Introducing GeoFarmer

September 6th, 2022

The game I am currently working on is titled “Stories of a GeoFarmer” and it attempts to combine the addicting mechanics of farming games like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley with the complex economic and social systems of agricultural geography. The locale is set in Southeast Asia with the current “levels” being the countries of Malaysia, The Philippines, and Vietnam.

Given that the game is designed as a learning supplement for a geography course at a university, the game tries to pull in as many pieces as possible when it comes to the unique agricultural geography for each region. The two mechanics attempt to fill that out along with a story somewhat unique in each locale. First up, the farming mechanic uses crops that are common in each area. More importantly, the quest mechanic includes issues that these countries and regions are facing today (along with some of the solutions that have been previously tried or are currently being implemented).

The game has been beta tested with a single class of the aforementioned university course and the feedback was mostly helpful in providing quick improvements to the game. Many of the suggestions were tasks that will likely add polish to the game and refine the user experience. For example, I am currently loading in custom artwork that is representative of the diverse populations that live in these regions (instead of the stock fantasy artwork that the game engine provides). Speaking of, the game is built on the RPG Maker MV which is JavaScript based game engine housing a robust custom events function. The engine is specifically designed for recreating nostalgic RPGs in the style of games like Final Fantasy IV, but has plenty of plug-ins, scripting, and code editing capabilities to allow for drastic modifications of the core gameplay. This leads to the current conundrum based on the feedback from the beta test: the suggestions included  changing some of the core mechanics to better align gameplay and the lesson so how do we evolve (Pokémon reference intended) to the next series of mechanics while still teaching the core lessons?

On that head-scratcher of a question, I’m signing out.

Your favorite and only game dev,

Blake