next »

[claybornp]

Hey everyone!
It's been a while since I last posted, but I'm back with something new!






In "lil guys", you play as an ancient super computer space station that is in desperate need of repairs. Your sensors have revealed that the nearby planet has the resources that you need for your repairs  - but you have no body, no arms, and no way to dig them out!

After eons of sitting with this sadness, you decide to use what's left of your CPU (the undamaged bits) to invent a new species of life that can survive on the planet and help you with your repairs.

In "lil guys" you will hatch, raise, and eventually set loose your lil guys.

It reminds me of: Spore, Pikmin and Tamagotchi.

I'm wrapping up work on alpha version 0.1, then I'm going to post the demo on itch.io (https://claypeterson.itch.io/lil-guys) - I want to get some early feedback!

[claybornp]

Hey everyone!

I uploaded alpha version 0.1 of "lil guys" to itch.io! It's very simple in it's current form! There is a game scene, a *very* brief tutorial, some cool music, and a main menu. I wanted to get the core stuff done asap so that I could sit back, look at it, and imagine what this thing might become. Here's the link: https://claypeterson.itch.io/lil-guys

I plan on releasing the game in little updates so that I have something to look forward to every week. I've started mapping out what the next updates might look like:

Care Update - Feeding the lil guys and taking care of them!
Sleep update - lil guys will sing songs and dance around the campfire before bed!
Egg update - You will be able to hatch the lil guys from eggs and raise them through adolescence!

Also - the current build is a web build, but in the future I plan on Switch, Steam, and mobile releases.  

If you have any questions, or suggestions let me know! I'm excited to work on this :D

[claybornp]

Alpha Version 0.2 (The care update)

Hey everyone!

Todays update adds some gameplay in the form of food! Now the lil guys will cry when they are hungry, and you can feed them by dragging apples into the scene from your inventory! 



The lil guys also poop when they eat too much food now - and they will stop everything and cry if there are too many poops near them! You will need to make sure to clean up the poops by clicking on them, or the lil guys will get really sad! 



Change Log

• Added stats
• Added regenerating inventory system
• Added poop!
• Added sound effects

The next update will be a bit bigger, and will focus on hatching new life forms from an egg! It will also introduce new growth pods.

[claybornp]

Version: Alpha V0.3
Theme: Death and Power!

This update adds two features - a power system, and the ability for lil guys to die and turn into ghosts!

Now player actions cost power, which adds a little bit of gameplay, as the player now has to time / plan out their actions.

Feeding


Cleaning up poop!

The Lil guys now take damage when they are hungry or scared, and eventually they'll die and turn into a gravestone.

Die

The gravestone might look cool, but it'll spawn a ghost at night! The ghost might look cute, but it'll scare the lil guys to death! So it's important to remove the gravestones by clicking on them. Also, as an added bonus, removing a gravestone resurrects the lil guy, so really, no harm no foul!   


Resurrection

Next Update
For the next update I will either add the hatching of little guys, like I had planned on last time - or I will begin working on the upgrade system. Who knows!

Like always, if you have any questions or comments, say hi!

[claybornp]

Version: Alpha V0.4
Theme: Eggs, Babies, and Evolution

Hey everyone, happy new years!!

I took a little time off for Christmas, but now I'm back with a small update, alpha v0.4 - introducing EGGS, BABIES, and EVOLUTION. Now you start the game with a single egg that eventually hatches into a blobby looking baby.


If the blobby looking baby survives for 2 days it will evolve into it's next form. I've only drawn the baby and human looking forms so far - but I plan on adding some in-between phases/forms in the future.



I also added an inventory slot that spawns eggs over time, allowing you (the player) to raise as many lil guys as you can handle! I also reduced the energy cost for some of the actions in order to slow down the pace a little bit. Let me know how it feels! I want the gameplay to feel pretty low key / low stakes while still providing some sort of challenge.

[claybornp]

Hey everyone! I'm back with my biggest update yet... or at least the one that took me the longest to finish!
(If you don't want to read all of this text, I encourage you to check out the gameplay video):




or, even better - play it yourself here: https://claypeterson.itch.io/lil-guys

---

Alpha version 0.5 introduces: resources, factory building, and objectives! As I've said before, in lil guys, the ultimate objective is to build a space shuttle so that you can send the lil guys to repopulate earth.

To build the shuttle, I needed a crafting system, and being a huge fan of satisfactory, I thought it would be fun to craft things using machines. This led me to make a very basic (satisfactory for babies) type of building system. So far there is a coal generator and a smelter. When you place the coal generator on the grid, it powers up the nearby tiles. Any machine that overlaps a yellow powered tile will become active and start animating / producing parts if it's required resources are available.  


Factory Building

I also added an objectives system! Now, in the top left corner there is a list of things for you to do. Once you finish all of the tasks, the list is cleared and you are presented with another set of tasks! Trust me, it's fun work! I'm going to use this feature to drive most of the gameplay and story - and I will also shoehorn it into an achievement system down the road when I release it on Steam / Switch.


Objectives

Here's a diagram that points out all of the new features:


and here is a picture of the redesigned main menu! It was pretty ugly before!


As always, let me know what you think! :D

[mobilelast]

Interesting mechanics. Lil guys seem to have some serious digestive problems. There are so many feces around that one should be able to use it as a fuel for the machinery.

I tested the game quickly, and liked the mood and animations. Mostly the controls seem natural, but it feels a little cumbersome that building and living happens on different maps. You could also mention the controls in the tutorial. I got stuck for a while when the tutorial told me to build a smelter, but I didn’t realize I had to press space to switch the view.

It’ll be fun to see where this one goes. Keep updating.

[Abdurrahman]

I like this type of game. I smell something charming here.
Will this game have a strategic depth, or does it lean toward puzzles or pet types?

[michaelplzno]

the visuals here are so expressive and fun, hit the spot really, KEEP GOING!

edit: OMG the SFX I am dead now, thanks.

[claybornp]

Interesting mechanics. Lil guys seem to have some serious digestive problems. There are so many feces around that one should be able to use it as a fuel for the machinery.

I tested the game quickly, and liked the mood and animations. Mostly the controls seem natural, but it feels a little cumbersome that building and living happens on different maps. You could also mention the controls in the tutorial. I got stuck for a while when the tutorial told me to build a smelter, but I didn’t realize I had to press space to switch the view.

It’ll be fun to see where this one goes. Keep updating.

Ha! My dad also suggested that you should be able to use the poops as fuel! I'm going to add that for sure. The "compost burner". It'll come before the coal power generator.

Also to address the building on different platforms/maps issue - in the latest version I've added a circular placement grid so that you can build on the round "home" platform - and I've temporarily disabled the square platform because I don't have a way for the lil guys to get there yet.

Also, buildings no longer auto-build in the WIP version. Now lil guys can have jobs, and if you make them an engineer they'll work on your building at their own pace... between eating and pooping!

[claybornp]

I like this type of game. I smell something charming here.
Will this game have a strategic depth, or does it lean toward puzzles or pet types?

There will be a bit of strategy, but probably no puzzles! I'm working towards a satisfactory/factorio type of system with the machines that you build. I would love to chain them together with conveyer belts so that you can make more complex parts.

I also want to lean a bit more in to the sims-like nature of the game and allow the player to build houses for the lil guys, or maybe they'll build them themselves? I'm not sure yet...

I've also been working on a "cellphone" UI that will be used for a lot of things... including video calls and texting. I love dialogue heavy games, and I want most of the narrative to come from talking to the other AIs.

[claybornp]

I’m finally back with another update! Alpha version 0.6!



I need to get back to doing smaller updates again… I got scope creep this time and just kept adding… but on the bright side it’s starting to feel like a real game now!

The main features I added are:

• Character UI! Now when you click on a lil guy it opens a menu that lets you check out their stats, rename them, and give them a job.
• Jobs! Now lil guys can learn jobs. So far their options are: Engineer (builds the machines), Recycler (cleans up poops), and Musician (plays guitar so that people can dance). Doing a job earns experience, and they will level up - but the level isn’t used for anything right now.
• I added a phone! You can use it to call NPCs, and they can call you too! Most of the game's story will come through the phone.
• I added time control! Some of the tasks take a while, so I wanted the player to be able to speed things up if they got bored. I will say though, it gets pretty tough trying to take care of everyone while you're blasting through time at 4x speed.
• Apples now decompose. A. It looks cool, and B. it ensures that the player doesn’t just spam and stock up on apples.
  
• Wind! Now little gusts of wind will appear and blow down the grass. (This is my favorite new feature)
  

If you want to check it out in action, he's a full playthrough of the demo:

[Rogod]

Hah, how didn't I notice this before - this is legitimately really good. I love the unobtrusive sound effects and the visual style definitely works.

Nice job

[claybornp]

Thank you!! I'm glad you like it! )

[claybornp]

Alpha version 0.7!

My main goal with this update was to optimize and refactor. I knew that I needed to spend some time updating things in order to make future development easier on myself. Difficulty was increasing! Up until now I had basically just been programming as fast as I possibly can - putting little thought into my game's performance (common for me when I'm prototyping). Luckily, I love optimizing and refactoring.

The biggest refactor I did tied together a bunch of systems that all rely on the objective manager. The objective manager is in charge of spawning new objectives and sending out an "objective complete" event. This event was used by a lot of systems to move gameplay forward, for example, completing an objective might unlock a new UI, or it could cause an NPC to call you. This worked fine, but it made testing things difficult. For example, if I wanted to test something towards the end of the game, I would have to play through the entire thing in order to trigger all the events and unlock the correct world state. To fix this, I introduced a campaign structure that is composed of "chapters", where each chapter contains a set of objectives and has the ability to change the state of the world when it is loaded. Now I can jump to say: "chapter 5 of the tutorial campaign". This will make my life so much easier as I work on the next segments of the game.

I also introduced a few fun new things!

I added a nice little "poof" particle effect that appears when you place an object.


Lil guys can now talk to each other! I gave them a "social" value that is constantly falling and is refilled through conversation. *side note* (One funny thing that happened during development is that the lil guys were registering ghosts as people and were getting up in the night to talk to them and it was scaring them to death! Talk about facing yours fears! )


And finally, I added a funny feature where double tapping on the ground will now tilt the pod (sometimes scaring the lil guys!) This is actually useful if you do it at night because it clears all the ghosts in the scene. Besides being sort of funny, the real reason I added this is because you can now rotate the pod and flip it over. It's not accessible in the current build because I'm still deciding what I want to do with it - but the backside of the pod is fully navigable and will house the machines that make life possible in the pod. (namely an oxygen machine that you will upgrade in order to support more guys) 


As always, thanks for reading, and paying attention to lil guys! I'm having a lot of fun making this one

Clay

[claybornp]

It’s been a while since my last update! Maybe you thought I gave up… but truth be told what happened was I broke the mouse support for the game sometime after the 0.7 update when I was adding controller support, and I haven’t gone back to fix it yet - so, even though I’ve continued to work on a game, I haven’t made any builds. The version on itch is still 0.7.

Video



Update 0.12-alpha
Since there have been five updates since the last release (some big, some small), I figure it’s best just to highlight the most interesting changes.

* Added a crafting table (an anvil) that lets workers convert bars into usable parts
* Added manufacturers - these machines automatically convert bars into parts
* Added a galactic waypoint system
* Added drones that can explore waypoints in the galaxy
* Added an engine pod that allows space travel (currently disabled)
* Added enemy space stations + combat waves
* Added defensive rocket launcher turret
* Added offensive celestial cannon
* Added the ability to assign a cooking job
* Added a rice cooker that requires rice farming
* Added music venue (currently disabled)
* Added skill trees
* Added farmer job
* Added scientist job
* Added new sound effects + sound manager
* Added win conditions / updated objective system
* Added screen shake
* Added sandbox mode that allows you to configure the galaxy + win conditions
* Added capturable planets
* Added space shuttle that can bring workers to different planets
* Added split screen multiplayer (currently disabled)
* Added controller support
* Added new resources
* Added new shaders
* Updated UI
* Refactored(lots) + new architecture
* Juice

Next Plans
I’ve been sharing the 0.12 build with my friends, but there are a lot of new controls to learn and there's no real tutorial in the game anymore - so it’s pretty uninviting and I don’t think I’ll share this build on itch just yet. My next update is going to focus on continuing controller support (bringing back the mouse), adding more tooltips / information / clues,  and maybe finishing the split screen multiplayer.

After That
After that I am planning on adding the ability to save and load space stations. For the obvious reason of allowing the player to return to their game (which is important now because sessions are taking 30+ minutes), and also to allow the player to create and save blueprints of space stations that will allow them to quickly build new space stations. These blueprints will also be used to design / layout the enemy space stations.

And Finally
The last big feature I plan on adding to the game is an overworld / galactic conquest game mode. In this mode, the player will start with a map showing a number of local galaxies to choose from. Upon choosing, they will spawn with a humble single celled space station, which they can expand until they have enough resources to to create another space station in a different galaxy. As the game proceeds the player will be able to trade resources between their space stations, and with NPC space stations. There will be various factions in this overworld, and, while I want to have win conditions, I also want the bulk of the story telling to come from your interactions with the factions. I’m taking a lot of inspiration from Civilization and Kenshi.

Anyways, here is a short story

[nathy after dark]

This is a wild idea and could be very fun

[claybornp]

Hey everyone! I just finished a small update. version 0.13. Its focus was to get the game decently playable before moving on to new features. The last demo I posted on Itch was March 29th 2023! This update adds improved keyboard + gamepad support, and better balancing. I didn’t fix all the bugs, or balancing issues, but the game is pretty playable/beatable now - and I think it’s fun (for what that's worth), I’ve enjoyed testing it. More to come soon!

If you want to download version 0.13, you can find it on itch https://claypeterson.itch.io/lil-guys
Or if you want to watch a playthrough:

[claybornp]

(sorry this gif is so small)

I made decent progress on the galaxy map / overworld this weekend. As you can see in the gif, there are four solar systems, complete with suns and planets. The solar system in the bottom left corner of the gif is ours - and next to that is Alpha Centauri. Then we have Bernard’s Star and Sirius. I made sure to make it easy in my editor to add new planets and solar systems because I really want to fill this galaxy out. As you can probably guess, each of these solar systems are the levels you play during the “campaign” mode.

The other thing I worked on this weekend are the data classes that will run the world state. As I’ve mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the game Kenshi because of how you can influence the world state. Taking over a city might change the whole dynamics of that region, including who travels through and lives there. I am also a big fan of the galactic conquest mode in Battlefront 2, and the diplomatic strategy involved in Civilization, so I’m trying to combine the three into something interesting.

I started by creating a faction data class. Factions have various data, but most importantly factions have a philosophy, and an extra set of beliefs. Philosophies are collections of beliefs. So a faction can have a philosophy that can be shared with other factions, but it might also have a few extra beliefs. The system that manages factions can also compare two factions to determine if they are friendly, neutral, enemies… based on their set of beliefs.

And lastly, I created data classes for the planets, solar systems, and galaxies. Each planet in a solar system can be owned by a faction, and there is a system that can look at the owner of each planet in a solar system and determine if the solar system is at peace, or if there could be conflict. It can also determine which faction has ownership of a solar system. This system will be used later by factions as they plan trade routes and evaluate the safest solar systems to pass through.

Overall, very excited to be working on the other half of the game. I’ve been thinking a lot about lore, and the different factions that will populate this world. I have some fun ideas. No demo this time, but more on the way.

[claybornp]

Small life update. I started working on a secret game project with my favorite comic book artist Jesse Moynihan. https://jessemoynihan.com/

We'll probably have a website / twitter up for the new game pretty soon. I'm really excited about it.
This game shouldn't take up that much of my time - the concept is pretty simple, but I am going to be slowing down progress on lil guys for now.

Be back soon with more updates! <3 clay