Harvest Island Development Journey

A Super Ultra Quick Day/Night Time Lapse of Harvest Island

It took me a year and a half to make Harvest Island

Harvest Island went through a lot of iterations, community feedback, and art changes and the game isn’t even completed yet!

It took me 1.5 years to develop the current version that I have now and my journey as a game developer feels like it’s just started haha.

The top Gif is my current version of the game. The two on the right were my designs a year ago. Notice how the screen is smaller? Well, there’s a lot of things that changed. Back then, the day/night cycle goes from day to night but in the top Gif, the day/night cycle goes from day to dawn to night to morning. The transitions are important in the game because it gives you visual clues as to what is changing in the environment.

The color has also changed. Noticed how the top is more green and lush? The image to the right is a bit bleached. The grass feels like it’s dying.

Wide Screen!

Making Harvest Island wide screen took me two months to do. Adding more art, and reprogramming the game to be compatible for ultra wide was brutal for me and I’m not even done with finishing the rest of the game’s art.

To the right is the wide screen. So when you play Harvest Island, you’ll play it like this. Regardless of your screen size. Cool huh? So if you have a small monitor, it’ll look like a nice black bar cinematic theatre thing. I don’t know what’s it’s called but you can use the picture to compare and see what I’m talking about.

The image to the left isn’t wide screen. It looks nice when showing off on twitter or instagram but it looks very retro when playing the game. I just can’t explain the huge difference it makes when playing the game in wide screen vs retro small screen.

Do you know why Indie games takes like 2+ years to finish a game? Because of improvements by the community. Because the community loves games and they want to help us succeed and they want us to make money so we can make games for them. So I took all the criticism to heart.

Harvest Island 2020 April Trailer (That I want no one to know)

This summarizes everything that I had done before the criticism came to play. Engrave this into your minds. The raw footage of Harvest Island trailer that I want no one to see that you must see because of the drastic improvements the game went through because of the gaming community.

Harvest Island 2021 June Trailer

This is the cold opening of my trailer. I had to split it because the original file is too big 🙁

Notice how the character image is facing right instead of left? That small change made a big difference to the game’s mood. The font of the game changed as well. From microsoft Sh*T to a more playful text. And near the end of the video, beach collectable items changed and the game’s logo changed as well. If you ever make a video game, spend a lot of money on the game’s logo. It’s worth it. I love my logo so much. Also, the trailer had a longer time, which you can see more stuff in there.

The trailer continues on and leave you with this nice little vending machine. You question the game more since at first it’s like, ok another typical farming game, but throwing that vending machine at the end adds a twist… Anyways, this doesn’t describe the journey of my game development.

Harvest Island Current Progress

There’s fishing, crafting, weather changes, you can pet wild animals, tides a thing in the game, and fun little easter eggs like this.

A fun little Easter egg. Yeah, you can collect all 7 and make a wish.

Harvest Island Journey

I have worked so hard and tried my best to market my game. I’ve taken creative risk and danced with the law to make things exciting. NO ONE’S WATCHING! Literally, I’m taking an orange ball, and adding a red dot to it. And you have to collect 7 of them. This is so close to copy right infringement that I’m barely getting away with. Even a dancing cow wasn’t good enough to be interesting for that creative risk. And no, dancing cow isn’t a feature. I came to my senses.

And that has been my game development journey. I’m sending an SOS. I need help from the gaming community. I am a very transparent developer. All I want is for my game to get exposure. I like to watch other youtubers play my game and see their reactions. I like to talk to my fans and listen to their feedback about my game. I like to read reviews of my game. Good and bad! I love game development so much, it’ll be heart breaking for me to leave it. So, all I ask for you is to wishlist my game, and play my game during the steam October Festival. It’s on the first and the demo is practically free. Just record yourself playing and post it on youtube, I’ll watch it.

Wishlist Harvest Island

Follow us!

I’ll send an announcement on steam for those that are wishlisted. It’ll tell you that the demo is playable. Or just follow me on twitter or discord or instagram. I’ll pretty much tell you when you can play the game too.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/YobobGames

Discord: https://discord.gg/nUubNqSRT8

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yobobgames/

I’m Yobob, and this has been my game development journey.