Janga 1.10: the Nap Update!

Finally! Here is a major Janga update!

In this post, I'll give you some informations about the state of Concrete Games and finally the exciting part, the many new features of the game!

Life is a rollercoaster!

Since January, Matlab, my associate, is AFK. He's resting for health reasons, mainly Burn Out. You know, there's some stress working in this industry, especially when you're Indie with no funding. Just a few weeks after, Ulysse, our marketing officier, left us for a cool job opportunity.
Then, we had to move from our office in February, because the building had to be demolished. We still don't have a working place as of today. For this reason and because we are all volunteers and need money to live, Brendan, our beloved 3D artist, went on his way too.
Finally, Covid19 came knocking at the door. I found myself in the situation of working alone on Janga since march. Having a kid at home, I was only able to work during the afternoon nap (and sometimes during the night). Also, this update is just released in time as I'll have second kid to be born in a few days!!!
I'll take a bit of rest now, sending the demo and our pitch to publishers. And partially working on Janga Game Design.This is the Nap Update!

Let's talk about the content of this update and the future of Janga.

There was a lot to develop for a one guy team. In order to find some financing, I needed to work on two aspects: the game design and the art direction.

Concerning the design, our vision of the game is simple: anarcade gardening game in space.

In order to fulfil this vision, I had to develop an arcade style gameplay and feeling, some cool gardening mechanics, and a space environnement.

The goal of the game is to give life to forgotten planets.The flow of the game is currently to plow the earth, then plant some grass, then some plants, then some trees. And have fun with a few other mechanics.

And now, here is the new features list!

• A nice menu, two modes: Story and Sandbox
  The Story mode is more like a tutorial and a way to understand how we would like the player to progress. We have great ideas for the story, especially inspired but the Little Prince novel or Terry Gilliam movies.

• Gluttons
  These are friendly creatures that spawns from the earth. You have to feed them with your main power, the life pipe, so that they explode in joy and helps you plow the earth and spawn some seeds.

• Seeds
  Grass, plants and trees seeds have different behaviours. You have to catch them to get them in your inventory.
• Objectives
  You have to fill planets with life (plow earth, plant seeds...) in order to complete them. Plowed earth gives you the ability to walk faster. Grass allows you to jump higher.
• Inventory
  The inventory will not work as classic crafting games. You can have only one type of tree on you, and I like this idea. Especially because one of our assessment is that too many games have over complex and frustrating user experience. Let's try to make things simple and enjoyable! (Especially for dad's and mom's that miss time to play more )
• New Pipes and Pipes menu
  - With the Build Pipe you can build blocks which have their own gravity.
  - The Vacuum Pipe allows you to vacuum a tree and have it as your new tree in your inventory.
  - Grass, Plant and Tree Pipes allows respectively to plant grass, plants and trees.
  - The Love Pipe allows you to merge two trees into a new species.

Pipe Menu

Build blocks with the Build Pipe

• Trees
  I made a diversity of trees. You can merge them to create a vast diversity of shapes and colors!
• Planets
  They are procedurally generated with a good amount of different kind of shapes.
  There are moons!
  There are oceans!

• Biomes
  Planets lives within Biomes, represented by clouds and colors. Biomes have an influence on the aesthetics of some of the vegetation and the planet.
• Sunset, space, colors and art direction
  We made a lot of improvements to aesthetics. Things are looking more and more like the game we want to make.
• More music and juicy sound design
  Janga radio!
  Everything dances on the beat!

• And a lot of small tweaks to already existing features

Little Disclaimer

Remember, it is still a prototype. There are bugs, the gameplay is not complete at all, we are testing things to make an exciting arcade gardening game.
The Story mode isn't representing what we would like, and there is too much text for the tutorial.
But if you finally like the prototype and would like to support us,don't hesitate to give us some feedbacks in the Steam community or in the form within the game.

I hope that you'll like this new version. As a final note, feel free to join us on our Discord if you want to participate and live our studio life and/our see our latest advancement or sales. https://discord.gg/Y5GXXaT

And if you want to find the progress of Janga directly in your mailbox, here is the link to our newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/c47f87e5fd15/jangaopendevnewsletter

And don't hesitate to talk about the game, give some feedbacks and follow the game!

Thank you so much for playing!