What Progress Looks Like for a Hobbyist 

Get a playable prototype of the game I'm making. I'll send it to you when it's ready. Sign up here! jamiedev.io/prototype-wait

Thanks for making this video. This is the side of solo game dev I'm interested in and have trouble finding information on elsewhere. Specifically, I'd love to see deep dives on the topics you thought would "put everybody to sleep": as you said, there are so many tutorials out there which introduce the basics of patterns, but I have trouble finding content which shows how they can be used and scaled out in a practical way. Concrete examples of how you've designed classes and decoupled scenes to take advantage of composition would be gold.

I'd totally buy a game called CAT RPG

My 2 cents: adding some juice/game feel would be very nice. Some screen shakes, some particule effects, some animations to your UIs, maybe some camera zoom-ins/zoom-outs. It's a bit of extra work, but it could brings lots of appeal to your game. Also, the grass tile is "just" a green solid colour. Maybe add a bit of texture to the grass would give more visual stimulation (as grass is 80% of what is displayed on the game's screen). Anyway, keep on the great work. I'm curious to see the final game :)

Awesome stuff! Definitely do not feel any pressure for time. You are here to learn things, not just to build a cool project!

This is an amazingly helpful video on the "unfun" backround of making a game. Its a LOT of documents and planning before you actually dive in. You can still add new mechanics and such, which is why stuff like an Agile development cycle, even as a solo dev, can allow you to go "Oh well this sucks" and change it on the fly after learning new information. As for your game? You know, I don't know what you got in it already but in a game like what youre saying here some ideas, all spitballs as I don't know what mechanics are already planned lol. 1) Your villagers being able to "improve" through work. Like level up, work faster, move faster, etc, increasing their efficiency, ability to find "rarer" crafting items, movement speeds, such things like that. 2) In light of the above, some way to "buff" your villagers? Imagine a research tree that lets you craft floaters, which ignore water, and eventually craft balloons, which ignore water/fence? The price of said items could be very high, and "Slower" than the villagers who can do this naturall. I.E if you equip a balloon to an otter, he can ignore fences, but only at 50% speed of the Squirrel as to not take away the value of the squirrels mechanics. It would obviously be a late game upgrade. 3) As with the above, a research tree for your village? Unlockable housing or locations (Like a MIll that maybe speeds up production of (X) supply), little "village wide" buffs that improve your gathering speeds or movement speeds or some such, maybe even combat improvements for the dungeon parts, all with the additional benefit of being additional ways to beautify/build your own unique village and layouts. 4) A Rogue-like mode. Honestly if you're going through the trouble of adding all these rescue dungeons, you can set up a semi-randomized tileset generator for the rooms you've created and add some kind of infinitely replayable "endgame" version might add some much needed post-completion elements to your game for relatively little effort once you have the tilesets down. Inside instead of gaining villagers, rescuing the animals inside will give you an option of a selection of buffs, or equipment/weapons to power you up, with incremental floor difficulty, and some sort of reward for completing higher and higher levels. IDK what the reward loop for your game is so the reward is up to you, maybe even just a leaderboard! 5) Different Homes in different Biomes with more villager options and their own dungeons to go through? Think of this as maybe a continuation of the idea, adding a few new "Areas" to explore after you rescue all from the forest area. Maybe add a sort of settlement transfer mechanic for resources, or a shared inventory space so you can craft from anywhere. I'm thinking like, how in Valheim going to new biomes unlocks new crafting stations and items that help you tackle the newer, harder areas. Good luck!

The way you talk about the game tells you have a lot of passion for this!

The narration is really nice, and storytelling got me hooked until the end, very interesting to see you strategise on how to keep motivated and get the game done. (just discovered ur channel) My favorite part personnaly was the one where you hinted about how to organise coding and files along a big project I would be really interested in an in depth video about the concepts you explained (finite state machine - event bus singleton - entity component pattern) and how to apply it to godot to have a well structured medium sized project.

Really great video. I personally would love to see more of the design patterns and design document process you went created. Also I have to commend you on how effective and professional the documentation is, it's way better than the stuff we have at my place of work even.

oh my god this video kinda blew my mind there is so much information about things i had never about, thanks for making this!!

What you said feels like you read my mind. I’m experiencing all the problems you mentioned. Thank you for making such a great video. I’m starting to see the light in my game development journey.

Love the patterns section in this video as well as your mind map video :)

Such a great video ! Really inspiring :) I liked the condensed design pattern talk !

Awesome idea for a 2D game. And your workflow is well explained. I would love to play the game!

I really appreciate you explaining the design patterns you use. It's a super important part of game design, and it took me awhile to learn that.

Great work! Very inspiring, and something I hope to do myself one day.

I really like the title, I've learned a new word today too!

Amazing video! I loved the new name.

Ive been following your channel for a while - you’re making amazing progress! I think you need to stop undermining yourself, you’re doing great. Would love to see just a generic morning routine (of coding) and how you frame your morning.

2:27 A game design document, of course! I’m also a solo dev and passionate about making stylized 2D/pixel art, so I find my thought process to be sporadic. Up to this point I’ve merely jotted things down in the middle of work on blank receipt paper, or in iCloud notes. Seeing your workflow and GDD example was very helpful and insightful. I’m an artist first and a programmer second in terms of solo game dev, but I feel at least competent and sorta jack-of-all-trades (except music and sound design but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there). You pretty much have the game mapped out thanks to your very detailed GDD! Very exciting stuff to see. Also, I’m very sold on your game. The cat protagonist reminds me of my brown tabby (her name is Mossy). I send you luck and my support. I know the struggle of working a full time job whilst also doing game dev in free time hours. But passion for creating art and game dev outweighs anything else. :)

Making own rpg is literally the same dream I always had. I also struggle with this state of mind that I have to do everything from scratch and being unorganized. Seeing your journey seems be really helpful and interesting. 😊

This looks awesome! At first i was like 'this is cute', then when mechanics came in and now i need this game asap 😭 i love animals and the premise is just perfect.

Excellent information, thank you

me as beginner who just start learning game dev in godot for 1 month. your video give me a lot valuable lesson and motivation, ty for this vid. i will looking for your next dev log :)

One of the things I struggle with on my game is Story. I usually find a fun mechanic and go from there....and yeah....the games are fun but not engaging. The story of "escaped cat helps other animals escape the testing facility" is a GREAT start. I can see many directions where this story could feed into your current design. Maybe a Mad Scientist trying to track the animals down or somesuch. Not suggesting combat orientation or anything but trying to stay hidden from an enemy tracking you down or mascarading as humans in a human world would drastically change how the player approaches their base design. Just some thoughts.

This is not a type of game that I personally would play. But I can imagine a whole lot of people that would, your progress is amazing and your videos are really chill. Looking forward to see you progress!!!

You are back! Thank you!

I am currently in the inventory system building phase of my game development journey, with no prior experience. I totally vibe with the confetti feeling on the success of a drag and drop moment! LOL

Welcome back Jamie, it's such a joy to see a new video from ya. Its really fun watching your progress of what your learning on your journey of gamedev land. I'm learning godot myself from a real through course and been having lots of fun with it.

Oh wow, starting with the hook/marketing in mind is a really important part I hadn't ever thought about :O

I'm a cat person, and i really like, how's you're cat moving animation looks like. It's very cute. Good luck with your project!

Honestly looks like it could be a lot of fun. I'm making something a bit different but has the dungeon crawling part in common and it was interesting to see your process. I can relate to having like 10 excel sheets filled with stats and stuff. Please finish the game! I'll be on the lookout!

English isn't my first language but I'm pretty confident in my English skills, it's very rare for me to not understand something or encounter a new word. This is my first time hearing "mlem", and I wouldn't have had any idea how to pronounce it if you didn't. I don't think Mlemtopia would be a good title marketing-wise from an international point of view, it made no sense to me. Thanks for mentioning Custom Resources, I'm using json files currently (very annoying) and I'm looking at Custom Resources right now, this looks way better! PS: Love the cat's attack animation ^^

I love this game idea!!!!

Junmin is back!!! Great to learn about the game updates!

the idea of your game sounds really interesting, looking forward to your game's progress, all the best.

Your game looks pretty! And I really, really like its concept. ...and its cats too, what more can I ask!? New sub, looking forward for more! You're so inspiring:>

I like to know what if you make an attacker / worker squad with an animal / pets and assign a weapon to them. Make a limit to the squad group and animals that are going to be placed. And, a system that can assign jobs for the work on the dungeons that the player is going to travel. Eg: the materials that are limited to the player can be found in dungeons or with attacker squad you can rescue animals / pets. It's just an idea you can develop the scenarios if you were like it.

So awesome!

Learned a lot from this video. You're so organized. Great job.

Thank for your work, I love it. Could you tell more detail on how to implement design pattern in your game?

Seems interesting. Landing on the 3 most powerful game design strategies straight up is pretty impressive. You obviously did your research in that month off doing the gdd

Welcome Back!!!!

Great video and good luck with you game. I'd be interested in learning more about the patterns you're using and your implementations.

I like this content, good video. 6 months of game dev hobbyist for me was: Learn and Transition to Godot from Unity -> Brainstorm game ideas -> Find a theme -> Brainstorm gameplay mechanics -> Brainstorm story -> Design gameplay -> Start project in Godot -> Write story, world, characters -> Create concept art for player character and tilemap -> Realise this shouldn't have taken me 6 months and at most only 2 months -> be sad -> watch devlogs on youtube -> suck it up -> back to concept art (now)

All the best for your game's developement! :)

She's back!

Awesome video and helpful. Keep it up good work! :)

Actually I am designing websites as one of my hobbies. Next year I will learn how to code. ❤️

Why does the cat use a sword instead of its own claws?

My feedback as a non artist is... Your ground needs more texture. For a name, maybe something Sanctuary. Or maybe you can use any two word name where one word is your own custom word and the second word is a marketing word.

Nice, looks like palworld with heart roots. Is there any chance we can take a deeper look at your design doc as a reference for own projects? Yours look solid. Thanks!

Welcome back!

great video

Me in my vicious cycle of scrapping projects: 6:55

I’m also trying to make a game on my spare time, thank you for the tips. The title is too complicated to remember, you should choose something unique, but also easy to market. Try to think about a person wanting to share your game to a friend, how will he talk about it, would he be able to remember and write the title?

this is a nice small niche game the target audience would be about 400 players throughout its lifespan. would make a good example to show off your skills on a cv.

this game and video are beautiful thank you

First: I liked your game-idea and your video very much! Good work so far. Second: Your use of shadows is a bit strange. Some of the objects have a shadow ( like the fence), but others don't have them. Look at the trees. That's very odd in my eyes. Also the animals, which were freed from the laboratory look like they were flying around. They should cast a shadow on the ground. Or a simple solultion would be to draw some dark pixels below them with some alpha-value. Thumbs up so far :)

I like Mlemtopia, but it's kinda hard to pronounce. Nyantopia might be better? I recommend against Cat RPG, since there already is a Cat Quest (trilogy, in fact), Cat Cafe Manager, Cat Goes Fishing, Cat God Ranch, Cat Museum, Cat Warrior, Bad Cat, Hustle Cat, Apocalyptic Cat (seriously, Apocatlyptic was _right there_ ), Alien Cat... Some other game dev RU-vidrs (Yahtzee, Extra Credits) have given similar advice though they all phrase it slightly differently. Yahtzee really stresses to focus on the primary gameplay loop (so what you're doing on a moment-to-moment basis while playing), and Extra Credits has pointed out that you should start with a mechanic that in some way stands out.

welcome back!! Nice video

Wowee! This video has given me alot of game design insight compared to my game design teacher hahaha... This game has alot of potential! Do the animals you save have backstories, or the cat per se? It's always good to have a thing that can provide players some sort of emotional attachment to the characters! Just this video alone gives me a good feeling that I will be subscribing to your content for quite a while! Thank you for this and I hope you keep inspiring fellow creatives!

Can you make more detailed videos about game design patterns? It would be very helpful 😊

Woo! Welcome back!

Amazing pixelart

Dead charming!

I know palworld wasn't released 6months ago. But... you should also play pal world. The base management is so similar. But I would also want to play your game for a bit because I also struggle with game design, and art an everything.

can you make a video on the walkthru of how a newcomer can get into game dev and free resources that one can take advantage of

Mlemtopia seems like a catchy name

0:47 tengo el orgullo de ser mexicano

I am not a pro at any point but i would like to add some bits to your conclusions - your game basically contains two very different parts: village sim and dungeon crawler. If i was you - i would stop working on both parts in the same time, because you maybe don't need them both to be in the same project. I mean, if managing your animal village isn't fun enough - you will not play at all, and if your dungeon part isn't fun enough - you will be really upset when time for dungeon run comes. I would instead focus on polishing (to some degree) managing part first, make it very comfy and fun to play, and then i would consider to work on dungeon part, if i ever even need this one to be in the first place, because it is often that some parts looks important on paper but actually not needed in game. Also with this approach after polishing village sim part i would give it for my friends to test and see if it is working. Testing things on which you worked long enough is very crucial part, that i know very well. When you work on something for a long time your eyesight becomes very blurry, you know every little detail and you can't reproduce the experience that a person will get when entering the game for the first time. P.S. btw game looks really comfy right now, i would like to play it some day, good job! Also sorry if my english isn't good enough to be understandable :D

What software did you use to make those flow charts? They look great.

Looks interesting!

What engine you used? I definitively would play your game,like eastward, i finished because i love this mechanic of craft and sell and make money to reinvest on the farm and buy machines... so an manager is also an job that many like to do inside these style of games but for me the contact with nature elements make it more rich for me. Interesting the document part that you explained,i think of design always on start of every story i plan, but i need to study more gamedesign😊 thank you

Cool art style.. ❤ It is great work. How do you keep up your motivation?

I totally get that feeling of just adding mechanics then landing at this sense of "Now what?". I think the question a game designer needs to ask is WHY are they making this game? Why does it NEED to exist? Things that are so fun that you would stop what you're doing right now and go play this game if someone else had already made it.

Hi Jamie, i like this video! What game engine are you using? I'm also learning gamedev, thank you and good luck!

How about Fur ball for a title? The cat could cough one up while idling every and and then and also make that sound they make while doing it! lol

Huh. When we were learning finite state machines in school, I had no idea of application. Now I do :D this makes sooooo much sense - thank you!!!! I think the whole design process is important to talk about and something I've definitely not seen enough information on. Do you have any recommendations for other resources beyond the Level Up book?

I think the game dev side of this was very interesting, but I’m a little confused about the internal ethics of the game. You rescue animals from a research lab and then they become laborers for you? This seems a bit odd and feels like it contradicts the vibe that you are going for. And, just to be clear, I don’t think this is intentional, I’m just sharing this feedback because it might be something you’d like to address. I think one way you could do this is having some sort of currency system or having an rng component where rescued animals can choose to join the commune or go and do their own thing. I hope this feedback helps and doesn’t seem too negative, I really enjoyed the game idea and video!

Hey Jamie, can you share a template for your game design document? I'm starting a game myself and started to scratch some ideas, but I think a well formatted document could help me better display and organize my thoughts.

Meowtopia🍀✨

Taking notes! I need to add a dog pet component so want to get better at pixel art but ofc there is a learning curve xd rip first few ugly dogs

Why not "Catopia" ?

2:33 Design Doc

For the design patterns you mentioned, do you have some sources that would be good to learn how to implement them well within one's game?

Nice to see another Godot-user

Would legitimately play your game

hello. hello. hello!!

I love this. I'd love to pick your brain, makes me want to switch to using Godot haha.

For the cat hook, maybe Meowlemtopia?

What about "A Cat's Tale"? As it is the story/RPG from the cat's p.o.v., and its adventure of rescuing other animals and creating a society. I'm getting Cult of Lamb vibes without the "sinister" underbelly. Nah, that might be too cutesy.

Did you have a job somewhere else? Or were you doing this full time?

Great video! What were you using for the game design document?

Why didnt you go for unity? There is more information/data of unity than Godot. Btw your games looks good. Keep it up.

Seems like Stardew Valley meets PalWorld. Nice.

did you know how to code before you started on this endeavour? if so how long did it take you to learn?

YAAAAY JAMIEEE IS BAAACK

I think your hook is that it's a cute, cosy game where you play as a cat and it's animal themed. What you described as the hook is just the genre of the game. No one is gonna be like "oh no way it's a management sim meets dungeon crawler?! Now I have to play it" It's more likely that players will get excited/hooked by the cat theme. But regardless, your progress so far is great and the game looks really interesting, keep it up! (This comment is meant to be helpful not judgemental) Subbed :)

Please do an account at Mastodon or something else so that we can keep up with minor game updates and interact with you during the process! ❤❤ I'm Happy for the new video :)