Emerald Woods - Drenched Hound [0.4.4]

A new version of Emerald Woods, the chill survival, farming, building, and exploration roguelike, where you can live completely on your own in the woods is now available!

Play for free for now (online/windows) at https://slash.itch.io/emerald-woods, even using your phone! we are still in an “Earlier Access” phase, so let us know any suggestions you have in the discord.

If you like the game, you can still become an Early Supporter (only 6 remaining!), and get your name into the game.

This version brings two big changes overall; the first one is the introduction of weather effects and transitions, including Rain, which is displayed with some simple and effective particle effects. Weather will affect the ambient temperature, so make sure to shelter if you want to sleep peacefully!

While adding these, I noticed an issue with the ambient audio which was completely gone because of a tiny bug that sneaked by. I added some audio monitoring hints to prevent this from happening again, and help debug and improve the audio overall.

Alongside Rain came the new “Drenched” status, which you can also acquire from swimming. It will lower your temperature temporarily, especially during winter. This new effect required an initial, very simple implementation for “roofs” so you don’t get wet while sleeping during rain: for now just placing any flooring will create a virtual “roof” on top of it, so you can guard yourself from rain there. It’s far from optimal and will be replaced with proper roofs when the multilayers building system is implemented (it will be similar to the one on OpenArthurianX6). Caves, and underground, are also guarded from rain.

The other big change is also a first “stub” implementation for starter pets! You can choose one of ten types of animals (four dogs, four cats and two giant frogs) as companions for your journey in the woods. They are simple for now, will just follow you around, but they make good company. Future versions will implement a much more elaborate system for pets which we already designed.

Upcoming Dev

QuietGecko is working in some improvements for the Spring music tunes. They’ll probably be added on next version.

What else comes for next versions? taking a look at the roadmap for 0.5.0 I see a lot of Big Hits, not sure which one to follow,

• Animals trapped in buildings
• Minimap
• Simulate temperature and its effects on the health of the adventurer
• Dangerous Areas
• Animal hunting
• Lure with bait
• Redesign of the breeding system
• Predation (don’t even remember what this is, dangerous animals?)
• Temperate woods biome
• Upgrade your tools.
• Seasons (Summer).

I think I’ll just pick the first one, to prevent being paralyzed by choice.

Events

Devcom is coming and Emerald Woods was selected to be featured in the “devcom NRW Indie Showcase 2024“! it’s just 35 games world-wide so I’m quite happy about that. We’ll be part of the virtual expo since I am unsure if I’ll be hitting Cologne this year, but this means a lot of people will be seeing our game and we are also participating for the devcom Indie Award.

I have also submitted the game for Argentinian EVA Play 2024 and Spanish Premios Indie Games Málaga. I just want more people to enjoy the game and join the community… so if you can please help spread the word!