Cards of Gluttony Dev Log #16 [26/05/2024] (Patreon)

This month, I've been doing a lot of work on the new side activities that have been mentioned previously.

To refresh your memory: the game is in dire need of more minigames, as there are currently only two activities to pass time in the game: fishing and the gym minigame, which isn't even available most days! There is technically also the jogging minigame, but because it was originally a last-minute addition with barely any mechanics or rewards, it will either be completely reworked in the future, or removed entirely. Which is a great segue to talk about an activity that I have already reworked. Or, to be more specific: it is an activity that didn't use to have a minigame attached to it.

Returning to the forest

Currently, going to the forest will simply lead you to some dialogue that randomly bestows items to you. These items are:

• Flowers

• Herbs

• Shedbeast

Notably: Flowers and Herbs are both items that can be obtained through other means. Flowers can be picked up on the overworld, and herbs can be bought at the store. This makes foraging fairly useless, as the only motivation to do it would be to get the Shedbeast, which has a ~4% chance to be found every time you visit the forest.

This makes going to the forest mostly useless, unengaging and unfun, as it is a mere glorified dice rolling machine.
... but you know what is fun? Rolling dice where you can affect the outcome:

(No, it's not Tetris.)

Say hello to the new minigame that will greet you when you enter the forest. Those familiar with logic-based puzzles such as Sudoku and Nonograms may see some inspirations here already.

In this minigame, you uncover items by opening up tiles on a 6x6 grid. Items are represented by the block shapes you can see on the right, which are 4-block Tetris-like shapes, or 1-block single squares. An item is only revealed once you uncover its entire block, and with a limited amount of tiles you can open, the goal becomes to find as many items as possible every time you head to the forest.

There are numbers attached to each row and column of the grid, which signify how many different shapes are in that area. Using this information, as well as the knowledge of which shapes you are looking for, you can make deductions about which tiles contain a block.

However, this minigame is equal amounts luck and skill, as the information you have is rarely enough to find all items with 100% certainty. I've intentionally designed it this way to add some variety and replayability to the minigame, as being able to consistently clear the board would become repetitive fairly quickly.

This also ties in to the new method of obtaining the coveted Shedbeast: fully uncovering all items will grant you a chance to obtain a Shedbeast as a bonus (on top of the very low chance that it is one of the items in the blocks), which gives players who familiarize themselves with the mechanics a bit of an extra chance to find it.

I've attached a short video of me clearing one board to give you an idea of how the minigame works, but I'll leave the full explanation of the rules for when you run into it in-game!

New materials!

Directly related to the new foraging minigame is the addition of new materials! There would be very little point in creating an entire minigame for foraging if I didn't fix the abysmal item pool, after all.

This will also address another issue the game currently has: a very small variety of crafting materials. Currently most of the recipes in the game depend on the fish obtained from the fishing minigame, with the occasional flowers or herbs. Now that foraging is an entire thing, it is time to add some materials associated with this minigame:

(Look at all these plant and plant-adjacent things!) 

You may recognize the icon on the bottom left, which looks very similar to the current icon for flowers: the current flower icon will replaced by the one in the top right. The old icon has been updated to look a bit more interesting, and will be used for one of the newer, slightly rarer materials instead.

But perhaps most interestingly, you'll notice the icon on the top left is... some sort of assortment of seeds? Why yes, they are. Which makes foraging the perfect tie-in for the next activity that will be added: gardening!

Sowing the seeds of the gardening minigame

I have yet to implement gardening, but so far the design notes point towards it being more of a brief distraction to check in on every few in-game days, rather than a full-blown minigame to spend hours on. Here is the idea so far:

After obtaining your first seeds from the foraging minigame, you'll be able to wander into the local community garden, where you will be offered a spot by the person in charge. And who might be this person in charge, you ask?

(A familiar face!)

You may recognize him as the shop clerk, who has been in the game for quite some time now! It took me quite a bit to finally get around to involving him in some kind of plotline, but I finally got around to it!

And so that makes this two new activities that will be added to the game: foraging and gardening. It might be enough to make the game feel a bit more fresh for a bit, but I would like to add at least one more thing before the next update releases. Development of this third activity is currently in its early stages, so I'll keep it a mystery until I have more to show you!

Jazz for the soul

Here is an aspect of the game I haven't talked touched in a while: the music! In fact, I haven't done anything with it ever since I first added the overworld and battle music to the game.

This is because my music composing process is not only very spontaneous, but the kind of music I usually create is not at all suited for the game. Actually, this has been a bit of a conundrum for me ever since I decided to compose for the game: what kind of music exactly is suited for a game where you're supposed to be... horny? Well, clearly I settled for jazz, or at least some kind of mimicry of it, as implied by the name of the main battle theme: "Fake Jazz". I'm still not quite sure if it was the right choice, but I'm sure we'll figure things out.

However, after several updates, the music has already begun to get somewhat repetitive. Currently, I would like to at the very least include several different pieces of overworld music, as the overworld is largely where most of the time is spent currently. No news on that front though, I haven't been able to create anything so far that I find sufficient.

What I was able to compose recently, and the reason I am writing about this in the first place, is another piece of battle music. I've attached a short demo of it to this post, so please give it a listen and let me know what you think! So far the plan is to use this song for "boss battles" where applicable, such as the end of MQ3, or Vernon in the intro.

The Main Story

So much talk about minigames, I've barely gone over the actual game! You know, the card game that is the main draw of this project? For this past month, I've been mainly focused on figuring out the side activities, with some more work on the next upcoming main quest on the side.

In the previous log, I've shown you two new characters that you will run into in this quest, and today I shall do another:

As usual, this bit of eye candy is all I have to tell you about progress on the main quest, but at the very least, I can tell you that I've been having a lot of fun writing scenes involving all three of these characters.

Card of the Month

What I can show you however that is relevant to the main story is another card from one of the opponents! Last month was the signature card of one of the new characters, so this month we have the other:

Healthy Appetite

Gain +1 Fit for every 2 Wgt you gain (8 turns).
One use only.

A big boy's gotta eat to maintain that body.

Not much else to say about this one, other than perhaps the duration: 8 turns. Some of you may have noticed a certain shift in the duration of various statuses: the first few BUFF and DEBUFF cards tended to have very brief durations, typically around 2 turns, making them less statuses and more... effects that you activated for the turn.

I'm still figuring out how I want to balance the various cards in the game, which is likely only going to get worse as I continue to add more cards to the game. As the game doesn't collect any data about battles, the only information I have to go on is my own playtesting and the occasional discussion online, so if there are any particular cards or card combinations you find too abusable or overpowered, don't hesitate to let me know!

And that brings us to the end!

As usual I have grossly underestimated the amount of work the next update release will take, what with the several new minigames and branching occurring in the various places.

I have also been juggling my time between working on the game and studying for my bachelor's finals that are happening next month, which means development might slow down for a bit. On the bright side, you can expect things to pick up afterwards, as I will be able to focus on the game fully after everything is wrapped up.

And with that final brief update, as always: thank you for reading and for supporting the project!