January Dev Log: Projects For 2024 (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

It's been a bit quiet on the western front lately! I said that I'd be working on the game update for most of the month and I have been doing that, which has lead to less things to post about because, hey, focusing on A Tiny Furry In A Huge World. I do have a few things coming up here this week though! A poll, a story about paws n' shoes, and...

... this dev log! Development log? Yes, that thing!

Since it's the start of the year and all, I think now is probably the best time to start about the game projects that I'm working on and plan to release over the course of 2024! Bear in mind that plans might change and things might happen and stuff might get moved around, who knows, but, y'know, roughly here are the things that are going to be happening this year in terms of games. In terms of stories... well, I'll be writing those as always! Not much to say there other than that.

Games? Games! I think the above ramble about covers it, so let's get into game projects! 

Yes, we have a shiny new logo! For the last time I swear. I didn't really like the one that I made up for v1.3 so I went back to the basics and just did a shiny version of the old logo, basically? I think it looks nice. Easy to understand and fancy in the right ways.

Enough about logos! Let's talk about content. Naturally we have v1.3 coming up. I've talked about it a lot and you all probably know what's going on but just in case you're not in the loop, v1.3 is going to add a brand new gymnasium area to the game, two brand new characters, an absolute ton of new scenes/endings and some predator-focused content in Aimee Mode. 

There's still a fair amount of work to be done on v1.3, but all going well it should be done by April at the very latest really. Over the next couple of months I will be knuckling down pretty hard on it and pushing it toward completion. After v1.2 (which was a monster update) I said that v1.3 was going to be a smaller and more compact release, but... v1.3 is kinda spiralling out of control in terms of both word and scene count. It's definitely not compact anymore. It's actually almost certainly going to have more content than v1.2 had. I'm okay with this though. Big feature and content-rich updates are good.

My plans after v1.3 are a little complicated and maybe even a little scary. There will be a v1.4 but it is definitely going to be small and compact: really, seriously, not fucking around this time. v1.4 will be the version that closes off the game, completes it in a sense, I suppose. I don't want to go into my exact plans for it... mostly because I'm still chewing over them... but more than anything it's going to focus on closing up loose ends and giving existing characters a few exciting new endings. 

The reason for this is simple: the other projects I am making are significantly more complicated and likely won't see releases every month. So, on months when I'm not able to put out a release for... one of the games I'll talk about shortly... I'll be putting out whatever bits of v1.4 I've also been working on in the background, to kinda serve as a buffer when one of those other games isn't quite ready for a public release. This will keep content flowing and also mean that I don't have to crunch a bunch, which will be nice for my mental health!

It is sad that A Tiny Furry In A Huge World Plus is heading into something of a maintenance mode, but at the same time it's something that's been coming for over a year. Like, the writing has been on the wall for a while: v1.4 was always in my mind as the last version of the Quest game at least, future ports and related projects nonewithstanding. 

This year will mark the games fifth anniversary. Five years is a long time! I could keep writing content for the game for years and years honestly, just add more rooms and corridors and make the college even more of a maze somehow, but... I feel like it is the right time to move onto new things. At least, for a little while. No doubt in the future if I keep doing this for long enough then I'll work on that port or maybe even a proper sequel, who knows, but for now... yeah, five years, wow. Five years, 500,000 words of content, scenes in the hundreds and characters in the dozens... and an incredible community that's somehow formed around it.

WIth that being said, though, this year is the game's fifth anniversary. So I'm going to make sure it goes out with a bang. I have a little more than just v1.3 and v1.4 planned - actually, quite a lot more - but I'm definitely not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe after v1.3? I promise it's really spicy though. Like I say. It's the fifth fucking anniversary. It would be weird to not celebrate it with a whole bunch of fireworks.

Bear in mind that a lot of the information to follow is still very conceptual. I'm working out the details of this one, basically, and things are liable to change but this is roughly what it's going to look like.

For those of you who were unfamiliar, the original Vorevival - made in Twine fucking years ago - was a text-based survival RPG of sorts, complete with gear and turn-based battling and everything. You were a little guy - natural micro, born that way - who was trying to survive in a world of hungry macros. I only ended up making about three versions of it before canning it (Twine wasn't much fun to work in, especially when making an RPG) but it was a pretty neat game all in all and the passion that I had for it was only really squashed by the engine it was made in being unsuitable for it.

Now that I have access and experience in a far, far better engine for RPGs and games in general though that's not really an issue, which means that my passion for this particular game has been enflamed once again. It's going to be a much different game than it was before while also feeling familiar to the original, hopefully? Anyway, let's talk about it for a bit!

So, like the last game, this is a world of natural micros and natural, well, natural-sized people. The natural size people will be (mostly) anthropomorphic animals, or, furry people. I say mostly because the original game had a demihuman in it and people seemed to enjoy that so who knows, maybe one will end up winning a poll for this one?

The world specifically will be a modern futuristic sorta cyberpunk sorta world if you catch my drift. A couple hundred years in the future. Everything is very neon. Capitalism is king and all that. I don't want to say that it'll be a dystopia because it's very much not going to have dystopia vibes - if anything, I want it to feel kinda quirky and cute in a way - but there will be an undercurrent of that sorta stuff so to speak.

The natural micros in this case will be the Jepis from Macroville. Remember Macroville? I do! Lorewise, this game is kinda like a sequel to Macroville in a sense. Roughly, it's a couple hundred years after that game, the Jepis rapidly evolved and formed their own society with their own rules, and now they're living in the walls of people's apartments and wherever else they can. They also learned how to communicate in English and build stuff out of more than just socks. I'll also probably give 'em bones and make em a bit less gooey. They've evolved quite a bit, like I say.

The reason that I went for Jepis is because I think it'll work out interesting on a gameplay level. Jepis are more durable and less defenseless overall, and the survival elements and turn-based battling from the original game will be returning, so it'll make for more interesting set of scenarios and abilities and whatnot than just regular person but small I think.

I'm not quite ready to talk about how the combat works - I'll be showing it off in a month or two for sure, though - but it will be a lot more interesting than just pick ability do damage until enemy dies. It's going to be interesting and neat and feed into the survival gameplay loop and should feel pretty varied and fun.

As for the survival gameplay loop: like the last game, you will be heading out into the world of macros for food and resources. You won't just be looking out for yourself, though... you'll also be looking out for a colony of Jepis, or, perhaps, a community. By collecting food and gathering resources, you'll be able to make your colony grow by building new stuff and attracting new Jepis which will let you build even more stuff. So, fittingly, it's going to have a bit of Macroville DNA in it too. I think that this will make going out exciting and lead to some interesting decisions: do you focus on food to get more numbers, or do you focus on resources so you can build that new shop you've been looking at?

There will be a wide variety of places to visit/raid, and a wide variety of macros to meet in the process. Over the next month or two I'll be able to speak about this one a bit more, but, the process of going out will be fun and interesting and a little different every time you do it. 

Regular-sized people (or, the anthros of the game) are going to be a touch less aggressive than the were in the original Vorevival: as in, their first intention probably isn't going to be to eat you or otherwise destroy you. Jepis and regular people co-exist pretty well... for the most part... though you'll no doubt encounter a deviant or two that's more than happy to make you a snack, because you taste good and, well... who's going to notice one missing tiny thing? It's not a crime to devour a Jepi, after all: it's just kinda rude.

I have a fair bit of this one worked out already, at least in terms of engine stuff. Asset and writing wise? Basically nothing, but, in terms of how it all works behind the scenes, yeah, it's basically figured out. All going well the first playable build of this one should pop up around the middle of the year to tell the truth: it'll be a pretty basic build, but it'll give everyone a good idea of what's going on. Like A Tiny Furry In A Huge World, I want this game's development to be effected by the community in the sense that I'll be hosting a lot of polls for it - for characters and for areas and for scenarios - and just taking a lot of feedback in general. So I'd like to get an alpha out sooner rather than later.

I could talk about this one for a while, but I'm going to leave it at that because I think that gives everyone a rough idea of what's going on while still keeping some things pretty mysterious. If you're eager for more info, then... that's what these dev logs are for! I'll be talking about it and it's various systems and details and such in much more detail over the coming months.

This was the people's choice when it came to what game to develop next, so it's currently - at least in terms of upcoming projects - getting the vast majority of my attention. With that being said, though, it's also the most complicated of the upcoming projects in every single way. Writing? Yeah, I'm in the process of that, and there's going to be a whole lot of it. Graphics? Tons of them, it's gonna be a visual feast. Programming? Yeah you better believe that I have barely any idea what I'm doing and that's probably going to take a bit.

So, with that said, I would love to talk more about this, maybe even show some things off, but the truth is that I am not really ready to show anything or even talk about this one all that much! The only thing that I can say is that it's going to be my most ambitious game yet and also, probably, my most interesting? 

Like Vorevival, I can also say that I'll be talking about it much more over the year and showing off much more because it's probably going to be a subject in pretty much every dev log over the course of the year. So if you're eager for more details...

Look forward to it. It's coming. It's going to take a little bit but I promise it'll be worth it.

And I think that's it for now! Dev log done, over, complete. These are the three big game projects that I'm going to be pushing forward on this year. Closing down A Tiny Furry In A Huge World for a bit while opening up two brand new and very exciting doors... I think 2024 is going to be very cool. I hope I'm right!

This week is going to be action packed in terms of things. Tomorrow: a poll! After that... a story! Then, next week... the big preview build of A Tiny Furry In A Huge World Plus that I've been working on all month!

See you all soon! Until then, stay lovely!