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[vdweller]

Gleaner Heights: Plant. Feed. Sin. Repeat.

Hi all!

I'm developing a game in the same vein as the older Harvest Moon games, enriched with a suburban gothic atmosphere, much like in some 90's TV shows.

Development posts

1. [July 15 2017] Town Map
2. [July 17 2017] That's a lot of items mate!
3. [July 19 2017] Enemies
4. [July 20 2017] Skills and levels
5. [July 23 2017] Level up and perk selection screen
6. [July 30 2017] Spring crops
7. [September 3 2017] Town Festivals
8. [September 29 2017] Fall crops
9. [October 16 2017] Equipment, clothes, hairstyles
10. [November 10 2017] Boat Sailing and underwater exploration

Core game aspects

Casual harvest-moon lovers will enjoy the usual aspects of farm-tending. More "inquisitive" players will stumble upon fragments of a larger story, hidden mysteries, secret places, supernatural horrors, the double lives of townsfolk...and they could change things for better or worse. And by worse, I mean much worse.

Since the beginning, the game has grown by leaps and bounds and, while definitely not completed yet, it already has lots of content! Aside from farming and exploring, the game features combat with a rather rare fluidity for a farming sim: You can move while charging your weapon, do dash attacks, ground slams... and since I am a fan of the Souls series, I have added a roll mechanic to dodge enemy attacks.

Other features include:

• Over 30 villagers with their own schedules, habits, likes and dislikes.
• Extended farming mechanics with over 40 different crops
• Animals like chickens and cows, as well as a horse. Extended sub-mechanics include growing mushrooms in a mysterious cave, or breeding silkworms
• Extended crafting system with lots of recipes, from fences to explosive arrows to cheese makers
• Cooking with over 100 recipes
• Complete town upgrade projects. Have your very own boat and explore the river and waterfall, and even explore underwater with your diving suit!
• Romantic interests and marriage
• Day/night cycle, seasons, and weather system
• Skills and equipment (clothing) with set bonuses
• Tool upgrades and mining
• Fishing! Over 40 fishes populate various water bodies around the town and in underground lakes.
• Town events and festivals
• Main plot with different "endings"
• Explore and discover hidden areas and dungeons
• Multi-language support
• Gamepad/mouse support

About the developer

My name is Emilios. I am 33 years old and I live in Athens, Greece. My last game was Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse. I do everything in my games: Design, coding, art, story... I'm even composing the music for Gleaner Heights!

I hope you like what you see! Does the project sound interesting to you? What would you like/hate to see in such a game? What aspect of development or idea would you like me to further elaborate on? Let me know! All these months I've been furiously building the game block by block, so it'd be nice to be a bit more public, get some feedback, and have a chat about it!

Dev Blog // Twitter // Facebook

[vdweller]

Town map

To give a sense of scale, here is the town map of Gleaner Heights. It's quite a big place for someone to walk around, so players who try to go everywhere on foot may find the horse very useful.

The area east of the pier will be explorable once you get the boat.

Empty spots will be filled with plant life or other content according to how development progresses.

[vdweller]

That's a lot of items mate!

Today I'll talk a bit about items! There are many many other interesting topics (that even get more technical, heheee), but I just noticed that the game so far has well over 250 items!

Items go with a unique description for every one of them. There are many different kinds of fish, crops, food made from recipes, ores and gems or other miscellaneous types. Most items can be given to townspeople as a gift. They may hate it, be okay about it, like it or love it. But each subsequent gift within the same day has reduced effectiveness.

Many items can be consumed to recover health and/or stamina. I am thinking of adding temporary effects, like a skill boost, or a satiation meter to avoid consumable spamming. What do you think?

Lastly, most items can be shipped for money. Some are dirt cheap, other are extremely valuable. Oh, and be careful when carrying food around! Throwing it on the ground will smash it!

I still have more items to add, for example arrows for your bow, silk worm coccoons, plot items... But I'm really glad because I didn't start making lots of items just for them to appear many! It was a natural process where everything served a specific purpose. Things got crowded because there is a lot of content that needed its items, not
the other way around!

Here are all the items so far, in all their pixellated glory:

[vdweller]

Enemies

Hedgehog




Boar




Slime




Worm




Maneater




Bat

[vdweller]

Skills and levels



You have various skills. if you engage in activities that train them, you increase your skill level. For every 10 skill increases, you gain a new character level, that comes with a variety of perks to choose from!

[Ayrik]

Looks good and pretty far along!  I'll be following this. TLDR though 

[vdweller]

Looks good and pretty far along!   I'll be following this. TLDR though  

Haha yes I understand! I thought a dev log was about being long-winded and technical but apparently that's not the case. I'll see if I can edit my looooong 4th post and perhaps insert something shorter there, I was thinking about some of the game's enemies!

[vdweller]

Edited the 3rd entry to display some of the game's enemies, instead of a very long technical post about animal placement.

[vdweller]

Level up and perk selection screen

[Alce]

Sounds like a really interesting mix, wanna see where it'll end up! Any plans for a demo in the near future?

[Xorglord]

This looks really cool! Following this one for sure.

[vdweller]

Sounds like a really interesting mix, wanna see where it'll end up! Any plans for a demo in the near future?

Certainly, will post it here as soon as it's done!

[vdweller]

Spring crops

There are 43 different crops in the game (44 if you count the grass seeds). Of them, 11 can be planted in Spring. Some of them are available for the beginning, others are unlocked once you ship a certain amount of other crops.

Below you can see the cucumber, carrot, pea and rhubarb plants that grow in Spring.

[foofter]

I love Harvest Moon, I love the Trojan Horse perk (and the idea of perks in general), and I love the animation of running around with hammer raised against the sweet crab boss!  And I'm interested in the spooky dark take, since most farming/dating sims are so upbeat.

But I personally find battle to be an unnecessary burden when I just wanna farm and romance villagers... *cough, Stardew Valley, cough*

Is battle more of an optional sidequest or necessary to advance/beat the game?

[joey4track]

This looks great! Looking forward to a David Lynchy 8-bit soundtrack   

[vdweller]

I love Harvest Moon, I love the Trojan Horse perk (and the idea of perks in general), and I love the animation of running around with hammer raised against the sweet crab boss!  And I'm interested in the spooky dark take, since most farming/dating sims are so upbeat.

But I personally find battle to be an unnecessary burden when I just wanna farm and romance villagers... *cough, Stardew Valley, cough*

Is battle more of an optional sidequest or necessary to advance/beat the game?

One can merrily plant crops, feed cows, go to town festivals and engage in activities with townsfolk. Combat can be avoided altogether.

However, if you want to resolve the main plot in the fullest way possible, you will have to confront a couple specific enemies. There is no "game over", and even if you mess up the main plot or don't go through it altogether, life in town continues. Well, at least for most of the townpeople 

[Oats]

Hello, just shipping in to follow. The pixel art is very cute !

[vdweller]

Town Festivals

    August was Town Festival month. Throughout the year, there are eight distinct occasions that call for the player's attention. Some are competitions. Others are just for hanging around and talking to people. Others are spectacles to be witnessed with others, like a theatrical performance or the first sunrise of a new year.

    Townspeople will inform you about an upcoming festival (usually a day before) and will remind you the specifics: Time, place etc, so you don't have to worry about constantly checking for an upcoming event or accidentally skipping one.

    Chicken Festival (Spring)

   

    Our favorite coop animal! If you have one, you can submit it and hope for the best: The best chicken of the year produces Golden Eggs! If you don't have any chicken or you don't want to submit one, you can still drop by and chat with the townsfolk.


    Archery Contest (Spring)

   

    As you might know by now, aside from farming, the game also has combat. players can also equip a bow and arrows and shoot at things from a distance. The charge mechanic for a bow is similar to any other "melee" tool; the more you pull it, the more range and power the arrow will have.

    So! Here we are, at the archery contest! You can either watch others take their shots against moving targets, or you can participate yourself. The first time you participate you will be given a bow, which you can keep afterwards, beside any other prizes!


    Summer Lake Party

   

    Festivals are not always competitions. Sometime people just like to get together, relax, talk, eat and drink. This is what the Summer Lake Party is about. Next to the waterfall, you will find lots of folks to socialize with. Oh, and if you particularly like a certain person, it's time to make a move!


    Horse Race (Fall)

   

    You can either bet on other horses and watch the race as a spectator (and possibly gain a lot of money), or you can participate and race against others! The question is, how well have you been training your horse to endure running long distances?


    Animal Festival (Winter)

   

Much like the Chicken Festival, the Animal Festival allows you to submit any barn animal, be it a cow or a sheep! Winning animals give Golden variations of their respective produce, however keeping an animal at top happiness to win the contest requires a certain amount of devotion from the player.


    Cooking Festival (Winter)

   

    Time to put those 100+ recipes you can learn to good use! If you think you have a shot at gastronomical glory, you can pit yourself against the best cooks in town. Usually Penny, the diner owner, wins every year. Can you topple her?


    Theater Man Performances (Winter)

   

    This is a three part "festival". The mysterious Theater Man appears every winter at the hotel. On the 5th, 15th and 25th day of Winter, he does three different performances at the hotel showroom. Who is he? How does he do all that weird magical stuff on the scene? And how does he know so many things about events that happened or have yet to come?


    New Year Sunrise

   

    The last night of every year, everybody gathers at the mountain summit to watch the sun of the new year rise. You should be there, too! The view is great!


    That's all about the Festivals! September will be the "more cutscenes/quests/main plot" month. Hopefully by the end of the month I waill also have my first trailer ready. Stay tuned!

[whistlerat]

I'm loving how many Harvest Moonlikes are appearing lately Looks pretty faithful to the originals in a lot of the farming and village features, which isn't a bad thing, but I'm super keen to learn more about this darker story aspect. Looks like you've made amazing progress so far!

[vdweller]

I have composed some music tracks for the game. I have no formal music education.

My question is, would you play such a game with this kind of music? Is it OK? Or is it wrong on a technical/melodic level or untolerable?

Please take 2 mins and listen to a couple of those few tracks I've made. They're meant to loop, so if you select "Loop" in Soundcloud it helps.

https://soundcloud.com/emilios-manolidis

Your opinion matters a lot because, as I said, I actually don't know anything about writing notes and stuff.
I'd appreciate some honest and strict judgement!