Other farming sims in RPG Maker

If you're a fan of World's Dawn, you should know it's not the only Harvest Moon-style farming sim out there! Many talented RM designers have taken a shot at the genre and come up with some promising projects worth checking out.

My Lazy Afternoon

http://mylazyafternoonsgame.wordpress.com/
This one looks to be the most active and the furthest along, with a promising demo available for download. Pretty classic Harvest Moon fare—you'll be farming, raising animals, completing quests, and interacting with a handful of happy villagers. The designer doesn't seem too sure the project will ever be completed, but it's still fun to see such a polished take on the genre.

Tailor Tales

http://tailortales.wordpress.com/
Although it's currently on hiatus, this game deserves special mention for its fresh concept and original artwork, as well as for being a big inspiration behind World's Dawn. Celianna is a terrific artist and a valuable member of the RPG Maker community, and she has legions of fans waiting to see what's in store for this promising project.

Serenity Oceans

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/7992-serenity-oceans/
A very unique project that blends farming gameplay with a dark fantasy story weaving throughout. Still very early in development, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on. The character artwork—commissioned from a talented deviantArtist—looks fantastic and the world looks to be very well thought-out.

Stardew Valley

http://stardewvalley.net/
While this doesn't qualify as an RM title, it's definitely in a similar vein and a wonderfully exciting project. It harkens back to early Harvest Moon games with its traditional country-life feel, but at the same time offers innovative new features like 4-player co-op. No release date as of yet, but the developer is good about posting regular updates.

Are you working on a Harvest Moon-inspired game or do you of any others you're excited about? Let me know and I'd be happy to feature it in another post.

World's Dawn comparison screenshots

The spring season of World's Dawn has been out for a little over a week, and it's currently sitting at 332 downloads. If you haven't given it a try yet, please do so and let me know what you think!

One big reason I'm so excited for people to get their hands on the season is because of how drastically the visuals have improved since the last playable demo. Everything—from the tileset to the character portraits to the user interface to the weather effects—has been completely overhauled to fit a more colorful and consistent theme.

Don't believe me?
Mouse over the old screenshots below to see how much cleaner the game looks today.

Quite a difference! Feel free to share your thoughts on the game's sleek new look.

The big explanation

Okay, here we go.

wayward prophet has been inactive for a long time, and there are many reasons for this. None of them are good enough, nor are they particularly interesting... As much as I would love to spend my entire waking life developing indie games like Prophecy and World's Dawn, 40-hour work weeks and the pressures of friends and family always seem to demand huge chunks of my time and energy.

My passion for game design, and specifically the RPG Maker community, remains as strong as ever, and perhaps because of this the last few years have been frustrating on a personal level. I know World's Dawn was being followed by a number of enthusiastic fans, and I need to apologize to each and every one of you for the long wait and lack of updates. I am so appreciative of the support the project received from day one, and can only hope all the people looking forward to my little farming sim haven't long since given up on the game ever being completed.

On that note, the spring season of World's Dawn is finally ready to play! Yes, after 4 years in development, the first chapter of the game is just days away from release. Look for more updates and the download link on the project website on April 12.

So, moving forward... I am still extremely excited about all the projects on my plate (which is a healthy handful) and getting them into the hands of people who want to play them. I am going to try to do better, both with the frequency of my updates and the accuracy of my promises, as well as try to scale back my larger projects so that actually completing them—despite a busy personal schedule—is a reasonable goal.

Thank you so much for your continued support and your patience as a friend/fan/interested party. You'll be hearing much more from me soon... 2014 is going to be a very big year for World's Dawn and wayward prophet!