Hello everybody ! I’m a solo indie game developer, working on a mobile game called Myoden. This is a first from series of blog posts where I will share information about the game and about the process of making it. The game development started with couple ideas for a casual mobile game inspiring in Cookie Clicker Gardens minigame, a “game that I would like to play but that is not available out there”. Not late after that I’ve found himself using my lunch time and spare time to work on the game. I’ve been about 5 years without making any game since I won my third and last college “Game Jam”. I’ve never blogged about anything and I didn’t tell anyone about that game development journey. So this will be something just between us :)

Myoden is a game about breeding plants. You will need to search for resources, build things, automate production and breed seeds. You start out with a seed. There are many different seeds (which grow into plants) you can obtain for planting and cross breeding. You can unlock additional plots for planting by upgrading your Farms, up to level 9 for a 6x6 grid. As you progresses you mines available resources, builds more complicated machines, unlocks elaborate recipes and creates automated farms.

At the moment the game is playable. However, it contains only basic functionality and it does not yet look as silky smooth as I would like it to be. While I search for my drawing tablet to draw all pending sprites I’m also finishing the demo version which will be available soon for free. I’m doing all this without any external support. This means that I don’t get paid and I have to finance all the expenses ourselves (mostly time and patience). For this reason I need an early verification whether the game will be enjoyable and thus whether it makes sense for me to continue in development. That is the reason why I want to get the demo out as soon as possible and see what you guys have to say about it. So stay alert, it will probably be flying out in the next month or so.

I’m still trying to bring some ideas to the game. Here’s some of my ideas for the future :

• Fertilize soil
• More habitats
• Seasons
• Genetics
• Clones
• Wild areas
• Explore (dig fossil, search for animals, bugs, fishes)
• Quests

I'm pretty new to devlogs so please bear with me, I’m working on it :)

https://myoden.itch.io/myoden

Drawing is Hard

Hello everyone! Quite a lot have happened in the last two weeks and I’d like to share it with you. The biggest and most visible change is that I’ve finished the basic seeds with stage transitions. In effect the game finally starts to look more like, you know, a game. At the moment the seeds is as follows: Onion, Corn, Tomato, Coffee, Potato, Strawberry, Blueberry, Pineapple and more. You can check some of them for yourself updated screenshots below. The other UI components still missing but that will change soon.

In the past weeks I spent a lot of time working on sprites. The game now has 32 seeds and will be part of the demo release coming out soon. The game still don’t have the tutorial which introduces the player into the game plot and teaches him the basic mechanics of the game. How to get the resources, craft recipes and build parts of the farm. I need to figure out how to make that fit into the game.

Apart from graphics I did a lot of small tasks and bugfixes. For instance the plants now give you itens when harvested which you can see in your inventory. With the core stuff for the demo pretty much finished I’m focusing my energy on improving the game experience. Like for example I’m searching for some ambient sounds to give more realistic atmosphere of the game. Or the game player interaction. I have spent a good deal of time with that. Trying to figure out how to make the controls easy yet understandable. So in the end you will be able to control the game with a single big button in the middle of screen. Just kidding, I’m not Egg’s Inc. So take a coffee and stay tuned …

DEVLOG 03 - Screen Orientation

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately.

Mobile devices are generally rectangular, with one side being longer than the other. The “longer side” has become longer (relative to the shorter side) as technology has progressed, with aspect ratios now right around the 16:9 of contemporary televisions/computer monitors.

Designing a game in “portrait” can be quite different from designing a game in “landscape”.

With regard to controlling the game, generally a portrait game will be designed for and/or able to be played with 1 hand (exceptions to this concept could certainly exist on tablets). One common method the player would utilize to control the game would be to hold the device in their palm and use the thumb of the same hand to provide input. An alternative to this would be for the user to hold the device in their palm and then use the index finger of the other hand for input.

Controlling a game in landscape orientation is often done with the player gripping either side of the device with each hand, and using the thumbs to control the game. This control scheme emulates the controller of console games. A common alternative is holding the device in one hand and pointing with the index finger of the other.

A majority of the most-financially successful mobile games are portrait-oriented, including Crash Royale, Puzzle And Dragons, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga, and Subway Surfers. Financially successful landscape games do exist, for example Stardew Valley, Clash of Clans and Jetpack Joyride.

I’m excited to hear any and all thoughts and opinions on this subject! Thank you.

Should I make my mobile game portrait or landscape if I am targeting multiple platforms? (mobile & desktop/mac)

My main target is mobile but I also I want to get on as many platforms as possible to increase my game’s possibility of access. After searching through portrait/landscape mobile topics in various subreddits its obvious people prefer portrait but that is thinking only from a player’s point of view. I am asking from a non hobbyists developer’s point of a view whose main target is mobile while still aiming to get on other platforms such itch.io and steam.

I think there are 3 options I could do…

Mobile landscape + PC landscape : My game engine can scale to any resolution without any changes so this would be the easiest but some PC players hate huge buttons from obvious mobile ports. Would that actually matter much in an idle game though? I just looked at Bit Heroes on steam again and it looks pretty good, I guess the reason is it has smaller UI in mobile so when its scaled it looks okay.

Mobile portrait + PC portrait : I think I’ve seen a few games play in portrait which is a bit weird but still perfectly playable in my opinion. I actually play some incremental in android emulators on PC so I am pretty used to it though.

Mobile portrait + PC landscape with 40% of screen portrait UI and 60% portrait gameplay : PickCrafter example This kind of takes the best of both worlds. The UI doesn’t look like a bad mobile port while you still take up all the area of a normal landscape game. PickCrafter on steam has a rating of Very Positive with 1,995 reviews which is something like 100,000 players who are very satisfied with it which makes it a viable option.

Last week I focused a lot of our resources on non-programming tasks. I’ve found some music and sound fx to use, WOW Sounds are really great and sell standalone sounds. You can check more below:

Cute Relaxing Video Game Music by W.O.W Sound - YouTube

Peaceful and Relaxing Acoustic Guitar Instrumental | Royalty Free Background Music by W.O.W Sound - YouTube