Building and Crafting
Crafting is a Mystery
Crafting is a bit interesting in Harvest Island. For one, you don’t get a list of what you’ll be making. Instead, you’ll have to craft the unknown item first and then it’ll reveal to you what items you’ve made. For example, in order to make the first item on the list (Image to the left) you’ll need 2 cotton and 5 twigs to reveal the unknown item.
Just adding this crafting mechanics raises the game’s value by a lot and it’s extremely fun when you want to explore new things.
The Idea came to me when there was a problem in Harvest Island. It didn’t have enough features when I played it. There wasn’t a set goal that the players could give themselves to continue on playing, so I added this crafting mystery to encourage the players to set goals for themselves. And these goals are pretty much discovering what they can craft. It adds a new layer to exploration which is what Harvest Island focuses on when it comes to game play.
Rope!!
After combining cotton and twigs, you get rope which is very important to building and crafting. Rope is needed for a lot of things like a ladder, or to tie certain objects down, and best of all, building a pier!
There are a lot of games that utilizes the building and crafting mechanics and sometimes they like to add a crafting tree or a crafting list. I think you can say that my building and crafting utilizes those crafting tree and crafting list’s foundations. I’ve made it simpler by adding a crafting table and a straight forward way of what items you need to craft.
The menu explains what items you know and what items you need. It’s very simple and straight forward at first glance so there shouldn’t be too much trouble with the user interface.
The building and crafting system will get a bit more creative once the game gets more developed. I plan to add different types of crafting tables and offer new items to craft once you’ve discover a new work bench or even upgrade your existing work bench.
So far, here are the list of items you can make at your starting work bench: Rope, Ladder, Fishing Pole, Fishing Net, and string. There will be a lot more items in the game and there uses are important.
Building a Pier!
Building and Crafting Plus!
Aside from building a pier there will also be options where you can upgrade your storage. There will be lots of items to collect in Harvest Island. It’s too much for your bag to carry all the items in Harvest Island. I mean, just look at the items you’ve collected! You’re bag is already full! (Image from right)
So I’ve added a chest which solves all those problems. Now you can collect and become a hoarder in Harvest Island! Though you will need to upgrade your chest.
Future building and crafting plans
I do plan to add more crafting materials to the game as well as a lot of different kind of items that you can make. These crafting items are important for Will’s journey and some items aren’t so much. Don’t worry, each item that you pick up has a certain importance in the game so you won’t be picking up trash or useless items. There’s a huge item ecosystem that I have developed and some items are dependent on others (like building and crafting items) while others are just for decorations or key important items that’ll help you progress through the story.
Besides upgrading the chest, I do plan to add a few upgrades here and there along the island. The ideas haven’t come to me yet, so I’ll have to keep you updated on this later on.
Harvest Island Progress
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I like to say that Harvest Island is doing really good in terms of development. Marketing is still of a struggle but I don’t mind sharing the hardships this game has to go through before the game gets released. There’s quite a bit of work that I am doing in order to showcase Harvest Island. Marketing is very tough and it’s slowly eating away my development time. I think that’s why I can’t give you a confirm release date on the game just yet, but no worries. It’ll be around winter 2020.
So far, I have spent 1 month developing a website as well as creating blog updates. Organic traffic from the game increased a little bit again, but not that much. In relation to an increase in organic traffic, the game received a little increase in the steam wishlist. So I’m happy about that.
Anyways, be sure to join all of my social medias for updates, new, and planned features! And wishlist Harvest Island on Steam! Make sure you check out my other blogs from Harvest Island!
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