The making of Forester.

While little was sure about Forester at this point, one I knew. It will be about tending tree cultivation. And so I stripped everything else, and tried to establish a basic question.

“Is it fun to work the grid”?

Hard to establish. It is hard to be proud of a green blob. The gameplay was flat, so was the map.

Thus the next step was to introduce space and at least some visuals. An idea of an estate was already there, but at this point only as a silent reminder of future scope.

At this point, trees were the main focus, and so it was time to define some typology of the trees themselves.

While it may seem on the screenshots that the main change is addition of details, the main work was happening in the backend.

Creation of new UI, tutorials, new menus, settings, balancing and the scenario work itself.

At this point, an awkward question came to my mind. “Why are we trying to get the wood actually?”.

This resulted in series of experiments, which ended up introducing a second gameplay loop, higher order one to the tree cultivation.

The estate management, the rebuilding of stations and the various upgrades and unlocks each would provide.

Final addition, completing the 3 pillar structure, was the character themselves.

Addition of character customization was a clear scope creep, yet it unlocked a certain “The Sims” angle, without which the game wouldn’t be the same.

As I failed previously in establishing a strong film-like narrative in my previous overly ambitious project, I was hesitant.

Fortunately, it turned out writing these little stories is exactly what I needed to get over my writers’ block.

None of these stories will save the world. But each of them will change the overall story a tiny bit, until something unique emerges.

The future of the project may actually be in this 3rd pillar more than in any other.