Hi there,

Thanks for reading this devlog, hopefully the first of many.  As an introduction, Wild Haven is a nature builder about rebuilding the forest to its once flourishing state. You, the spirit of a small shrine, are tasked with cleaning up your damaged land and bringing back the plants and animals. As you explore and grow, you’ll discover new wildlife and decide how you want to shape the landscape.

You can check out the game here: https://rchava.itch.io/wild-haven

My brother and I started building Wild Haven at the start of the summer as a fun project.  Our development got to the point where we asked ourselves the question why not release this as a full fledged game and away we went.  And now one summer later, we’ve gotten the game to a point where we are quasi-confidently ready to release a version to the world and hopefully receive some feedback. Our goal with Wild Haven is to create a sandbox where you as the player can build up the natural landscape while making trade offs based on the placement of resources.  Each unit you build is a potential resource for another unit down the road.  In addition, we want players to experiment and be happy with just spinning up a new run if they want to try something different.  We are still in the early days of hopefully realizing that goal but that is the plan!

For this first release, we’ve built out the core game systems of exploring the map, building wildlife on the map, a resource tree for adding more complex wildlife, and managing your resources.  We added some simple graphics, sound, a save system and procedural map generator but plan to flesh these systems out more in the future.  To help get you going, we also added an in-game tutorial and a how to play on the Itch game description.  Again, we would love any feedback on how to improve, any bugs you find etc. 

Developer Log #2 - Version 0.2.25

Hi reader,

Thanks for taking the time to read through this.  From the feedback we've received on our demo, https://rchava.itch.io/wild-haven, we spent the last couple of weeks on two main areas; the first being the end game and the second being the build tree for the game.  

Each run has an ending once you’ve reached 100 turns but it was pretty unclear how to compare your runs. To answer that, we’ve worked on building out a scoring system.  Now when you reach the end, you’ll receive a score based on how many and what kind of plants, and animals you’ve built.  You receive a higher score for adding more complex animals and for filling up the map.  We plan to iterate on the scoring system with bonus modifiers and a task system that is to be implemented later.

The second piece of feedback was on the balance of the build tree.  It felt like some wildlife was super important to place on the map such as Beehives but other wildlife went nowhere (Birch).  We feel like this is going to be a long work in progress as we iterate through the game but we took another pass with a focus on how plants interact with one another.  We’ve separated them into three groups, brush, grasses, and trees.  Brush and grasses affect the type of trees with brush growing Oak trees and grasses growing Maple trees.  Additionally, we wanted to make the choice of types of plants that grow on toxic soil more impactful with specific ones unlocking different parts of the build tree.

Developer Log #4 - Dec 8th, 2024 Version 0.2.35

Hi reader,

Thanks for taking the time to read this devlog!

With this update, we’ve added a bunch of quality of life improvements(QoL) to the game.  A number of ideas which we incorporated based on feedback! The biggest being the ability to reset the turn.  If you don’t like the placement of specific wildlife, cleared something you didn’t want to or changed your mind you can reset to the beginning of that turn. 

To keep with the trend of QoL changes, we’ve added another step in the build process to make it easier to understand the requirements for building wildlife, and we’ve frozen the soil informational bar when you select a tile.  We’ve also added tooltip information to both the build requirements informational pane and soil informational bar and added tooltips to the build button to explain why you can or can’t build specific wildlife.  Finally, we moved the clear wildlife button to the soil informational bar to show that the option is tied to the tile and not to the wildlife.

With our next update, we plan to make major updates to the how tiles are generated, what is placed on tiles and how large the map can be.  Right now with every run you are fixed to a 11x10 grid, which is a good size, but what if you want to explore in a specific direction and just want a larger map?  With this next update, we plan to add those options!  Once again we want to thank you for trying out our game and we would love any feedback on how to improve, any bugs you find etc.

- K & R

Log:

Updates:

• Add an undo button to return to the game to beginning of the turn.
• Freeze soil informational bar when tile is selected either on top or bottom.  Provide on hover tooltip information.
• When out of turns have next turn button be animated.
• Add two step process for building wildlife to make it easier for player to understand what wildlife’s requirements are.
• Move clear button to bottom away from wildlife build options.
• Show total coins per turn gained per turn.
• Add tooltip info for why player is unable to build wildlife.

Bugs: 

• Fixed pixel font for readability.
• Some wildlife outside of a tile's influence/range was not correctly showing up as dependent on said tile.
• New wildlife builds aren't correctly registering for some wildlife requirements.
• Update coins icon and animation to match coins per turn icon.

Developer Log - Jan 12th, 2025 Version 0.2.40

Hi reader,

Thanks for taking the time to read this devlog; the first of 2025!  

You can check out the game here: https://rchava.itch.io/wild-haven

As a brief recap, we are the two person dev team building Wild Haven, a nature ecosystem builder.  Per our previous devlog, with v0.2.40 we wanted to create a larger update focused on more choices for you when setting up the game.  

With this update, we added a new game selection option where you can choose between Classic Mode and One More Turn mode.  Classic Mode is the current version of the game with limited turns, and the ability to accumulate experience to unlock talents (coming in a future update).  With One More Turn mode, the game has an unlimited number of turns and all wildlife is unlocked at the start, but you won’t accumulate experience to use between runs.  For the demo, only Classic Mode will be available for now.

The second major feature for this update is new game map sizes.  With this update, you have three options: Normal, Large and Jumbo.  Normal maps are 11x10 tiles, Large are 23x20 tiles and Jumbo are 33x30 tiles.  Each map size also increases the number of turns you get respectively.  For the demo, only Normal and Large maps are available.

With the next update, we plan to update the types of structures you will encounter during a game and take another pass at the game map’s procedural generation.  Currently, you can find Derelict Sheds and Abandoned Houses as you explore.  We plan to add to these polluted landmarks and also let you find beneficial landmarks on the map.  This will also naturally result in more wildlife options and combinations.  Once again we want to thank you for trying out our game and we would love any feedback on how to improve, any bugs you find etc.

- K & R

Log:

Updates:

• Add game selection mode for Classic or One More Turn game mode
• Provide normal, large and jumbo map sizes with different game lengths.
• Right click, hold and drag to move the camera.
• Camera re-centers on selected tile.
• Add ability to end the game early.
• Custom default mouse cursor and when moving the map.

Bugs: 

• Explore build tooltip now says Explore not Grow.
• Moved tooltips for Next Turn and Undo Turn to prevent overlap with respective buttons.