tomaO2
Planter
Surprised it isn't mentioned here. It just fished the kickstarter, and made over a million dollars.
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...and-reimagining-the-farm-sim-game/description
I don't want to guess the likelihood of it working out, given how many projects I've seen that didn't work out. My gut reaction is that it is likely to not be as good as promised. As far as I can see, this is the first attempt at making a game from a brand new studio, many of whom do not have a great deal of experience. The blog says some of them don't know anything about the Unreal engine they are using to create the game.
What they are doing is extremely ambitious for a farming sim. If it succeeds, it will put to shame Story of Seasons, which has long been the most well funded of all farming sim games, and I'm going to assumeNatsume Marvelous Inc is seriously phoning it in when they made their latest version of the game.
Speaking of, I see that the new Story of Seasons has some playthroughs up, and the new harvest moon game is also up. I might want to make a list of them as well. Both games seem to like taming animals and searching for seeds.
So here are the various things Coral Island wants to add that could also work in Stardew Valley.
-More gender fluidity is an often requested feature and it has a pretty simple concept for this. You pick male or female body, and then pick honorifics separately. That is a much smoother process than other ideas I've read. Some honorifics in Coral Island will apparently be non-binary, which would be a little difficult for this game, but the specific idea of separating the male/female body from the male/female honorifics is one I don't recall being mentioned before. It seems a pretty easy change, and I think it's done in a fairly elegant manner in the promo video for Coral Island. If this is incorporated, there need not be any changes to dialogue, you are simply treated as the gender that the honorifics say you are by the NPCs, regardless of the body type. The one exception to that would be having kids, as you would need one of each sex to have your own, otherwise it's an adoption.
-CI plans to create an underwater kingdom that the player can explore. There have been suggestions for what sort of a new area could be opened up but I've never heard anyone mentioning being able to visit an underwater kingdom, and we do have mermaids, so it's certainly something that could be explored. In my opinion, any new areas should be DLC though. I feel the base game has enough areas.
-There is also a mention of featuring the theme of environmental conservation. I feel like this is something Stardew could work harder on. We got the whole Joja is bad, small business good, but maybe that theme could be played up by Joja destroying the environment a bit more. We get a bit of that right at the start, due to Joja causing a landslide. Maybe there could be recurring missions. It would go on the big quest board, and would work like the Qi mine missions, meaning that everything is normal, until you accept the quest, which causes a change. The quest would be something like Joja had made the beach a mess, clean up the trash. That seems a little simple, but something like that could maybe added.
-A slider for how quickly time passes. I can see the appeal of wanting to have twice as much time in the day, or challenge yourself by making time move twice as fast. If a slider is done though, please give the option to do some time skipping. Perhaps by letting the player take 2-4 hour naps.
-A secondary pet you can have, in addition to your starting dog/cat. Having a second main pet means you could pick something a little more interesting as an animal. These pets are also able to follow off the farm.
-Collecting bugs and donate them to the museum. Could be a minigame for that. Maybe you get a net, and you use it to capture insects. Insects could be added to jump out of the screen, like you see other wildlife do. Apperently, the Coral Island museum it will work more like Animal Crossing. Not sure how Animal crossing differs from Stardew's museum.
-Getting cooking utensils in order to make some food items. I don't think that would be a great addition. Just more work to make stuff.
-Full hand drawn portraits of the characters. It might be a little jarring to have full body drawings when taking, as it would take you out of the 8-bit style, but I think that could look nice.
-Other things it will be adding... Bigger cast of characters (over 40!); more romanceable characters (over 20. I question if you can make each character feel rewarding if you are doing that many); more skin diversity for the NPCs; kids aging (all kids, not just yours); and having the personalities of your children shaped by you; seasonal outfits; mini-games; official mod support; using scythe to gather crops; more skills; more community upgrades. All good ideas, but nothing that hasn't been suggested multiple times.
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...and-reimagining-the-farm-sim-game/description
I don't want to guess the likelihood of it working out, given how many projects I've seen that didn't work out. My gut reaction is that it is likely to not be as good as promised. As far as I can see, this is the first attempt at making a game from a brand new studio, many of whom do not have a great deal of experience. The blog says some of them don't know anything about the Unreal engine they are using to create the game.
What they are doing is extremely ambitious for a farming sim. If it succeeds, it will put to shame Story of Seasons, which has long been the most well funded of all farming sim games, and I'm going to assume
Speaking of, I see that the new Story of Seasons has some playthroughs up, and the new harvest moon game is also up. I might want to make a list of them as well. Both games seem to like taming animals and searching for seeds.
So here are the various things Coral Island wants to add that could also work in Stardew Valley.
-More gender fluidity is an often requested feature and it has a pretty simple concept for this. You pick male or female body, and then pick honorifics separately. That is a much smoother process than other ideas I've read. Some honorifics in Coral Island will apparently be non-binary, which would be a little difficult for this game, but the specific idea of separating the male/female body from the male/female honorifics is one I don't recall being mentioned before. It seems a pretty easy change, and I think it's done in a fairly elegant manner in the promo video for Coral Island. If this is incorporated, there need not be any changes to dialogue, you are simply treated as the gender that the honorifics say you are by the NPCs, regardless of the body type. The one exception to that would be having kids, as you would need one of each sex to have your own, otherwise it's an adoption.
-CI plans to create an underwater kingdom that the player can explore. There have been suggestions for what sort of a new area could be opened up but I've never heard anyone mentioning being able to visit an underwater kingdom, and we do have mermaids, so it's certainly something that could be explored. In my opinion, any new areas should be DLC though. I feel the base game has enough areas.
-There is also a mention of featuring the theme of environmental conservation. I feel like this is something Stardew could work harder on. We got the whole Joja is bad, small business good, but maybe that theme could be played up by Joja destroying the environment a bit more. We get a bit of that right at the start, due to Joja causing a landslide. Maybe there could be recurring missions. It would go on the big quest board, and would work like the Qi mine missions, meaning that everything is normal, until you accept the quest, which causes a change. The quest would be something like Joja had made the beach a mess, clean up the trash. That seems a little simple, but something like that could maybe added.
-A slider for how quickly time passes. I can see the appeal of wanting to have twice as much time in the day, or challenge yourself by making time move twice as fast. If a slider is done though, please give the option to do some time skipping. Perhaps by letting the player take 2-4 hour naps.
-A secondary pet you can have, in addition to your starting dog/cat. Having a second main pet means you could pick something a little more interesting as an animal. These pets are also able to follow off the farm.
-Collecting bugs and donate them to the museum. Could be a minigame for that. Maybe you get a net, and you use it to capture insects. Insects could be added to jump out of the screen, like you see other wildlife do. Apperently, the Coral Island museum it will work more like Animal Crossing. Not sure how Animal crossing differs from Stardew's museum.
-Getting cooking utensils in order to make some food items. I don't think that would be a great addition. Just more work to make stuff.
-Full hand drawn portraits of the characters. It might be a little jarring to have full body drawings when taking, as it would take you out of the 8-bit style, but I think that could look nice.
-Other things it will be adding... Bigger cast of characters (over 40!); more romanceable characters (over 20. I question if you can make each character feel rewarding if you are doing that many); more skin diversity for the NPCs; kids aging (all kids, not just yours); and having the personalities of your children shaped by you; seasonal outfits; mini-games; official mod support; using scythe to gather crops; more skills; more community upgrades. All good ideas, but nothing that hasn't been suggested multiple times.
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