A medieval farming and life game. Grow crops and fruit trees through the seasons, raise chickens, ducks, cows, goats, sheep and pigs, befriend the village of Thornbury, fish every pond and river, fight your way down an old mine, build rooms onto your farmhouse and furnish them, and cook what you gather. Every sprite is drawn by code, and it plays right in your browser, on a phone with touch controls, or with a controller.
The idea
A cosy medieval farming and life game: tend a plot, live through the seasons, and grow a small village life around it.
How it works
It's built in Godot 4 and exported to WebAssembly, so it runs in the browser with nothing to install, and as a Windows app for anyone who'd rather. Sign in and your farm is saved online, on this home server, each night you sleep, so it survives a cleared browser and follows you between the two. There are no hand-drawn image files: a Python script paints every tile, crop, building and villager at 32 pixels a tile, with dithered shading and outlines, so adding a crop or recolouring a roof is a code change.
The village
East of the farm is Thornbury. Six villagers walk their own routines with pathfinding, change their plans on days off and when it rains, and remember how you treat them. Talk to them every day and bring gifts they love, and they'll teach you recipes, hand you rewards and pin requests on the notice board.
The adventure
South of the village lies Whisperwood: a river and a pond for fishing, forage, and great old stumps of hardwood. At its edge is the old mine, 20 floors deep and 20 more in the red-lit Deep below, every floor a fresh cave carved by a little cellular-automaton step. You break rock for copper, iron and gems, hunt for the ladder hidden under one of them, and fight slimes, bats and crabs that pretend to be rocks. Fishing is a timing game: click while the darting fish is in the green.
Home
The cottage has an inside now: a room with a bed you wake up beside, a fire, and whatever you put in it. Twenty-five pieces of furniture, rugs that lie under everything, pictures and windows that hang on the wall, and four wallpapers and floors. Tomas the carpenter extends the house overnight, first with a stone wing and then into a two-storey farmhouse with a kitchen, and the house on the farm grows to match.
Cooking
The fireplace doubles as a kitchen: sixteen dishes made from what you grow, forage and catch. Big meals restore more, and many give you something for the rest of the day, like quicker feet, a stronger swing or a steadier fishing line. You start with four recipes; the rest are taught by villagers as you become friends, and the innkeeper sells a few.
Where it started
It began in May as a quick Phaser 3 prototype to find out whether the farming loop was fun. It was, so the whole thing was rebuilt from scratch in Godot.
What's next
Everything on the first plan is in: farming, the village, adventure, a home and cooking. What comes next is still being decided.
What I built
Updates to the game, day by day.
Faster joining
Playing with friends gets going sooner.
Everything added (5)
- Joining a friend's game is much quicker: their world is built in about two thirds of the time, with a "Travelling to ...'s farm" screen while it loads (loading your own farm and each new morning with friends are faster too)
- Your quests now sit under the clock, wrapped neatly in a column
- Scout's card has a little treasure chest for his pack and a Heal button, and his window is bigger and zoomed in
- If Scout is knocked out he goes home to rest by his water bowl, ready to be healed
- Dirt paths have smooth curved edges like the shoreline, and run right up to doors, paving and bridges instead of ending in a point
Islands, a dragon and HD magic
A big batch of things to do, and spells that look the part.
Everything added that day (8)
- Pets grow up: Grown at level 10 (bigger, tougher, and it digs something up for you once a day), Legendary at 20 (glowing gold, and it rallies you when you're badly hurt)
- Treasure maps: read one to see an X somewhere in the Wilds, then dig there with your shovel for an old chest of gold and loot
- Valley events: shooting stars that leave meteorites to break for star shards, a travelling caravan with rare things for a day, and high water when the big fish bite
- A weekly raid boss behind a gate in the Old Keep: a titan, a kraken, a dragon or a hydra, with slams you can see coming and waves of the dead, tougher for every friend you bring
- The Gauntlet: race ten floors of the Catacombs against the clock, the same floors for everyone all week, with a weekly leaderboard on the wiki
- Contests: the summer Fishing Derby (biggest fish wins), the pumpkin weigh-in at the Harvest Fair, and Hearth & Home, where the judges score your house
- Spellcasting looks the part: your farmer flings their arms wide, raises them overhead, then thrusts them out as the spell goes off, with light gathering in the hands, an orb overhead and a rune circle at your feet; spells glow smooth in HD instead of blocky pixels
- Boats and islands: sail from Saltmere's dock to Gull Isle (Old Pell the hermit and his rare wares), Wreck Reef (a wreck's strongroom and oyster beds with pearls) and Dragon Rock, where a dragon guards its hoard
Eight ways to face
Everyone in the valley can now face eight ways, the diagonals drawn turned three-quarters.
Everything added that day (14)
- Eight ways to face: the farmer (every hairstyle and hat, and all the armour), villagers and children, pets, the horse, the companion's beasts and the farm animals all have pictures for the diagonals, turned three-quarters
- Walking on the slant faces you on the slant; tools, swings, spells and arrows go that way too, and turning in the saddle turns the horse
- What's solid is what's drawn: every house, prop and piece of furniture is fitted to the picture you see, so walls drawn out past their tiles block you and the shadows and gaps beside things don't
- Moving loot: a piece picked up stays the size it was in the pack, and its info box keeps out of the way until you point somewhere else
- Info boxes redone, short and neat: the name in its rarity's colour, one line of what it is, then damage, armour and magic a row each
- Your pet keeps out of a fight: with a weapon out or monsters about, clicks go past it, and what it does when patted is a little bubble over it
- Your pet's card at the top left of the screen, as in Fate: its picture, name, level, health, experience, what it's up to and how full its bag is; click it and its inventory opens right there, with your pack across from it
- The Catacombs look like a catacomb now: soft brown tuff, walls lined with burial niches (skulls, shrouded bodies, stacked bones), runs of stacked skulls and tomb tablets, grave slabs in the floor, stone coffins (some broken open), heaps of skulls, candles still burning, cobwebs and burial urns to smash
- Disturbing the dead: open coffins (grave goods, or whoever is inside climbs out), scatter skull heaps (some knit into a skeleton), haunted urns, cobwebs that slow you and hide spiders, epitaphs on the wall tablets (some hide a purse), and now and then a sealed tomb: light its four candles to break the seal and fight its Tomb Guardian for the hoard
- The old mine looks like a mine: minecart track across every worked floor, curving round the corners to a buffer, lantern posts along it, timber props shoring up the rock, crates of ore, picks and pit props left lying, and ore carts to dig through
- A new preview video: half up in the light (the farm, the village, fishing), half underground (the mine, Catacombs fights, the dead waking, the sealed tomb's guardian, and new armour and gems in the pack)
- Play with friends: host your world and give your friends a four-letter code, and they come and play in it as themselves (their own farmer, pack, gold and gear, and what they find goes home with them). You see each other, chat, share the farm's changes and the host's clock, wake up to the same new morning, and fight the same monsters in the Catacombs and the mine. It runs through a small relay on baubra.com, so it works in the browser
- The Wilds got more interesting: milestones, wayside shrines and broken-down carts along the roads; ancient oaks, hunters' camps and fairy rings in the forests; old farmsteads, wild beehives and corn stooks on the plains; watchtowers (climb one to map the lands round it) and drystone walls in the hills; boardwalks over the bogs; shipwrecks on the coast; and forgotten statues with something carved on them
- New preview video with a friend in it: Rowan comes to visit while you host, says hello, and keeps beside you round the valley, down the mine and into the Catacombs fight
Real 3D art, and a valley that's alive
Every building, prop, fence, tree and rock redrawn with real depth by a small 3D renderer made for pixel art, and the valley filled with life: smoke, birds, butterflies, falling leaves, glinting water. Also stone walls in the Catacombs.
Everything added that day (31)
- A small 3D renderer built for pixel art: each building is a real 3D model, and every wall, roof and side is painted with its own windows, beams, tiles and doors, then lit, with shadows under the eaves and in the corners
- All 37 buildings redrawn: side walls with their own windows, real roofs, chimneys, steps, porches and signs on brackets, with life round them (woodpiles, barrels, carts, herbs, the witch's cauldron, hay spilling from the barn loft, a mine tunnel with an ore cart)
- 348 props in 3D: fences and walls that join into real runs, lamps, chests, barrels, wells, signposts, market booths with their keepers behind the counter, machines, graves and furniture; lamps and fires really flicker now
- 151 trees, rocks and plants redrawn with volume: lit leaf clusters, round barked trunks, layered pines, bare snowy branches in winter
- A second pass on the 3D art: a gentler angle so roofs sit centred and round things look round, the fireplace mantel holds its colour while the fire flickers, and the small things that only looked stacked are back to their clean pictures
- Sticks no longer block the way: you wade through them, a little slower, and there's less rubble to pick through in the Catacombs
- Bridges redrawn: grained planks with knots and nails, the water glinting through the cracks, rails on posts along the open sides
- Shadows fall the right way, away from the light that every picture is lit by, and swing round a little through the day
- Calmer, finer grass with wide natural patches of colour instead of repeating swirls, and paths, cobbles and sand that fray raggedly into it instead of meeting it along the tile lines
- Shields and weapons in the farmer's hands sized down so none of them dwarf him
- Cobbles laid as real irregular stones, each its own shade with moss in the cracks; earth mottled and strewn with pebbles; grass with tussocks and thin spots, so nothing repeats tile by tile
- Every weapon has a Reach now (Close, Medium, Long, Very long): a Longsword or a Pike keeps them further off than a club or a dagger
- Wheat, barley and rye grow as full sheaves of stems with plump whiskered ears
- No more box running along in front of you as you walk: it only marks the tile you point at, or the one you're working
- Hop down off a cliff by walking off the edge; going up still takes the stairs
- The mine's glowing crystals come out with a pickaxe: brew them into a Glow Tonic (a light that follows you) or set them in a Crystal Lamp
- Barrels and crates in the mine and at the Wilds' old camps smash open for gold, potions and the odd piece of gear; opened chests stay open chests
- Magic weapons spend mana and the rest a little energy; trees come down in four chops; the plaza's corners curve; gentler lamps and half the fireflies
- Caves of real rock: lumpy tops, wandering edges and sloping corners instead of square blocks; in the Catacombs, earth spills raggedly over the flags where the castle's broken into the cave
- Silas gave up his shop: he keeps a tent by Thornbury's stream now and wanders about beside it
- Brady's fifth valley plan: a grove east of town, Hesper's Remedies back in Thornbury among the trees, the road east along the stream
- Silas's camp by the stream: a bench at the fire, his crates stacked by the tent
- The Wilds and the valley meet properly now: the snow and the bog carry on over the border, and the woods run across it instead of stopping at a hedge of trees
- On the world map the valley fades into the Wilds round it, instead of sitting in a hard box
- The world map draws the valley in the same style as the Wilds, so it reads as one land
- Frostpeak's snow runs into the grass round it in long wandering tongues, in the valley and out into the Wilds
- Ground blends better everywhere: the Highlands run into Frostpeak's snow in drifts, paths bend in curves instead of steps, and the Catacombs' cave rock runs over the castle walls
- Chimney smoke that thickens at mealtimes and in winter, windows flickering at night and going dark as the village goes to bed
- Flocks of birds with shadows (crows in autumn, gulls by the sea), sparrows that peck and fly off, butterflies, bees, dragonflies and summer fireflies
- Falling leaves and blossom petals, sun glints and ripples on the water, fish that leap, breath on cold mornings, dust on dry paths
- Where a Catacombs wall meets the floor, a rim of big dressed coping stones; inside thick walls, mossy rubble in four looks
HD-2D, tidier menus and one way to shop
The valley now looks like a lit miniature (HD-2D, the look of Octopath Traveler): buildings drawn with real depth, sun shadows, glowing lamps and sun rays. Before that, the menus got a clean-up and every shop now trades the same way.
Everything added that day (20)
- HD-2D graphics, the new default: the pixel art stays, but it's lit like a little model you're looking down on
- Sun shadows: every tree, house, fence, crop, person and animal casts one, long to the west at dawn, short at noon, long to the east in the evening
- Buildings and every structure redrawn with real depth: side walls in their own stone, plaster and timber carried round the corner, the sloping ends of the roofs in their own tiles or thatch, chimneys, and sides and tops on fences, lamps, carts, benches, barrels and furniture, lit by the morning sun and shaded in the evening
- Lamps, windows, fires and the hearth glow softly into what's round them at night
- Slanting sun rays and drifting dust on clear days, golden mornings and evenings, cool blue nights
- Settings has HD-2D, Smooth and Classic pixels, for older computers
- Every tabbed window is now one size in one place, so the tabs stop jumping around as you switch
- Nine tabs became six (Pack, Crafting, Hero, People, Journal, Map), with a second row of sub-tabs for Hero and the Journal
- The 212 crafting recipes are sorted into lists (Farm, Tools & gear, Building, Lights, Garden, Village, Statues...) plus a Can make filter
- Pause and Settings rearranged into headed sections, and a close x on every window
- A new test photographs all 25 windows and fails if anything spills outside one; it caught four that did
- Crafting: recipes you haven't learned show as ??? with a silhouette and how to learn them (their writing had been invisible)
- A bug check: two read-throughs of the code found 21 problems (saves in the Wilds, trees that grew back, tappers lost, chests wider than the screen...), all fixed and tested
- Villagers you can catch: walk up and they stop, say hello and show the key to talk; a click anywhere on them works
- Gloves take one slot; Town Portals only work in the Catacombs
- Every shop now trades the same way: the shopkeeper's wares sit in a grid like your pack; click to buy, drop your things on their side to sell
- Everyone buys almost anything: full price for their own trade, more for what they want, less for the rest (the woodcutter takes wood, but the carpenter pays far more for it)
- Sold something by mistake? It waits on their side to buy back for what you got
- Upgrades, building, animals, recipes, healing and geodes moved to a Services tab; Merchants' Row uses the same window
- Item details in a shop say what it costs or what it would fetch there
A bug hunt, then a world ten times bigger
A full balance pass, then the Wilds: 96 generated lands round the valley, and over a hundred new things to craft and put down.
Everything added that day (11)
- Stats can't run away any more: crits, life steal, attack speed, speed, reflect and magic find all have ceilings, and deep enchantments no longer roll 60% life steal
- Spells rebalanced: Magic used to count twice, so Firebolt hit for 50 times a monster's health by floor 60; Whirling Blades, Arcane Ward and Dread toned down, Frost Nova and potions made stronger
- Bugs fixed: monsters dying twice (double loot and XP), ice resistance doing nothing, copied hunt prizes, gear lost from full mailboxes and shops, enchantments wiped from stored gear, health and energy cut on loading, mushroom hut upgrades forgotten
- Money loops closed: buying fish to cook, enchant-and-sell gear, fertilizer that never ran out, free seeds from every harvest, two-day pigs
- New: the Gilded Runner (a golden slime that flees and sheds gold), a reward for clearing every monster on a floor, armour set bonuses, crops worth a quarter more in season, and Elda's dish of the day
- The wiki has a By the numbers counter for everything in the game, and new Farming and Crafting pages: every crop ranked by gold a day, the fruit trees, fish, recipes, dishes and machines
- Brannoc's shop sells any kind of loot now, with rare and unique pieces turning up now and then (dear), and some of it unidentified
- The Wilds: 96 lands round the valley, ten times its size, made up fresh for each world: snowy fells, forests, downs, fens, rocky hills with cliffs, lakes, rivers and a long coast
- Roads, signposts and waystones to travel between, caves with monsters and treasure, ruins, old camps and caches, richer the further you go
- Only the lands near you are built (a few rows a frame), so the game stays quick; what you change out there is kept
- 106 new things to craft and place (garden, lamps, camp gear, market stalls, walls, statues, paths) and six materials found only in the Wilds
Sound in the browser, and the Catacombs' hall cleared out
The web version plays its music and sounds again, renamed farms keep their names, and the stair down goes straight to where you left off.
Everything added that day (51)
- Brady's fourth valley plan: Thornbury rearranged (Tobin and Brannoc to the north side, the guild east of the square, the museum in its place), Hesper's Remedies out at the Old Keep, Oswin's hut and Garrick's booth gone (Ansel sells Garrick's things), fruit trees and a ring of new trees
- Fennick the minstrel wanders Thornbury instead of keeping a house; Garrick sells what Ansel did; Tobin cracks geodes and takes over Oswin's stone trade
- Eight new spells (Ice Lance, Poison Cloud, Whirling Blades, Thunderstorm, Arcane Ward, Regrowth, Blink, Dread) and every spell properly animated: trails, shockwaves, forked lightning, soul wisps, a rain cloud, scorch and frost marks, flashes and screen shake
- Casters drop wizard staffs and spell tomes: each kind carries its own line of staffs (the best it can at your depth) and its own spells, so you can hunt the one you want
- The Catacombs never swarm (twenty at most, twenty-six on busy floors); six new casters and summoners (Ash Cultist, Bone Caller, Rime Witch, Storm Seer, Grave Lord, Hollow Priest); the great beasts and most hunted bosses cast spells and call up help; every beast its own speed and sight range, wandering until it spots you; nothing walks or flies through walls
- Everything that lives in the mine turns up in the Catacombs too: crabs, red and purple slimes and wisps
- Deep armour, rings and necklaces in all 24 materials; 48 new ring and necklace designs, each with its own built-in power; gems rewritten to work like Fate's (15 kinds, different effects in weapons and armour, sockets by item height, named one-of-a-kind gems, fire/ice/lightning monsters and resistances); the pet now wears two rings and a necklace.
- Deep weapons: ten new materials past chaos (bloodiron to eternal, floor 66 down), each with its own trick on a hit; 130 new weapon designs, wizard staffs that shoot magic and power up your spells, three new spells (Chain Lightning, Meteor, Soul Siphon) and 30 new unique weapons. Monsters now can never exist above ground.
- A hundred more beasts out of Greek, Norse, Celtic, Slavic and Finnish tales: the Catacombs now go down to floor 452, ending with Kronos and Ymir
- Hunts on the quest board: a named beast glowing in a red halo waits on a floor; slay it and bring back the fine weapon it carries, and it's yours. And every beast is the size its tale says: a cyclops or Surtr towers over you, a nisse comes up to your knee
- Fifty new beasts in the Catacombs out of Greek myth and the northern folk tales, a new one every three floors from floor 5 to 152: nisser, satyrs and draugar near the top, then harpies, trolls, gorgons, the Minotaur, frost giants and the Hydra, down to Surtr and Typhon. Some charge, some fly through walls, and the Hydra splits in two
- Brady's second plan: the quest board and the portal stone moved to the Old Keep by the Catacombs' stair (Town Portals bring you up there now), with pines, standing stones and more graves about the valley
- Brady's valley plan, applied from his planner's new Apply button: a graveyard by the Catacombs' stair where Aldous walks in a violet cloak, Silas's Gamble up in the highlands, and every tree, bush and rock can now be moved in the planner
- Gold flags on the map show where each quest sends you next, and the Catacombs' quest board is an old cracked standing stone
- Weapons scale like Fate's now: every one hits for a range and swings Fast, Normal, Slow or Slowest, and there are 125 unique weapons (about ten of every kind)
- Chaos gear is no longer rainbow: black metal cracked with glowing veins that pulse
- Every kind of armour has its own colours, and there are robes and more: Vestments, Battle Robe, Gambeson, Fur Coat, Mitre, Kettle Hat, Slippers
- Every weapon has its own colours too: blued steel, rose gold, verdigris, black glass with a red edge, magenta flame and more
- Every weapon down the Catacombs is its own design now (168 of them, Shortsword to Twinblade, Hatchet to Rift Axe, Stick Bow to Twinbow), and the wiki has an Armoury page showing them all
- 48 kinds of armour, each its own shape: robes, mantles, ring coats, laminar, brigandine, breastplates and bulwark plate, coifs, pointed hats, horned and visored helms, sandals, riding boots, sabatons, targes, heaters and more
- A MidEvil wiki at /midevil/wiki: every monster, piece of loot, place, skill and talent, made from the game itself (and a Wiki button in the pause menu)
- Every material has its own style of weapon, armour, ring and necklace now, not just its own colour
- Pets get talents too: Keen Nose, Haggler and Second Life
- Rivers flow straight over the old borders between places (no more strip of land across them), and cliffs end properly there
- Mining, fishing and combat get talents too: Prospector, Gem Eye, Double Catch, Master Angler, Tough Hide, Last Stand and more
- Talent points: every skill level earns one, spent on the talents you want in the Skills page
- New Ranching and Building skills; Farming, Ranching, Foraging and Building earn talents at levels 3, 6 and 10
- The Catacombs' quest board is a small, spooky box on the hotbar; blocking takes a little energy
- Thornbury's portal stone appears once you've read a Town Portal in the Catacombs; no more midnight nagging
- Guarding shows the shield raised in front of you, and the hotbar's shield spot says F
- Phones get a Guard button; controllers guard with the left trigger and can work the spellbook; touch buttons no longer overlap
- You can walk diagonally between things that look apart (barrels, posts, fences that don't join): solid only where drawn
- Hold F to raise your shield: half pace, most of a blow from in front stopped
- The spell column is half the size
- Music and sound effects play in the browser again (they had gone silent there)
- A renamed farm keeps its new name, even if the game is still open on another computer
- The Catacombs' stair takes you straight to the floor you were last on; the hall at the top is gone
- Gear vendor booths by the Catacombs' stair and outside Brannoc's, and Silas the gambler has his own shop in Thornbury
- With a weapon out, right-click casts your active spell
- Songs are now two to three minutes long, and the door sound going in and out of places is gone
- No more rain falling in the Catacombs or inside shops
- Identified gear and gear with gems in it sell for more; right-click a piece to take its gems out
- Set gems show on their piece as little cut gems in their own colours
- Quieter birdsong, echoes and sound effects to start with
- Crab pots go in the river, Thornbury's too
- Gems only fit belts, necklaces, rings and some helmets, shields and weapons
- The armour you wear shows on your farmer, tinted to its metal
- A spellbook like Fate's: F1-F5 pick the active spell (shown down the right of the screen), right-click casts it
- Shops show item info in a proper panel; unidentified gear keeps its rarity a secret
- Fall in the Catacombs and your things wait in a bag where you fell; a Town Portal saves your place
- Your quests show on screen wherever you are, and build mode zooms out
A planner, and the valley rebuilt to plan
Brady drew where everything should go on a map of the valley, and the game was rebuilt to match.
Everything added that day (17)
- Aldous the Enchanter now runs a little purple tent stall on North Street, with a swirling crystal ball
- A valley planner: a map of the whole valley drawn from the game, where buildings drag around and paths and cobblestones paint on
- Brady's own plan, built: Thornbury rearranged, the Catacombs moved to the Old Keep, the mine to Fenmire, Hilde's cottage to Whisperwood
- Pink cherry trees now grow only in their own blossom grove in Wildflower Meadow
- Brady's rivers and beach painted in, with smooth curved shores and bridges where roads cross the water
- MidEvil is now 'a Thornbury tale'
- A spell bar: up to five spells equipped at once, Q to cast the chosen one, Z to switch, Shift+1-5 to cast any of them
- Drag spells onto the spell bar; casting takes a second of arm-waving, and a hit spoils it
- Rivers redrawn with smooth curving banks
- A bigger pack (five rows of twelve), plain slots so gold items stand out, and weapons kept out of the hotbar
- Your equipped weapon shows in your hand; experience pops up over your head
- The Town Portal book holds ten readings, and a one-use Town Scroll
- Cleared Catacombs floors stay cleared, more chests are mimics, and the portal stone remembers your floor
- Thornbury's fountain heals you for free, and Aldous the Enchanter walks about in front of his stall
- Spells work like Fate's: Attack, Defense and Charm spells with Magic requirements, F1-F5 pick the active spell, and magic skills to spend points on
- Gems work like Fate's: they stay in their sockets, the gem cutter saves either the gems or the piece, and holding a gem lights up gear with an empty socket
- Townsfolk step about near their shops, ready to serve when it's their time
A bigger valley, an adventurer's life, the Catacombs, spells and a true companion
Doubled the farm and added new places, made farming quicker, added farm helpers and shops you can walk into, then made MidEvil an RPG too: levels, armour, enchanting, an endless dungeon, spells, a pet that fights beside you, and achievements for every world.
Everything added that day (27)
- Crops grow in one or two nights, in any season. Skip the watering or the fertilizer and they just take a little longer, they never wither
- No more scythe: weeds, reeds, crops and dead plants come up with a click, whatever you're holding
- Chopping a tree leaves a seedling of its kind to plant, and it's a full tree again in three or four days; fruit trees grow in three or four days and fruit all year
- Worm spots in the grass give worms (bait), and the glinting spots hold the buried finds
- Grass turf goes over any hole, bare soil or path, anywhere, even the old roads; ponds need six tiles of water before fish move in
- 50% more energy, and it comes back while you stand still for a moment
- The shipping box opens a full grid: click things in, or ship all your produce at once
- Reach up to five tiles with the mouse; building and moving buildings live in the menu beside the pack and crafting; the day of the week stands out on the clock; each world shows how long you've played it
- The farm is twice the size, with wild land to clear (older farms get theirs too) and new roads west and south-east
- Three new places west of the farm: Bramblewood's deep woods and bramble thickets, the Wildflower Meadow, and Willowmere's willow lake with a jetty
- One river: Stonefall Falls spills across the farm into Thornbury's stream, through the Old Keep and out to sea; Saltmere Shore moved to the valley's south-east corner, away from Frostpeak's snow
- Berry bushes in five kinds (bramble, raspberry, blueberry, elderberry and snowberry), each with its own season; road signs naming one place have a single board
- Farm helpers: irrigation channels that water the soil beside them once they're joined to a pond or river, a harvest golem that picks ripe crops into its basket every morning, and a compost bin that turns scraps into fertilizer
- The cave in the rocks became a Mushroom & Bat Hut that Tomas builds and you can move anywhere; he makes it bigger twice, up to the Grand Hut under a giant mushroom cap with logs and bats both
- Do up the outside of your house: lanterns by the door, flower boxes and a weathervane; inside, four new wallpapers, four new floors, four new windows, and storage (dresser, wardrobe, trunk, cabinet)
- Walk into every building in town: the inn, the forge, the workshop, the herbalist's, the guild, the boathouse and more, each furnished its own way, with whoever's in there to talk to
- Shopkeepers stay behind their counters all through their opening hours; every villager with a shop buys from you, and pays more for their own trade (fish to Ansel, crops to Elda, ore to Bram, wood to Tomas)
- Levels and attributes: experience from everything you do, and 5 points each level for Vitality, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity and Magic; a Character page shows what it all adds up to
- A Fate-style pack: wear things on the paperdoll (head, neck, two rings, weapon, body, shield, hands, feet); armour in six tiers from cloth to obsidian, shields and gem amulets
- Enchanting tables in the guild and Oswin's hut: gold and a gem add a random magic bonus (up to three), and you can have them taken off again
- The Catacombs under Thornbury: endless floors that get harder as you go, new monsters (bone bats, frost slimes, ghouls, shades, gold slimes), golden champions, and treasure chests with gear as good as the floor is deep
- A dungeon clerk who sends you to the landings you've reached, a gear vendor, quest boards with three new quests a day for gold and experience, and Town Portal books that take you up to a portal stone in the square and back down again
- Seven spells learned from tomes: Firebolt, Frost Nova, Heal, Haste, Light, Recall and Rain Call (which waters your crops), cast with Q for mana
- Your pet as a companion: name it anything, tell it to follow, stay or go home; it fights beside you, levels up with a skill tree, fetches loot into its own bag, can run to town to sell it, wears rings and a gem, and a fish turns it into a wolf, a bear or a drake for a while
- Trees, buildings and the hotbar go see-through when you walk behind them
- Walk with the mouse if you like: click to walk there, or hold to follow the pointer
- Achievements for each world: 41 to earn, with 18 new ones for levels, the Catacombs, spells, your pet, quests, enchanting and more, earned as they happen
The Deep, one joined-up valley, and worlds of your own
Took the mine twenty floors deeper, joined every place into one valley whose ground blends at the borders, filled the woods with new kinds of tree, let you keep several farms as worlds, and reorganised the game's code so new updates come quicker.
Everything added that day (9)
- The Deep: 20 more mine floors below the old mine, lit red, with skeletons, wisps and purple slimes, gold ore to smelt into bars, and the Heart of the Mountain waiting at the bottom
- Gold tools: the furnace smelts gold bars and Bram upgrades your tools one tier further (a gold hoe tills seven tiles at once), plus an obsidian blade and shadow boots from the Deep
- The Honours: 24 milestones across farming, fishing, friendship, money, the mine and building, each with a reward, kept in your journal
- One valley: the places now fit together edge to edge with no gaps, every road meets the road across the border, and where two places meet their ground runs into the next (snow creeping into the highlands, marsh moss into the woods, grass up the slopes of Frostpeak)
- Saltmere's sea became a bay fed by Thornbury's stream, with a sandy far shore running into the Old Keep, and winter now snows over the whole valley, the marsh too
- New trees that differ by place and season: birches, maples that turn scarlet in autumn (tap one for maple syrup), wild cherries that are the only trees in blossom in spring, firs, and dead snags in the marsh
- Every fruit tree got a shape of its own, so only apple trees show apples
- Your worlds: keep as many farms as you like, each shown with a picture of how it looked when it last saved; carry on with any of them, start a new one without losing the others, or delete one you're done with (online too, if you're signed in)
- Behind the scenes: the game's code was reorganised into smaller files (each play-test on its own, the shared world code in eight layers, the menus by topic), so updates are quicker and safer to make
Build mode, a family, and a world to shape
The biggest day yet: rooms to add onto the house, a family to start, your own farmer and farm, four more festivals, the Adventurer's Guild, fish ponds, thunderstorms, seasons you can see, and a world you can reshape and decorate anywhere. Also fixed about 60 bugs found in a big round of play-testing.
Everything added that day (20)
- Build mode for your house: draw new rooms against it (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, study, nursery and more), open doorways between them, pick each room's wallpaper and floor, and buy, move or sell furniture from a catalogue
- Fixed about 60 bugs found in a big round of play-testing (95 reports)
- Fishing became a timing game: click while the fish is in the green to land it
- A family: after the wedding, talk with your spouse about a baby, who arrives in the cradle, gets a name from you, and grows into a toddler wandering the house
- A scrying glass in the house with tomorrow's weather, a fortune for the day's luck, a weekly recipe and farming tips; luck nudges crops, foraging, geodes and the treasure chests that come up while fishing
- Stonefall Falls, a mountain valley where a river pours over three cliffs as waterfalls into a deep pool under snowy peaks, with stairs, a bridge and a lookout
- 25 new crops, 41 across the four seasons, from garlic, peas and tulips to grapes, cranberries, roses and winter rye; scything grass can turn up wheat seeds and chopping an oak an apple sapling
- Four more festivals, eight in all: the Flower Dance round the maypole, Lantern Night on the stream, the Spirit's Eve hedge maze and the Festival of Ice fishing contest
- Make your own farmer (hairstyle, hair colour, skin, clothes and hat), name your farm, and choose where it is: a meadow, a river bend, deep woods, a rocky hilltop or a lakeside
- Move any farm building, from the farmhouse and barns to the greenhouse (crops and all), and signs naming where every road leads
- An Adventurer's Guild by the mine, run by Gunnar, with swords, rings and a Monster Slayer goal board; nine rings to wear two at a time, from a Glow Ring to a Vampire Ring
- A slime hutch where you hatch slime eggs and keep up to eight slimes that make goo, and a cave on the farm to fill with mushroom logs or fruit bats
- Fish ponds that breed whatever fish you put in and lay roe, and five legendary fish hidden around the valley, each catchable only once
- Boots to wear alongside your rings, for defence and speed, and room in the family for a second child
- Thunderstorms with rain you can see and lightning you can catch in a lightning rod, warp totems, bins to rummage through in the village, and a zoom-out that keeps the pixels crisp
- A world you can reshape: farm anywhere, build bridges and stone steps, dig your own way through to the next place, and explore the ruined Old Keep; cleared trees and bushes grow back over time
- Bigger coops and barns with an incubator and new young, a three-night winter Night Market, and secret notes that lead to buried treasure
- Seasons you can see (golden autumns, snowy winters), a furnace for metal bars and bigger chests, a manor to build, a farmhouse you can repaint and re-roof, and autosave
- A map of the valley drawn from the world itself (it changes as you build, clear and farm), and portal stones to step between the places you visit most
- Build and decorate anywhere: walls that join up as you place them, doors, paved floors, signs you write on, and dozens of new pieces of furniture and garden decorations, from a grandfather clock to a windmill
Rebuilt in Godot, and the valley comes to life
Rebuilt the game from scratch in Godot so it plays right in the browser, then grew it in one long day: the village of Thornbury, a forest and a mine, a farmhouse to furnish, cooking, animals, skills, festivals, romance, a bigger valley with new biomes, a museum, pets, and play on phones and controllers.
Everything added that day (22)
- Rebuilt in Godot 4, playing right in the browser, with all the pixel art generated in Python: every tile, crop, building and face is drawn in code
- Seasonal farming: crops, daily watering, fertilizer, silver and gold quality, crows and scarecrows, and a shovel to lay out paths and move bushes
- A village of six people with their own daily routines, friendships, gifts, shops and requests
- Adventure: a forest to forage, a 20-floor mine of caves generated fresh every visit, sword fights and fishing
- A house you can walk into, furnish and decorate, which the village carpenter extends into a two-storey farmhouse
- Cooking: 16 dishes from your crops, forage and fish, with boosts that last the day and recipes you learn from friends
- Sign in to save your farm online and carry on anywhere, in the browser or the new Windows version
- Six kinds of farm animals in a coop and barn: chickens and ducks lay eggs, cows and goats give milk, sheep grow wool and pigs dig up truffles, all better the more you care for them
- Fishing in any water, from the farm pond (home of the rare goldfish) to ponds you dig yourself with the shovel
- Five skills that level up as you play (farming, foraging, mining, fishing, combat), each making you better at it and teaching new things to build
- Artisan machines: kegs, preserves jars, a cheese press, a loom, an oil maker and bee houses turn your harvest into wine, jam, cheese, cloth and honey, and bombs for the mine
- Fruit trees (cherry, apricot, peach, orange, apple, pomegranate) that fruit every day of their season and get better every year, and tappers for oak resin and pine tar
- Four seasonal festivals in the village square: an egg hunt, a midsummer soup feast, a harvest fair where your display is judged, and a Winter Star gift exchange
- Heart events with every villager, and dating and marriage: your spouse moves in, heads to work and helps around the farm
- A bigger valley: Saltmere Shore and the Greyfell Highlands, with Maren the boatwright (crab pots) and Oswin the stonecutter (who cracks your geodes), and a map that fills in as you go
- Biomes and heights: cliffs and stone stairs, the snowy terraces of Frostpeak and the misty Fenmire marsh
- A museum to fill, run by Rowan: dig up artifacts and fossils all over the valley, find minerals in geodes and the mine, and watch the display cases fill up
- The Old Guildhall to restore room by room with bundles, earning a greenhouse, minecarts and more, and plenty to craft: sprinklers, chests, lanterns, gates, benches and machines
- A dog or cat of your own, and a horse to ride around the valley
- Wild animals to catch and tame (rabbits, foxes, deer, hedgehogs, frogs and snow hares), crops for winter, and letters in the mailbox from your neighbours
- Plays on phones and tablets with an on-screen thumbstick and buttons, or with a game controller, full screen on any screen shape, and a settings page
- Its own whimsical background music: a recorder and lute tune in a lilting 6/8, composed and synthesised in a Python script, with no recorded samples
The first prototype
A quick Phaser 3 prototype to find out whether the farming loop was fun: till, plant, water and harvest through the seasons. It was, so the whole thing was later rebuilt from scratch in Godot.