let it leave me like a long breath

i think i'm gonna approach this whole SEXY FARMING SIM game as just... an exercise of planning/outlining skills, with the end result being a 100% complete design doc, rather than committing to making an actual game. since uh testing out DESIGN AND PLANNING SKILLS is not a thing i do much and i could stand to have some practice runs here.

(and of course w/ the understanding that if i do decide to make a game out of it, it would be a lot easier to do that with a complete design doc than without.)

so with that here's the mess of notes i have so far.

moving to a frontier town that's at the edge of a mountain range that's actually a giant crater w/ a craggy rocky desert inside. but outside it's a boggy fen swampy kind of place, directly in the shade of the mountains, tho it gets more forest/plains-y a little ways out or in the foothills. there's a big river going along the mountain, w/ lots of little streams winding down the mountain to join it.

soon after you arrive you make a pact w/ some kinda forest god and that basically gives you the ability to level up.

also, yr pact provides you with a shrine or smth, and you can perform various rites + keep the shrine maintained to give various growth buffs to yr land + yrself. it's like, different configurations of the shrine's immediate area change what rites are available. some of the rites have elements like "keep yrself ritually pure via bathing in springs" or "don't take damage" or w/e, so there's a constant component for as long as the rite keeps going. you can (a bit later on) make offerings to summon up the forest god and ask to expand or move yr rite zone.

probably some of the rites are ritual sex. ritual sex w/ the forest god or weird forest monsters even. or w/ townspeople.

ALSO so you live on the town outskirts and the town has perpetual materials quests you can give to supply them w/ stuff to expand in various ways. sometimes you can pick where the things they build go -- somewhere between soulblazer and dark cloud 2. maybe the opening arc is even straightup a "the town got sealed away so you gotta break the seals" kinda thing?

ALSO the town is built over/through some ancient ruins, like super old and broken apart and plant-encrusted (i'm thinking the ruins of gehenna pale in jade cocoon, v. overgrown) and you can sometimes get into the depths which is where The Dungeon is. there's a certain amount of dungeon crawling stuff but it's basically optional.

alsooooo the gardening should be more like actual gardening, w/ a major emphasis on perennials and on yearly flux. it's subtropical, w/ spring and fall as the rainy seasons and winter and summer as the dry seasons.

• in spring the river floods & leaves behind a big silty floodplain
• in summer the wind down off the mountain is thick w/ wild pollen, which pollinates a bunch of stuff
• also in summer: its hot and dry, and you'll actually have to water plants every few days / every day during a heat wave
• likewise: summer is brush fire season. not so much in the swamp, but definitely higher up on the plains
• in fall it's spawning season so the river is hopping w/ fish and they're blanketing the river banks
• in winter the snow extends down further from the tops of the mountains, and there might be a few frosts. snow is possible but very rare

it's not just those things; there should be a lot more seasonal tweaks

any plant that is not completely uprooted to harvest will keep living & growing out of season. stuff like berry bushes would take two+ years to even start bearing more than one or two berries; stuff like tomato plants could bear on the first year but it would take five+ before they reach full maturity. or w/e, specific times aren't clear yet, just: a lot of stuff yr gonna plant and tend to for a long time before it bears any fruit.

uhhh thinking like, primitive 3d, breath of fire 3 style (as usual) with world geometry and character sprites, tho maybe with a isometric camera that's edge-on instead of corner-on since that fits more with the farming sim genre conceit.

levels up: there are skills. you level yr skills by doing actions in the domain of the skill (farming, forestry, mining, cooking, you know the drill).

there are special one-use items you can collect in various places through various ways that raise yr max stamina & health

(certain actions are 'prolonged' and don't just happen in a crafting menu or w/e. instead yr character queues up the actions and performs them. most cooking actions are like this. idk about this, b/c it would basically be "this thing has a hugely long animation".)

(buildings work like this: they have "damage" show up sometimes randomly, which you can fix for free by hitting them w/ a hammer. but they also have a hidden 'actual damage' stat, & when that hits certain levels it'll need actual materials to repair. there being unfixed visible damage drastically increases the rate at which the actual damage increases. so 'increased weathering' means the visible damage rate goes down)

• foraging
  • use: wild plant identification; increased foraging yields; decreased stamina cost of harvesting
  • gain: harvesting wild plants & berries
• farming
  • use: increased plant care info; higher quality grown plant harvests; decreased stamina cost of planting, tending, and harvesting
  • gain: planting crops; tending to sprouts; harvesting from a plant you planted yrself
• cooking
  • use: increased quality cooking products; more visible recipes; decreased stamina cost of cooking
  • gain: prolonged food preparation; food processing actions (cheese aging, wine aging, milling, etc)

• mining
  • use: rock identification; increased mining yields; decreased stamina cost of mining
  • gain: digging holes, mining rock, and collecting underground scavenge materials (e.g., crystal growths)
• woodcutting
  • use: increased woodcutting yield; decreased stamina cost of woodcutting
  • gain: chopping trees; stripping trees for materials

• fishing
  • use: increased fish info / quality; decreased stamina cost of fishing; better fishing meter?? is there a fishing minigame??
  • gain: catching fish & collecting from nets / fish traps
• animal care
  • use: increased animal info (diet, likes/dislikes); increased animal good quality; decreased stamina cost of animal care
  • gain: feeding animals; animal good extraction action (milk, wool, honey)
• trade
  • use: increased trade quality
  • gain: trading with other characters (& monsters)

• construction
  • use: decreased repair costs; increased building weathering; decreased stamina cost of construction actions
  • gain: building any structure
• crafts
  • use: increased crafted item quality; decreased stamina cost of crafting actions
  • gain: any prolonged crafting action (throwing a pot, weaving); any refining action (firing clay, cutting boards, chiseling blocks, cutting gems, etc)

• crystallography
  • use: increased grown crystal yield
  • gain: harvesting grown crystals
• alchemy
  • use: increased alchemy ingredient info; higher quality potions
  • gain: making potions; any prolonged alchemy action
• spellcasting
  • use: increased spell effects
  • gain: casting spells

some plants and stuff you can grow, in vague categories. a lot of this would be wild growth.

• sunflowers
• chickpea
• radish
• tomato
• pepper
• rhubarb
• various mushrooms

• garlic
• onion
• tuber sunflowers
• yam
• carrot
• peanuts

• sugarcane
• rice
• rushes
• wheat
• corn
• bamboo
• sorghum

• lavender
• thyme
• sage
• rosemary
• rooibos
• honeybush
• raspberry
• blackberry
• tea

• olive trees (takes like 10yrs for a tree to start growing fruit, but there are lots of wild trees around)
• fig trees (needs wasps to fruit!!)
• strawberry tree (fruits in fall)
• lemon
• lime
• orange
• apricots

• cucumber
• olive
• sweet pea
• calabash (squash)
• hemp
• poison ivy
• beans
• soybeans
• melons