Outerworld Meadows

About fifteen years ago I started thinking about what I wanna do with my life. Little 9 year-old-me’s greatest passions were games and horses, so naturally I wanted to combine the two. Years have flown by, filled with far too many, far too disappointing horse games. Ironically, us horse gamers can only find decent horse-related gameplay in games that aren’t targeting them, namely, games like Breath of the Wild and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Then, about three years ago, I discovered Godot, and finally, my goal of making my own games became slightly more realistic. I had tried Unity and Ren’Py already, but they just never clicked with me. I spent over fourteen hours every day in the Godot engine, and watched every video about it that I could find. I followed every tutorial, but remained a complete newbie. I eventually quit and gave up one day after about a hundred hours, and I didn’t open the engine for three whole years. Then, finally, after a failed comp sci college experience and some courses on basic programming, I felt ready again to tackle my dream.

At first I started with a simple bullet hell, Star Shooter, that I got into a minimum playable state and quickly uploaded to itch.io. I mentioned it to my followers and friends and got some good feedback and more downloads than I allowed myself to hope for. Star Shooter desperately needs some polish and more features, as well as a main menu background and more, but I’m happy that I actually managed to set a goal and complete it in time.

Next I started working on Color Climb, an incremental game where the player has to balance money, anxiety, creativity, burnout, energy and more to survive, all the while trying to make it in the world as an artist. Those who know me could instantly tell it was quite therapeutic for me to make this, lol. The scope of Color Climb eventually got away from me, so I never finished it, and probably never will.

Now, I’ve set my sights on the idea that started it all: Outerworld Meadows (name up for debate). In Outerworld Meadows, the player takes on the role of ‘Rowan’, who, after an accident, developed amnesia and was sent to live with her grandmother on the planet Outerworld. Her grandmother, Palma, is her only remaining relative and owner of a ranch, once opulent and influential, now fallen into decay after many years of misfortune. The ranch now only has one safe stable left, occupied by Palma’s only mare, Birdy. There’s also a few chickens running around and Palma has been taking care of a little vegetable garden behind her house. The house itself has fallen into disrepair, there’s holes in the roof and the upper levels are starting to cave in.

The first objective for the player is to fix up Palma’s (and now theirs) home. They will be guided to chop some wood from a nearby overgrown field and use it to shore up the walls. In the morning, Palma can be found outside and will teach the player the basics of farming and taking care of Birdy, claiming that it might bring back some memories from their childhood.

Eventually, Palma gets a call from an old friend, the friend tells her that he still owes her a favor, and offers one of his stallions to cover Birdy. Palma accepts, leading the player to have to fix up the barn and meadow in time for the stallion’s arrival and eventual foal.

News goes around that the once famous ranch is starting up again, causing debt collectors to check out the situation. Seeing two horses and a significantly improved ranch, they assume the family has come into money again and will start sending claims periodically.

The player’s objective is to pay off all debts, take care of horses, fix up and expand the ranch, all the while exploring towns, going to competitions, hiring employees, fighting off predators and building relationships with the townfolk.

For version 0.1, I’m focusing on minimum playability. And, contrary to Color Climb, I’m allowing myself to work on and add art as I go, to keep it visually fun and engaging. Plus, it makes sharing my progress more interesting.

I’ve finished up Rowan’s character design and am working on her sprites now (walking, chopping wood, brushing horses, cleaning hooves, mucking out stables, filling food and water troughs and idling). Next up I’m going to make the dilapidated and fixed-up art for the house from the outside, as well as for the inside, same with the barn, a tree sprite, and (for now) a single sprite for Birdy. As for the programming side of things, I’m going to get it up to a point that the player can brush horses, clean hooves, muck out stables, feed horses and fill up the water troughs. They also need to be able to move and chop wood, where the wood goes into the ranch’s inventory automatically. I don’t want to deal with a player-specific inventory, other than their equipment load-out. My reasoning for this is that this game is set pretty far in the future, so there will be some sci-fi stuff like teleporters, inter-stellar travel and more, who’s to say there’s no device that teleports items?

So yeah, fairly basic stuff for now, nothing I haven’t done before. I’m looking forward to sharing my progress with y’all and hopefully exchanging some ideas and feedback!