Farmtastic Life isn’t my first attempt to create Farming Game.
In fact, I’ve started to working on first one back in 2003 – 21 years ago! It was named Farmer Fran, which of course was reference to TV Show in Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. I was using GameMaker 5.3 for it’s creation – a same tool that I’m using nowadays for FL.
2003 – 2007 – Farmer Fran
Game was using ripped graphics from HM:FOMT and HM:DS, and in fact that was actually main reason why it was abandoned. While making “fan” games at the time was very popular, I’ve understand that using copyrighted graphics is not legal and one day I might see lawyer letter in my mailbox, and since I’m not good at pixel art, I felt that there’s no chance to draw something good enough, that anyone would want to play it – even for free. I’ve discontinued it around end of 2007. I’ve sold one copy of game with it’s source code, and gave all money to charity – so someone still have it on it’s shelf, somewhere around world…
However, after success of Stardew Valley (it sold in 30M copies as for 2024!), I began to regret that I’d at least didn’t tried to continue project, finding own style pixel graphic and improving it – who knows what I could achieve in 9 years… But I felt that I shouldn’t think “what if” – I’ve lost my chance.
Around 2 years later I’ve started to really regret my decision and miss those times, when I was making my original project. It was 15 years since I’ve started it, and 11 since I’ve dropped it – in which my programming skills went dozen levels up – so I’ve made my own challenge in which I’ve tried to make a farming game prototype, and see how much I would be able to achieve during ONE weekend.
2018 and beyond
I was able to achieve minimal functionality of cultivating fields and taking care of animals, with day/night cycle and primitive backpack – in less than 3 days I’ve managed to complete what took me around 2-3 months back in 2003.
Yet, I’ve put it once again on shelve.
It was until I’ve played Swords of Ditto on Nintendo Switch, a game also made in my beloved GameMaker (which also evolved compared to 2003). It’s one of biggest games ever made in GM, but what I really liked there was… graphical style.
While this game is more about fighting, environment – like trees, ground, sea, houses – was looking like taken from some cozy game for kids. And that was that moment, where synapses in my brain finally found final solution for my kid dreams… Game, which I could drawn on my own, as I could use vector graphics to prototype things (by moving curves every time I made something bad), and then re-draw it by hand tracing my own lines, to give them more natural look.
I’ve back to work. It was… 8th February 2000. That’s the day on which I’ve decided that I’m going further, and make repository to track code changes (and have a backup!). First commit was kind of joke to my previously cancelled work (and HM:BTN of course) – as it contained same quote from game, which inspired me to make game back in 2003.
Which means, that 4th anniversary of project revival just passed, and that it’s 21st year of development… it’s a Duke Nuke Farmever among farming games…
Here are few other videos presenting my initial game.
First one – from 28th of July 2006 (~3 years since dev. started).
And another one – 13th December 2006 (half year later, around 10-11 months before I’ve discontinued project).
That was blast from the past…