Did you know that two core features of the game are cooking and rebuilding? With the end of the year approaching, we figured it was time to give you a closer look!
When Alva returns to the Great Tree, everything is in ruins. The Tree’s illness has manifested as black thorns, spreading and destroying everything in their wake. The village is only a shadow of what it used to be.
The ruins of the Town Hall can be found in the village plaza. Rebuilding it would allow Drana, the village mayor and Alva’s grandmother, to help her restore it.
Rebuilding requires resources found in the Duramen, where enemies can be defeated and objects can be broken for loot. Everywhere there are ruins, Alva can rebuild it. It goes for regular villagers houses as well. Taking care of them increases the village population and the number of customers for the shop!
Lyra’s house was built after the village was abandoned and is therefore one of the few untouched buildings. It serves as her research center, where she has tirelessly studied the Tree's mysterious illness for years.
Trained by the shamans of the Healing Ground, Lyra uses crystals to extract and analyze the essence of plants, uncovering the roots of their ailments.
As this house is super important for the story, it has its own theme!
The Station, a bar set within the remnants of an old locomotive, has partially survived. While its frame has remained intact against all odds, some parts have to be rebuilt.
Just like villagers gather in the village plaza during the day, the Station acts as a hub for them at night. It is managed by Lun, the former train driver.
We all know Alva’s shop will have delicious pastries, sweets, teas, coffees, ice creams and groceries to offer. But how to decide on which makes it to the game?
First, what we can cook depends on the available ingredients, which in turn depend on the season. We need to choose and balance the available ingredients so that every season has unique plants to be grown.
It wouldn’t be very fun if summer had all the best fruits in the game to cook towns of delicious specialties, while fall had none. Our goal is to try to have the season each plant grows makes sense, but being absolutely accurate to real life would make it so spring and summer would basically have everything. So we have to take some liberties.
Once we have a list of every plant we’d like the game to have, we need to use them in recipes. Lucky for us, the diverse cultures in our world have already made it so there are tons available for every single ingredient we can think of.
Speaking of diverse cultures, we’re trying to include specialties from all over the world. We are a French studio and French pastry is a big part of our cultural identity, but we really try to broaden our horizons. By the way, if you have recipes you’d want to see in the game, you can suggest it on our discord server!
There is still one thing to consider. The game has multiple separate crafting modules to be found and that are necessary to craft items. For instance, making ice cream requires an ice maker, making tea requires a grinder. And the recipes must be distributed between all of them equally.
As of now, we’ve gathered hundreds and hundreds of recipes and have simplified them to a maximum of 5 ingredients each, since it is the maximum number of ingredients a recipe can have in Acornia. But testing the game and further balancing endeavor will teach us how many recipes is the right amount.
Ramus was born in the heart of the underbrush. He is Alva’s best friend, ready to embark on any adventure that comes their way. He is a constant source of support for Alva and offers her advice when needed — whether she asks for it, or not.
Despite his cheerful demeanor, Ramus carries a mysterious burden. An axe was lodged in his head during his birth. It was used by Orlan to save his life, but now causes headaches.
Ramus is a little know-it-all with a love for philosophy. He often gets lost in his thoughts, contemplating life’s deeper questions, and sharing his reflections with anyone who will listen. And sometimes, he’s just a bit silly.
This month, we went on a team building adventure together!
We kicked things off with a pastry course. We thought it would make our pastry-based game more legit… We ended up making a delicious Paris-Brest!
Then we made some pizza together while playing billiard and darts as if our lives depended on it, and exchanged Christmas presents to make peace.
The following day, we played paintball and discovered that not all game devs are equal when it comes to aiming and dodging. And ended the trip by going to a super fun facility with dozens of short escape room adventures to complete!
POV : You're a billiard ball.
That's all for November !
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