Mushroom game development progression

I recently finished a game involving mushroom consumption. It was more of a test in programming ability than a story or immersive experience. I thought it was interesting how many ideas led up to this, and I didn't want them to go to waste, so here they are.

(Disclaimer: I do not give consent for any public use of the art shown below, commercial, placeholder, AI training, or otherwise).

Immersive RPG:

The player character lives in a tower in the middle of the woods, loosely inspired by the one in Rapunzel.  They travel upwards with a pulley mechanism (it doesn't make much sense). The first floor is a kitchen, the second floor is the knife room, the third floor is the cat room, the fourth floor is for decorating, the fifth floor is a greenhouse, the roof is the bedroom, the bedroom connects to a treehouse where a photo album and other collectibles are kept.

I remember a Tumblr post saying, “what if the forest was like an ocean, and the deeper you went, the larger and stranger the creatures are?” That’s the inspiration for the outside environment.

There are multiple player characters to choose from, each designed to resemble a mushroom species. They also have specializations, like Portabella is good at foraging, Mink is hunting, Amani-Rose is taming wild animals like cows or cats, and Herica is best with studying. Their skills tie into the game loop, which is to collect enough mushrooms to survive the night or fulfill a quota. 

There are two main ways to get mushrooms: forage the dormant ones or hunt the various mushroom themed beasts. Again, these beasts get larger and weirder as the player gets further into the forest. Then, since only the edible ones are safe for consumption, they must be studied. Other thing should also be studied, like recipes for making more effective weapons, medicine, or a wagon for carrying larger creatures. Amani-Rose’s skill is not as useful for survival at the beginning, but the animal taming skill is proven more useful later.

As the cat room and taming skill may have clued you into, you are able to tame cats. After a cat is tamed, it will hang out in the cat room. It will grow up with a skill depending on its diet. This can be used to aid in gameplay.

There is a grandmother character introduced in this game. Every time the player dies, they miraculously appear in their bed with a letter from grandma saying to be more careful. At the beginning of each week, they get letters from grandma asking why they never visit. The long-term goal of the game is to find grandma.

When the player is able to get to the edge of the woods, they will find grandma's house. With grandma, they will find the reaper.

There it is revealed that grandma made a deal to give a piece of her soul every time you die, to keep you alive. When she gives enough of her soul, she becomes the reaper. After the initial deal, the reaper fell in love with grandma, and now they take turns giving up their souls to keep you alive. I don’t know why there’s a raccoon in the image.

After getting to the cabin, you unlock creative mode where you get the powers of death. This is endgame content.

RPG in RPGMaker:

This is a pure turn-based combat RPG. You get letters from “grandma” at the start of each day. You don’t remember anything about who you are or why you’re here, so all you can do is stay alive and figure out who this person is claiming to be your grandma. In the meantime, you defeat enemies for food to survive each day. The combat has the format of a rock paper scissors game, and the creature must be harvested before it dies otherwise it does not count for food.

The player character is a redesign loosely based on Portabella—her dress looks vaguely fungal, and she doesn’t have hair. She uses her foraging knife as a weapon against various mushroom beasts, now depicted as different types of birds with their roots as their feet.

This is the smaller sprite.

The title screen is shown below.

This game takes place over five days. After surviving those five days, you get taken over by those you have consumed and finally talk to grandma through an internet of roots.

Graveyard side-game:

The player character is an old lady working at a graveyard. They talk to the grim reaper which takes the form of a ghost child guiding spirits to the afterlife.

The child gives the task of putting bodies in graves. While doing this, you meet another lady in the same situation. They talk vaguely about the end of their lives.

This one actually got completed for a school project, but the only file I have doesn’t work so I would have to remake it if I wanted to share it. It was a pretty neat piece of world building, but it’s not that important.

Resume Consumption:

The goal is to survive as many days as possible with the limited number of actions you are given per day. It was first made with an online IDE and played with text prompts in a terminal. My previous projects have been strong in story and art. This time, I just tried to make something that is simple, doesn't take long to load, and is fun to play--the result is linked in this post. If you're expecting a lot of art like is shown above, I hate to disappoint, but it has none. I would be grateful if you would give it a shot and give me feedback to improve my code or presentation in the future. Regardless of whether or not you do so, I hope you enjoyed this devlog, and thanks for reading!