Craft, forage & farm across a whimsical land with new friends in this open world sandbox adventure. What world will you create? 🦕🌎
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Hello beastly friends!
We are so excited to share that Alpha V 0.2 Â is now out!
We've decided to reopen the BackerKit shop to offer Alpha Beast access to those that can't wait to play. Alpha access remains limited, and you all have first dibs!
Being an Alpha Beast means you get to play the Alpha in progress builds and give feedback to us. You'll get to share your thoughts in our exclusive discord community and have real input in the development of the game.
We are approaching our target Early Access launch date of March next year and backing the project now as an Alpha Beast is the best way you can help us reach that goal!
We continue to appreciate your patience in making this game as great as possible, and a big part of that is the community that has developed around our little project.
Your beastly buddy,
Cliff
Order Alpha Beast Access here! : https://oddfauna.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/
*For Alpha Access you need both items in the shop. A Steam copy of the game and Alpha Beast *
Here is a list of some of the improvements in this update:
Ahoy me watery beasts!
Alpha v 0.2 has entered its final stage, playtesting. This update has grown to be quite jam packed with new and improved features. I am really proud of this update and excited for you to test it out. It will be going live this Friday Noon PST. Alpha Beasts, keep on your inbox for your playtest survey. The last surveys were really helpful, so please fill those out.
With this update we are opening up the BackerKit shop one final time! If you have been considering backing as an Alpha Beast, this is your chance. Details to come later this week.
Your oddCaptain,
Cliff
Hey Friendos,
(Before I begin, make sure to check out the shoutout at the bottom of the update.)
Being back in the studio has felt great! I started Sept off thinking 🤔 "I think I'll choose something simple to work on to start" and that almost immediately spiraled into refactoring my random math library from blueprint into C++. Ha! It may not sound like it to many people, but it actually was a lot of fun. I love working on this game.  I've since refactored a lot of the code into C++, making it much faster and allowing me to do some exciting things (Like my version of water simulation). A lot of progress has been made, from the wind system, water system and Starfruit. Speaking of progress, let's start with Starfruit.
Eating star fruit is the main way you can level up your character's skills. That's right, you can level up your skills! I'm always a fan of rpg like progression in games. The approach I'm taking with OddFauna is to have a long list of skills that have a meaningful impact on gameplay. Eating 4 starfruit gives you a skill point to spend. Skills include things like jumping, building, harvesting, and many more. The other ways to increase your skill levels are to have OddFauna in your party and/or wear friendship pins. More on those in a future update.
Breezing right along. Wind is back! There are a number of systems that were turned off to launch Alpha, wind was one of those. It's a global wind system that effects many things; pushes physical objects, temperature, floating items, gliding/flying, fire and many more.
Blown in on the wind, clouds are back! I've always loved these clouds. They feel like mischievous creatures. :) They have been reworked to appear properly and behave in a more suitable manner. Their main purpose is to rain on your parade. Water is being refactored to act overall more naturally; flow down slopes, water plants, evaporate, etc. Clouds play an important role in replenishing the available water on the TerraBeast.
These updates will be in game for the next 0.2 Alpha Update.
As a reminder, if you backed as an Alpha Beast you can play the game right now on Steam. If you are interested in getting your paws on the game early and want to support us, we will be opening up the shop later in October (details in a future update).
Your weathered friend,
Cliff
ALSO! I want to share that very good friends of ours Jordan and Chris have launched a Kickstarter for a Horrible Adorable's board game TODAY! They also happen to be a married couple that work together making all sorts of creature creations. We've known them through our creator community for many years now and they are awesome. Check out their Kickstarter by clicking below:
Hey Beastly Buddies!
I’m back and I’ve got our first update for the game, entitled 0.1 Bug Smash! If you have been wondering, Hmmm where has Cliff been? Well, it has been quite the summer! First a personal update; Emma and I had our second child! YAAY! The birth went extremely well, and we are overjoyed to have our new healthy baby girl join our family.
Right before our new joyful little one joined us; we released the first version of Alpha! It really couldn’t have gone better. We had hundreds of our Alpha Beasts start playing the game and clock in some serious play hours. It is very-very exciting to have my first game out in the wild. Thank you to everyone who played, filled out your surveys, filed bugs and shared your experience in the Discord.
This first update is primarily focused on fixing the bugs people submitted and fixing the most common issues/requests. I’ve read and re-read everything you’ve submitted and again, I can’t thank you enough for your positive and constructive feedback. We really have an amazing community growing around this game!
What are the highlights of this update you ask?
What is next?
I’ve been back to work part-time and am about to start back full-time. I have LOTS of updates planned. The next major updates will be focused around 3 major things:
Expect more information on these in the coming weeks. There are many more updates on the roadmap that I will share with you at a later date.
When do I get to play?
If you backed as an Alpha Beast (or added Alpha access) you can play the game right now! Check your email for your steam key from Backerkit (including your spam).
There is a lot of work to be done to get the game ready for the general public. The new target date for Early Access is March. I am expecting Alpha to run till the end of this year, leaving 3 months for Beta testing/polish.
Ride Sculpture Update?
Yes, we have news! The Ride collector sculpture is continuing to move forward through the manufacturing process. We are expecting the first factory sample to review soon. We’ve seen pictures and it looks fantastic, very exciting!
Your happy-tired dev,
Cliff
P.S. you will hopefully start to see me again on social media. I am looking for a good place to try streaming the game/development. There is twitch/youtube/tiktok/instalive. Do people have a preference?
0.1 Bug Smash
Bug fixes