Near the end of the beginning

Hi!

I'm Davide, the solo developer behind Please, Enjoy Your Stay. This is the first actual devlog I’m making, and I hope you’ll find it interesting!

As you might’ve noticed from the page, PEYS is a survival game - more precisely, a sandbox (well, not yet!) survival with many RPG elements (mostly infinite progression, achieved through enemy levels, weapon levels, skills, etc.). The game aims to entertain you indefinitely: I’m not planning to add a “real” ending where you’ve mastered everything, beaten every boss and the game just becomes easy and boring, as happens in many other survival titles.

Currently, the game is… kinda boring. It’s empty!

I’m spending a lot of time implementing core mechanics before adding variety. I’m following a horizontal-then-vertical approach: first I build many core systems, and then I’ll add enemies, food, base building, and so on. This way, the entertainment should grow exponentially.

At the moment, you can:

• eat berries and carrots (that’s it!),

• craft items (and use a makeshift crafting table for extra crafting),

• use tools like the axe, pickaxe, and shovel to gather resources,

• place some items and remove/destroy them with the crowbar and hammer,

• sleep through the night (since it was extremely boring to wait 10 minutes doing absolutely nothing),

• craft torches,

• use a few sword-like weapons,

• upgrade tools from stone to flint.

There’s also a small tutorial/task panel to help you with the very basics.

In the coming update, you’ll be able to repair broken tools and weapons (they won’t vanish anymore, but instead will just become slower and weaker at 0% durability), fight enemies with levels (making them harder and faster), collect souls from those enemies to enchant your weapons, replant trees, and level up by killing enemies to unlock useful skills that make your character tougher, faster, and more enduring.

This upcoming update, version 0.0.5, is the last one focused mainly on mechanics and quality-of-life improvements. It doesn’t add a lot of new gameplay (yes, you can enchant weapons, kill stronger enemies, and level up,  but there’s still only a single enemy type and three sword variants). However, it adds much-needed thickness to the game, which will be extremely useful once real gameplay content arrives.

The next update will be the last one without major gameplay additions. It will focus on the player’s inventory: as you can see from the screenshot above, there are currently no chests, and the inventory is very small. With the increasing number of items I’m adding, it’s becoming annoying to have everything floating around. So this update will mainly add chests (of various sizes), a few more details (like a new woodworking crafting station), a larger base inventory, the first backpack, and maybe even the first armor: wooden armor.

After that, update 0.0.6 will finally bring the fun: it will introduce many new enemies, raids, improved AI, and more enemy-related content. Surviving will become a real challenge, and you’ll finally be able to level up, upgrade things, and scale faster.

That said, the game - even in its current empty state - has received almost no feedback. Numbers are very low everywhere. Paradoxically, I got more likes earlier in development, back when I had almost nothing to show (not even a player). So, even though it’s obvious that the game barely qualifies as a “game” right now and performs badly, questions still come up: Will this ever become a good game? What if, even after adding real content, nobody plays - or worse, dislikes - it?

One thing is certain: graphics (and audio) are completely provisional. I’m no artist, and it shows. I’ll need a lot of help creating a real, unique style and improving all the icons, UI, animations, and music - not to mention making a proper logo (I don’t even have one yet!). But for now, I need to see at least some numbers grow, just to confirm that the game is fun and worth investing more time and money in. After all, players come for graphics, but stay for the gameplay… right?

The update I’m currently working on, version 0.0.5, will go live later this week, most likely on Saturday. Be sure to check it out! I’d really appreciate any feedback on the current state of the game: even if it’s still almost empty, the earlier I can adjust my aim, the better.

Thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions <3

See you soon!