Mustelia
A downloadable game for Windows
Manage a band of plucky and endearing mustelids as they build a new home in this quiet valley.
The animals are able to work independently and cooperate with each other but have called on you to lead them so they can get their village up and running efficiently.
For the first day or so, your biggest challenges will be fulfilling their needs and handling their diverse personalities. But as time passes, you will find that mustelid recalcitrance is not the greatest threat to your success, and that perhaps this valley is not always so peaceful...
Current status: Waiting for more community feedback/interest
Where this project goes from here is up to you! If you enjoy it and think I should continue developing it, please write a comment below. I particularly need to know where I should go from here in terms of content and features. There are a lot of technical things I would improve moving out of prototype stage (e.g. improving pathfinding, optimising performance, etc.) and obvious things that are missing (e.g. sound, missing graphics/animations, options menu, etc.) but what I am particularly keen to hear from you is what you would love to see in the game. The game would always be first-person mustelid management, but outside of that, anything could happen!
- Is the game fun to play yet? Why/why not?
- How could this game develop so you would enjoy it more? (e.g. more building pieces/styles, more technologies to develop, more farming, more threats...)
- Alternatively, would you prefer a different setting? (e.g. crew of a space freighter, nomads in a desert caravan, underwater in a cyberpunk coral reef, explorers on random planets, in and on the branches of a giant tree...)
Changelog for 0.1.5:
- fixed sandbox delete tool deleting everything in the players line-of-sight
- fixed upgrading not refunding the cost of the original piece
- fixed owls spawning after loading a sandbox save (there should be no owls in sandbox mode)
- fixed crash caused by a mustelid trying to follow a path with no nodes in it
- added mustelid effect info during interact (hover for more information)
- added owl indicators (show direction and indicate level of danger)
- added lamp post (outdoor lighting)
- added owl-repelling ability to lights (including the campfire)
- buffed owls slightly by making them follow their target so they can't be dodged as easily by the player (take cover instead, such as behind a tree, near a light source, or in a house)
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Prototype completed!Dec 30, 2020
- Entire prototype changelogDec 28, 2020
Comments
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Seeing as the last comment was four years ago, are you still looking for feedback?
Sure! I can keep working on this if there is interest.
Definitely interested, as this is already very strong. I only have five right now, since I am struggling to keep the colony functional long enough for me to properly test the game. Firstly, a means to disable the owls would be useful. the option would provide more of a sandbox option. As for the owls themselves, I would recommend giving the player some means to counter them, or at least making the current form a random event. Similarly, colonist deaths should be better telegraphed. Currently, the only indicator is the owls screeching. Corn does nothing currently, which is costly to find out. Is it supposed to be another kind of food? Lastly, I still notice some pathfinding issues, notably with trees, anything above the ground level, and anything placed near beds. I will be eating shortly, so it may be some time before I respond again.
Edit: Added the feedback on owls. It is now the second recommendation out of five. (Sorry if I am too thorough.)
Not too thorough, it's wonderful to have feedback!
The owls are easily countered by shelter. Owls will not enter houses and mustelids will seek beds to sleep in at night time. The player can pass the night quickly by sleeping on a bed. I am, however, open to suggestions about counters, other night-time threats, and ways to telegraph danger.
Corn was an experimental feature. I'm not sure what to do with it.
The pathfinding engine needs something of a rewrite which wasn't worth it just for the prototype. It's quite fixable though.
I have created a Discord server in case anyone would rather converse in a space other than these comments:
https://discord.gg/VQEbvP8GpT
I mentioned a different counter since sufficient bed and shelter can be unobtainable at times (Especially when you add 4+ settlers in one night), the bad pathfinder can invalidate the run for cover, and it simply feels like owls are too weak in their current form. Corn would work well as a third food source, reducing the pressure on traps, which often eat into the building resources. I suggested disabling owls since it would allow me to move and do things freely at night, which would help significantly (Unless you are not supposed to gather resources and build things at night.). Danger should be telegraphed simply as a notice of who, how, why, and sometimes where. For references on threats, I recommend the Rebuild series and Hive Time (You easily could go down the semi-educational route Hive Time did). No Man's Sky's settlements is a great reference for settlement management (Especially in 3D games like this) and Minecraft continues to be a good source of things done wrong and right for sandbox games. (Your owls resemble phantoms, which that community considers a nuisance). A few more things I remembered, I would be careful with linear progression in this game, since players may use it to optimize the fun out of the game. I recommend keeping stone and wood as separate upgrade trees, as a player who wants to switch from one material to another can replace the walls. This fixes another issue I noticed: upgrades lose resources. If you are willing to deal with a game with a complicated relationship with SFWness, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is an excellent resource. That said, I would also be careful with open progression, as some players flounder when guidance and objectives are absent. While I do not know of something on balancing linear aspects, acgaudette (who is on itch) wrote several blog posts on balancing openness and sticking to your level of abstraction. Lastly, two things with construction. Firstly, built objects should not cost the full amount of resources until it is built. You should allow partial construction (The most common) or block construction until all resources are present. In addition, a proper planning mode would be very useful and help keep the settlers from bottlenecking on their auto buildings.
Notify me if you want me to put the suggestions on separate lines.
Thank you again for the feedback. I am assuming that you would like to see this game updated (rather than just providing the feedback for the sake of my own learning) and so my responses below are focused on next steps of development of Mustelia rather than games of this type in general.
"the bad pathfinder can invalidate the run for cover"
How bad is the pathfinding overall? The reason I ask is because it is a big job to fix properly or I could work on your other suggestions first and fix pathfinding later.
"it simply feels like owls are too weak in their current form"
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I thought the problem was owls are too dangerous? I would also interested to hear if you have any specific ideas for different owl counters and/or dangers.
"Corn would work well as a third food source"
Ok, that should be easy enough to do.
"you are not supposed to gather resources and build things at night"
This is correct. The valley is supposed to feel like a dangerous place at night.
"Danger should be telegraphed simply as a notice of who, how, why, and sometimes where."
This is good. I will consider those references and add a feature for this in the next release.
"upgrades lose resources"
I will investigate this and your suggested reference games.
"balancing linear aspects"
Thanks, I'll read up on this.
"two things with construction"
These should be relatively easy to implement but I am concerned about how to make the mustelids prioritise their projects and resources. I will think about this a bit more.
I think it's really fun so far and I think the next development should be that they can have children.
New experimental build has children/breeding. Give two mustelids privacy for the night.