April Devlog!

Look, I don’t need to tell you that it’s been a busy month. The fact that I’m posting April’s devlog in May should tell you all you need to know about that 😅

The good news is that there are really exciting things happening behind-the-scenes on Rolling Hills. The project is growing and evolving every day, and April continued that trend.

🛍️ Thrift Store

Another gorgeous model from Aender based on a concept created by Brittany. I love the colorful bricks and the two-story design. Currently this is the tallest building in Rolling Hills, and in general it adds wonderful variety and character to our little town.

Although you can collect furniture and aprons in a number of ways, the Thrift Store will offer a steady supply of each. As you make improvements to Rolling Hills, the number of items available at the Thrift Store will also increase!

Expect a lot more cute aprons to choose from!

🦥 Just Hangin’ Out

To me, the most challenging (and exciting) part of making a life-sim is defining your relationship with other characters. We use a lot of organic verbs like “hang out” and “befriend”, but what do those actually mean? Let’s talk about three important character behaviors and the games that do them best.

“Random” dialogue / Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing villagers feel alive because they’ve always got something new to say. This stands in stark contrast to the many RPGs and life-sims where characters will eventually stop talking to you or begin repeating their most recent dialogue.

To achieve this effect, Animal Crossing splits dialogue into a few different categories like greetings, questions, advice, gossip about other villagers, and many more. This gives the game plenty of options to choose from each time you interact with a villager, but ultimately it all circles back to the quality and quantity of writing.

Hang outs / Persona

I’ll be honest, I played Persona 4 and 5 on the easiest setting. I just wanted to blast through those dungeons and battles so I could hang out with my friends! As your bond deepens with each character, you’re given opportunities to spend meaningful time with them. These scenes are more scripted so they can advance the story and have more depth than the day-to-day stuff. The bottom line is that this is when characters bare their soul with you, ask questions, and react strongly to what you say and do.

Routines / Stardew Valley

Because it seeks to emulate classic Harvest Moon titles, Stardew’s dialogue and relationship mechanics are generally very straightforward, but that’s not a bad thing at all. Take routines for example: instead of the game determining and then randomizing a character's movements like in Animal Crossing, Stardew’s characters operate on routines that are not only easier to program, but help us better understand the character. If a character loves to read, it only makes sense we see her head to the library every day at noon, right? This sort of “show, don’t tell” storytelling helps each character come to life in ways that dialogue alone cannot.

🍣 Recipe effects

One of the most important design tasks I have is making sure that each recipe is unique in meaningful ways. Obviously each recipe requires different ingredients, appeals to different customers, and possesses a variety of stats (like the sell price), but I’m talking about the big differences, differences that will excite you and cause you to spend a few extra minutes deciding which recipe to learn next.

That brings me to recipe effects! Now each recipe comes with a powerful effect. These effects are activated and strengthened by playing a—Oops, I almost said too much!

What I can say are some example effects:

Plentiful Chance to produce multiple rolls

Flavorful Chance to add an additional, random flavor

Youthful Can restore a small amount of stamina

In my perfect world, I’d like to experiment with these tags being (somewhat) randomly applied to recipes, meaning that my California Roll might have the Plentiful effect, but my friend could have the same recipe with a different effect. Perhaps I could even merge two recipes to combine the effect from one with the ingredients of another. There’s a lot to consider, but I think these basics are exciting!

🕵️ Imitation Crab

What's that? You want an explanation for the crab-in-glasses? Well, if you insist!

Imitation crab (also known more bluntly as 'Crab Stick') is a common ingredient in sushi. In reality it's just miscellaneous white fish repackaged to resemble crab, but in Rolling Hills, it's a little more fantastical! Don't be shocked when you see one of these fellas on the end of your fishing rod, thanks to Ryan's 3D skillz.

❤️ Thank you for supporting us!

A sincere thank you to everyone who supports Rolling Hills. In case you missed it, we have a Steam page now where you can wishlist the game. Wishlists are surprisingly meaningful to developers and publishers, so please give it a click if you don’t mind.

It’s not lost on me that money is tight for a lot of people right now, so to the patrons specifically, thank you so much. We'll keep working hard to make Rolling Hills a great game for you all!