scribels

making games for the bees 🐝

background in design, game dev by trade, artist at heart 🐞

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  • what lies in that seedy vault…

    so, there are features i’ve been planning from the start of seedy vault. part of this sort of master gameplan i came up with in my head and jotted down on paper very early on. and i was waiting for the game to get more popular but…. i just had the thought today to ignore all previous limitations and just add ’em. i want to play them!
    and as i was about to take notes on how to best implement one of them in-game, it dawned on me that, oh yeah. scribels has a blog! so welcome to another blog post…

    i just finished maybe the first meal i’ve made for myself in quite possibly 2 months, so don’t mind me chowing down on fajitas as i first brain dump my plans for these ideas.

    at its core, seedy vault was always going to possess a rogue-like dungeon mechanic where vault runners navigate its mysteries and collect locked away seeds that lie within the vault. this was always the concept that was going to set the game apart from the infamous grow a garden colossus and the like.
    the cooler part about this idea was not just providing players the option to explore the vault, but also exploring other islands in search of rare fauna and seeds – plucking out invasive species in the process. vault dwellers would have to learn how to best avoid hostile creatures, bugs, plants, and… machines(??) as they search these places for bounty.

    of course, like the rest of the game, these areas would be completely randomized and refreshed between designated time intervals with varying degrees of rarity. perhaps vault dives happen every half hour, while the chosen island could be a daily occurance, giving players 24 hours to visit and reap its rewards.
    i also believe it’s integral having these mechanics be a shared experience among other players in a server, so you and a friend can journey together simultaneously and both have equal chances at collecting the same loot! maybe this is me having hyped this all up in my head, but i genuinely think this sounds so fun; and feel it could really have some potential. it’s a colorful twist in conjunction with the (already proven) addicting core loop.
    i want to say there’s room for progression, too – having certain island passes locked behind higher costs due to their more dangerous circumstances and yield for better rewards.
    especially in the vault. but i haven’t quite yet puzzled together how progression would work there. original ideas were having some sort of vault keeper’s level or status… where maybe unlocking expansions and higher level seeds permit the opportunity to venture deeper and deeper into the vault. learning more and more about its history until eventually reaching what lies at its end, and discovering for yourself the true reason behind its creation…

    but that’s getting ahead of ourselves, simple comes first!

    it’s been a while since i’ve touched seedy vault, and for a moment i forgot why i stopped updates… but looking back on it i lost the job i had at the time and the game wasn’t performing to my expectations so i think that’s a fair reason

    there’s been a work in progress update sitting in studio since then, so i’d like to get that rolling before i start having fun with all the dungeon stuff. currently i’ve been spending some time improving the ux for mobile since i came to the conclusion that it sucks pretty bad. i really liked having the bigger harvest pictures overflow in the inventory but i did that knowing eventually some day i’d have to remove it. so i’ll be tearfully saying goodbye to that.
    mostly i want mobile players to have the ability to see the mouse hover pop-up information like PC currently does, as the weight of a harvest and descriptions are currently ambiguous to them… which is kind of an important issue.

    after that it’s nana banana time as i finish implementing the bananas. currently a (mostly) illegal fruit in the islands at the time of the vault. why you ask? well, you’ll have to ask a few friends you’ll be meeting down in the vault some day. some dark market traders may have a word or two to say about that whole fiasco…
    we also have the start of a few new early game plants coming to help spice up gameplay for new players to hopefully keep them interested and playing. islander flowers being the first of them. squeaky squash will have to make its debut at a later time, i think. but the goal is having plants that indicate to players right of the bat that this offline game is not like the others, in a good way!

    i also hope you’ll enjoy our first sign of life down there, runt! our aspiring vault master deemed too small and inexperienced for vault runs. i’m hoping to upgrade his style and design in the future to match my sketches, but for now he’s very oceanrest looking with raisin eyes. he’ll handle all upgrades relating to your inventory storage and expansion while boss is away – deer’s in charge!

    alright, i’ve gotta get back to it. i’ve been chipping away at little islands, too, in-between work for dandy’s world. though, i think i’ll cover all that in a separate post. bye for now!

  • back online

    we here at scribels.blog apologize for the interruption. i was using this site as a temporarily portfolio holder but now we’re back in action. 😼

  • labor day for the labor-less

    lately the islands have been calling me, and in many ways i’m happy to know they still remember my name! you know, given i’ve been away for some time. though to be fair, i’ve never really been far at all if you consider where the seed vault lies. and while it’s been refreshing to step underground for a while, i am eager to return to the surface.

    in the real world, i’ve been on an island of my own, actually. a thousand miles away from family, friends, faces and places i miss oh so much. though i’m happy to report that much of my whereabouts recently have been touring these comforts in a much needed visit back home. i keep family matters close to my chest, but what i can share is the unexpected enjoyment of the 20 hours there and back.
    i love any moment where i can simply exist alone with my thoughts. so much of that time feels robbed from us these days. there is always someone…. something… or some place demanding our attention. and at last when we’re free, we spend the break enslaving our minds to the braindead consumption of our devices. brainrot is real, and it feels healing to treat my mind to some much needed gardening.
    now, with two 20-hour drives, and added time for pee breaks, truck stop snacks, and sketchy back seat slumbers – i had plenty of time for gardening. we’re talking like 50 hours here, and my brain did not disappoint! well, during the drive back my brain started to shut down, actually. driving UP, however, i was so happily lost in thought with both little islands and seedy vault… and i loved every second of it. so next time you think me lazy, uninterested, or unmotivated to work on the game you care for, just know nine times out of ten i’m probably sitting somewhere, bag of goldfish in hand, staring at a wall, daydreaming about the same game you are. believe me when i tell you these games are my art. and not the art i’m forced to make, but the art i want to make – bugs and all!

    what’s more worthy to report, and a bit more relevant to the sabotaged progress of my projects, would be the loss of my job as ui designer for jazwares in august. it was a good run, islanders… but ultimately i am grateful for all i was able to learn from this experience and the connections i made.
    there’s a lot more i wish i could say about this, but essentially it was out of our hands as the entire studio closed. i think it’s safe to say most of us were half-expecting this to happen after layoffs hit our team hard in the spring. but nothing quite prepares you for the present like the present.

    in the mean time, i’ve spent this time largely… well, crisis managing! (with a detour for family of course.) but in more recent good news, thanks to a former colleague i’ve been able to find some part-time contract work with a very cool roblox community as i prepare for the strenuous trip to RDC ’25 this weekend. so far, things are going great! but it’s only part-time, so the hope this weekend is to find something more permanent that could provide safe haven to work on my art again without worry.
    besides this, my circumstances have been ever so the more humbling lately. i would spare you the details, but i just find them so amusing. one of them is my apartment towing my registered car from our garage without telling me, experiencing a flat tire immediately following the release of my car from the sketchy car asylum, and a cigarette fumed truck ride with michael, the arabic speaking tow driver (who was strangely hitting on me…). google translate apps made for a fun ride!

    but aside from my circumstances, i have been deeply frustrated with roblox’s lack of moderation, the current state of the platform, and the outspoken inflammatory side of its community. i’ll save you my explicit thoughts on everything in this ongoing situation, but it’s taken its toll mentally.
    it is hard to find the drive to work on a game that resembles so many of the games that are currently being understood as enabling for predators and bad actors to subdue victims or expose young users to illicit content. i suppose this is the darker side of user-generated content that i do not see being 100% preventable. i think about the users and builds we’ve had to moderate ourselves already, and then i imagine them brought to a larger scale and making its way to the reactionary public. it is demotivating, to say the least, because i so badly want a building game like ours to commercially succeed. but perhaps it was always a blessing our little islands have stayed a small tight-knit community.
    because of all this, i’ve taken some time to re-think some design decisions for the game. originally, the plan was to open up character customization to the catalog, becoming more akin to places like catalog avatar creator; empowering players to manifest the characters they want, while also opening doors for monetary revenue through the commissions on in-game catalog sales. however, i think it’s obvious now the problematic nature of this mechanic and as such i cannot in good faith continue to work on it until roblox improves their moderation. i do not want the game to hold even the capacity to support such behavior, even more so than it already has as a free form building game.
    so instead, i think it would be wiser we stick to the customization strategy we have always adhered to, with pre-made catalogs of avatar items with controlled roleplay genres that do not empower opportunities for explicit content or dangerous behavior. the amount of content to work with may be limiting, but i do believe this the safer approach to character customization.

    so, after all that’s been said. i currently find myself at a roadblock of sorts (haha, roadblocks), and i’m not quite sure yet how best to proceed. my mind fluctuates by the hour between working on little islands 2 or working on seedy vault. sometimes it feels smarter to work on the vault, as its goal was to provide for little islands 2 financially. but seeing the game lose its spark so quickly has been demotivating, and i was expecting it to take off more than it did. i still believe in it, and i do think there are a few more mechanics that would change the game and keep people playing, but i’m worried i’ll be wrong again. i suppose that’s the fun of it: finding out.
    other parts of me wish i wasn’t so ambitious, that i could just make something and have it released to the world without any fear of things not being quite the way i want them in my head. so, my personal goal is to do more of that. especially with the sequel update, i think scaling back and just getting something functionally playable out would be a better start to new beginning for little islands, even if it’s not what people expected.

    the length of this blog post was more than intended, but it feels good to get all my thoughts on paper. it’s helped me quite a lot, actually, and i think i know what directions to proceed in. right now, it’s feeling like the islands will get what they’ve been wanting. but first… i think the banana trade is about to arrive at the vault.

  • nana banana

    nana banana
    oh what fun
    nana banana
    out in the sun
    nana banana
    when ripe as plum
    nana banana
    bread you become

    From the Oceanrest Library Collection

  • the inevitable first blog post

    if you’re reading this, you’ve probably been following me for a long time. but if not, spectacular… welcome to my even more official diary.

    very quickly, let’s do a little run down of what you’ll be able to find around here. for one, this is a blog, and those tend to have a lot of words. if reading is not your forte, my condolences… but i’ll try to include some cool pictures here and there. there will be times i feel like posting quick ramblings or slices of life. other times where i focus on my craft, sharing updates, dev logs, lore scoops, or status of the games and projects i’m working on. the most exciting part is finally having a platform where i can go into more detail without worrying about my word count or whether or not people are interested. everyone here is here voluntarily, i am free!

    if you’re wondering what’s going to happen to the discord diary, i…. don’t really know. i’m kind of figuring it out as i go. i don’t intend on stopping posts there, though, nor do i expect the majority of people who frequent the discord to find their way here and stick around. a lot of this blog is really for me and whoever cares to listen.

    i see this as a personal outlet to always return to my inner scribels and listen to the art-and-stories-and-stuff that i want to create. a funny looking goblin reminded me of this not too long ago… to make the game i want to make. it seems every time i hold true to that, people enjoy it – and when i lose sight of it, people don’t. i could name a few examples, but i think the take away here is people can tell when something’s not genuine or authentic to its creator. and i’m hoping this blog helps me attune to myself in that way.

    so yeah, maybe a bit random to start a blog, but i’m excited to have a platform to voice my thoughts with a bit more permanence. not to mention the fun journey ahead of learning this CMS and customizing the site to my liking. also, did you notice? scribels.blog! official domain alert!! how cool!!! my first one ever! for some reason scribels.com is already taken, but mark my words… whoever you are, i will find you.

    i think that pretty much covers most of it. currently i am a thousand miles away from home visiting family, and the macbook i’m using right now is a bit old… but i have a lot of thoughts and feelings i would like to share soon regarding seedy vault and little islands 2. i suppose i should also give some general updates as to what i’ve been up to as well. another time, perhaps. right now this macbook is burning the skin off my resting palms.

    until then, islanders…