Moondrop, the roguelike farm sim (dev chat)

[Moonroof Studios]

Hello, all. I'm Josh, the developer of the roguelike farm sim Moondrop. The game released on Steam this weekend after a year's worth of Early Access development. I thought I'd talk a little bit about the game here and in particular the game's farming mechanics - I'm quite proud of them ^_^

I'm a big fan of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. As much as I liked those games, I felt like the farming eventually became repetitive. (I've never made it past Year 2 in Stardew, for instance.) I wanted to see if I could take some ideas from the roguelike genre (another favorite genre of mine) to help keep farming fresh.

Roguelikes are designed to be played over and over, and one way they do this is by randomizing things. Each game could feature a different dungeon, a different combination of equipment, or a different set of monsters to fight. So how do you do this in a farm game? My answer was to make crop planting and placement more interesting by making crops care about their neighbors. In Moondrop, crops have an "elemental" type - they are either Dry, Damp, Sunny, or Shady. If you want to think of these like the traditional four video elements -- fire, water, air, and earth -- I won't stop you >.> Besides having a type, each crop also sends out growth arrows to its neighbors. There arrows also have an elemental type. If they align with the neighboring crop, then the crop grows a little each day. If they oppose it, then the crop shrinks. For example, you might have a Dry-type crop that sends out Sunny arrows (so you should plant it next to Sunny-type crops), or you might have a Damp-type crop that sends out Dry arrows. You should plant that next to Dry-type crops, and definitely not Damp-type ones.

With that system in place, I had a good way to make each farm interesting. By giving the player a random assortment of seeds, the player has to figure out the best configuration of crops to maximize growth / profit. Each game presents a cozy optimization puzzle for the player to solve (and add onto as more seeds are gained during the game).

Once the player gets comfortable with the basics of elemental farming, they start to unlock rare seeds and plant powers. For instance, some rare seeds give growth bonuses to any type of neighboring crop and some others double the value of their neighbors. Some plant powers will cause the crop to teleport across the farm or cause the crop to change type depending on what's nearby. These provide additional 'twists' to keep farming interesting once the basics are mastered.

I hope you check out the game! You can play a free web version at https://joshuagalecki.itch.io/moondrop to see what Moondrop is like. I'm happy to answer any questions about the game itself, game development, or my thoughts on farming games in general

[Kikki]

Here is the game on Steam, everybody, if you're interested in checking out some extra info and reviews and so on.

As for me...I hate roguelites, lol, so it's very unlikely to be my thing. I resented even just having to fight monsters while mining in Stardew, and it's not a roguelite...I just really like to get into deep farming and community-building without any combat. I like to slowly develop my farm and the world over a long time, and having it reset would make me go berserk. Plus the social side of farming sims is a big deal, to me, and Moondrop doesn't contain those things.

I don't know if me mentioning why I (as a huge farming-sim fan) am not interested in trying it is helpful or not, but just in case...those are my main reasons for figuring I probably won't try it. Though you can do so for free right at the link the developer posted, so it's not like you have to spend money if you're not yet sure if it'd be your thing or not.

Good luck, Josh. I hope your game does well

[Moonroof Studios]

It's true, the game is quite a bit different than a standard farm sim - no worries if it's not for you! There's definite times during Moondrop where you have to restart your farm. This was one of the bigger design challenges for me - farm games are such big engine builders, and asking players to lose all that is asking a lot. But it also drives the game forward. When the player is expected to restart, you have to make sure the game is fun to restart and offers interesting challenges each time.

Moondrop, I'm proud to say, is completely nonviolent* and there is no combat in the game! I think doing something like Stardew Valley's mines would have been an easy path to follow, but I wanted to avoid that entirely. The roguelike part of Moondrop focuses more on exploration, discovery, and puzzles rather than fighting. (If you're interested on a deep dive of that part of the design process, I wrote up some extensive thoughts on the topic.)
*One small exception: you might have to run away from bees.

I can also confirm that there is no social aspect to the game, and I know that's an important part of farm games for a lot of people. That means no romance aspect either, although there's another reason for that. The main character in Moondrop is based off of my wife - she's a huuuuuge Stardew fan - and I made the game as a bit of a love letter to her. Adding a romance layer to that would be a little... weird, haha.

[greensara]

I have always associated rougelikes with combat, so no combat certainly has my attention. I honestly hate the mines and volcano in Stardew Valley. I mostly prefer farming without fighting or killing monsters for materials. I don't mind mixing it up if it's well done. The problem for me is when there's so much other stuff, you can't just focus on the farming.

[Code_Name_Geek]

I played a bit of the demo, it was really interesting!! Not totally sure on some of the mechanics and I'm pretty sure I've barely scratched the surface but it was kind of addicting. I love the idea of a non-combat rogue-like, and I like to think about different ways it could work myself. This is a really unique take on it! Restarting the farm every so often seems like an odd idea, but with the way the layout matters so much I can see it being a relief to restart if you farm yourself into a corner. Playing with the mouse and keyboard was a little awkward for me but I see the full game has controller support so that's awesome. I actually already had this one on my wishlist so I will def consider it in the future (but I always have a million games to play so it may not be right away). Thanks for posting here about the demo, I like to see when devs drop by this corner of the internet!