Another Friday, another Something's Brewing. This week we talk about your main goal in Ale Abbey. We also touch on the subject of brainstorming and implementation as well as ideas for future expansions! Last, but not least, our own twisted take on what ingredients could make it into a brew, but really shouldn't.
Remember to ask any other questions you might have by commenting on this post, or by reaching out through the Interwebs! (links at the end of the post!)
Also, keep your eyes peeled as we will be making a very important announcement next week ;)
-- What is the player's main goal in Ale Abbey?
The ultimate goal is to make the monastery prosper! Creating recipes and brewing ale are the two core tasks to accomplishing that. However, in addition to these two, the player will have to keep the monks satisfied and well fed, tend to the poor, appease the local lord, befriend the other brewing Abbeys, take part in beer contests, sell beers in the local markets, keep bandits bribed, etc. Pretty realistic all in all. You know. Brew, keep people happy... bribe!
-- How do you go from brainstorming ideas to actually developing parts in the game?
Mostly paper and ugly Notepad documents. After a few iterations of these, it becomes a Confluence page in an already pretty large GDD, and it gets a few iterations before it's ready for implementation. Anyone from the team can suggest ideas at any point in time and we're happy when the team's Discord channel gets flooded with crazy features and in-game mechanics. After that it's all about testing and potentially trashing it all if it didn't work as intended!
-- Have you entirely scrapped ideas? Is there any way they resurface in the future?
Well, there's one thing that comes to mind and that is an agricultural DLC related to garden management. Even though it's been quite detailed in the GDD, we realized that it was far too much, both in terms of our production scope and in giving the player too much to thing about right away. That's when Emiliano decided it was too much for the base game, but maybe potentially interesting for an update or a DLC... Who knows?!
-- Best ingredient for a brew? Wrong answers only! (SFW)
Emiliano: Bubble gum or Broccoli.
Yannis: Kimchi... I mean it's already fermented and can produce yeast if you don't store it properly. Practically half way there!
Thanks for your time and see you all next Friday!
-- Hammer & Ravens
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