – Mushroom Gardener

Hello Villagers! About a year ago I revealed what was then a new in-game hobby – Gardening. As I worked on the design I realized that while I knew what I didn’t want – I didn’t want it to be like Harvest Moon, and I didn’t want it to be just a mini-game –  I couldn’t  nail […]

Building a Village, 10/15/2018 – Home Improvement

The power of ten thousand souls flows through me as I open GameMaker. A cursed scream escapes my throat as I watch my possessed fingers furiously writing lines of flawless (though haunted) code. A demonic entity bursts free from my chest in a ring of fire. His terrible visage turns toward me and whispers, “This […]

Open Dev Policy

One of my favorite trends in video game development is how increasingly open its become. It used to be that game creation was (to players, at least) an unknowable and arcane process that you could only catch glimpses of in magazines or websites. These days you can find all sorts of examples of refreshingly open […]

Release: Summer Sherbert Demo is now available for Mac!

Good news, Appleheads: Village Monsters is now available on Mac! You can download it right here As with the Linux releases, the Mac versions will be labeled as “Lightly Tested” until I’m more comfortable with the process. On my old (~2009) MacBook it runs but at a low performance – which I suppose is to […]

Building a Village, 08/25/2018 – Trash Hog

Hello Villagers! The past couple weeks were so focused on the demo release that I went on a developer diary hiatus – but we’re back today, baby! (Also, why not check out the demo if you haven’t already?) You’ll notice a definite trend in what I’ve been working on this week: villager interactions. This’ll remain […]