All posts tagged in indie game
Aug 29, 2019
Garden Paws has been one of our favorite simulation games played this year as you can see from our review here. You can already purchase this adorable game on Steam here or wait for the Nintendo Switch release this December. Garden Paws continues to receive huge monthly updates by developer Bitten Toast Games such as: taming many animals, making new furniture sets, farming expansions, etc. Moreover, there are currently 500 quests which deliver hours upon hours of gameplay alone. Even one particular Potato Family member has reached over 100 hours…
After enjoying everything that the game has to offer so far and seeing how there are many of you that have or will play this game, we’ve decided to make a list of things we wish we knew before starting. As most of you already know, most farming games require you to stockpile certain crops or foraged items in order to advance the game or to complete quests. Garden Paws is less stressful in those regards as you cannot miss out on anything big and out-of-season items are purchasable. However, there are a few rare drops of items you might not want to sell and things that we hope will make your life easier with our guide below. It is also as spoiler-free as we could manage.
Garden Paws List of To-Dos Early Game
- There are extra little islands all around Florens that are hard to reach, even with your glider. Make bridges by using ramps and wooden foundations to get to them. You can actually place anything anywhere by using the Item Shifter.
- On some of those islands there are beehives. Harvest the honey often for your chance to get the rare “honeycomb” drop as you’ll need at least 5 if you want your own apiary.
- While you’re there, every island has their own unique rare flowers. You’ll specifically want to grab every color of dandelion you see as those are the only flowers you can paint with. A villager will also ask you for some dye.
- Poop is something you’ll need to save up a lot of for questing and crafting at the beginning. There are beetles you can tame in a certain cavern that will gather all of your poop for you! Once you reach 100 poop, you unlock the Legendary Feed which you need to tame Legendary animals.
- Look to the skies near Mooney’s every day to see if there’s a rainbow. That means the unicorn is out there somewhere on one of the islands for that in-game day. Make sure to bring your Legendary Feed and a horse stable in your inventory. You’ll want to start doing this early on as the chances of it happening are as low as 1%.
- Mine for geodes often in all caverns because silver is a rare drop and you will need a lot of it for important quests and crafting.
- Make yourself a Stone Furnace so you can turn those silver ores into bars and sand into glass. Just make sure you also put coal in there to get the fires burning.
- The top two fastest ways to make money is by creating bouquets at the Flower Station and cooking dishes (anything with strawberries) with your Cooking Station and Oven. You need to unlock these by doing quests but you can start saving flowers in packs of 5 and plant fiber now. There are also insects inside of plant fibers that you need to turn into bait to go fishing.
- As for hording anything else, you don’t really need large quantities of other items except for your farm animals’ daily drops. Milk, eggs, and wheat requests will come up often to expand certain shops or buildings. Wool is needed to tame ferrets and Delicate Fur is needed to make some furniture. Ferrets will pick up all of your farm animals’ drops such as: wool, furs, feathers, and eggs. Meaning, they are quite the life-saver! You’ll need a specific habitat from the Blueprint Vendor before you can tame them or other forest animals first.
- Flowers, animal by-products, paintings, gems, ores, etc can be donated at the Museum. Once you have completed an entire display case, you actually get an amazing reward. Sometimes even a reward you can’t get by any other means. A couple of them even progress some quests so make sure to save one of each item needed.
To Learn More…
Extra fun tip: press F11 on your keyboard to freeze time to take lovely screenshots or to view anything from above or at a distance. We’ll continue to keep you posted as more updates become available! The developers are working hard on creating an entire dungeon with enemies, bosses, and loot releasing this month!
Thanks to everyone on their Discord channel that have given us the inspiration to write this article. They are quite the fun community where we discuss and answer questions about Garden Paws. Feel free to also drop us a comment below if there’s anything you’d like to ask!
- Aug 29, 2019
The creators of Garden Paws gave us the scoop on their upcoming new game, Potion Paws.
We here at myPotatoGames have been huge fans of Garden Paws, as you can probably tell from our Steam review here, and many post updates here. We’ve poured hours into this simulation game, so when the developers of Bitten Toast Games announced during their Twitch live-stream a few days ago that they’ve been working on another game, we were very intrigued. Dan and Kristina showed us a surprisingly spooky yet adorable game they’ve been working on alongside Garden Paws and we couldn’t be happier.
Their new game is going to be a lot simpler and shorter with a Kickstarter coming in early September and a release date on Steam before Halloween this year. Don’t worry though, they’ll still be working on the Nintendo Switch release for Garden Paws for this December! We wanted to share with the rest of you all the details of the new potion-making, dungeon-crawling, and magical game via an interview with some of the greatest game developers we know!
We’d like to thank Dan and Kristina for taking the time to answer all of our questions and we wish them all the best for their Kickstarter campaign!
Q&A with Dan and Kristina of Bitten Toast Games
What inspired you to make this particular game with a spooky theme?
Kristina: It’s something I wanted to do for a long time. I like the idea of creepy monsters dropping creepy stuff like eyeballs or tentacles. Halloween is around the corner and I love Halloween. We plan on releasing this game before then. We also wanted to push ourselves to play with particles and more special effects. We’re always trying to push ourselves to be better.
Inside Your House Have you decided on a title for your new game? I know you were thinking Potion Paws?
Kristina: Potions Paws is the title, I love the alliteration. Also, Spooky Paws was taken.
Do you have a date in mind for your Kickstarter campaign?
Kristina: We are aiming to start the Kickstarter September 5th, where we’ll also be releasing a free demo.
Is Potion Paws related to Garden Paws? Do they share the same universe?
Kristina: It does share the same universe as Garden Paws. Based on the art style, you can tell they share the same ‘verse. You might see a familiar character from Florens too as caravan merchant.
Dan: Some items will cross over from both games.
Kristina: We’re introducing new features to Potion Paws like expanding the world around you by purchasing land, carrying heavy items that can’t fit in your inventory and combat via potions.
You mentioned we will see a familiar character from Garden Paws, will there be new villagers to meet in Potion Paws?
Kristina: No new characters, no. The idea behind this game is that you are a hermit away from civilization, slowly purchasing more land. Being solo lets the player immerse themselves in their work.
What kind of potions will we be able to craft?
Kristina: For potions we have some basics ones but also some really silly creative ones.
Dan: Some potions make you smaller/bigger, some turn you into animals, some confuse. We’re currently taking ideas from the Twitch community because we like including people. We started a spreadsheet with all of the ideas.
Kristina: We are going to hide some puzzles into the game for new potions. Potions are going to be very useful against monsters as well. You are an apothecary but you’ll be doing some fighting.
Craftable Potions So there will be fighting in this game?
Kristina: You can battle if you like but you can play the whole game without fighting at all, you can just sneak around them. But using potions to attack monsters will get you some extra loot. If you see items in the dungeon that you want, you have to physically carry the items out and not get spotted.
What kind of items can we get from Potion Paws for Garden Paws?
Kristina: If you buy Potion Paws, you will get the crossover items for Garden Paws. There’s a furniture set, a cauldron, a skull, a skull carpet, things that are generally not seen in Garden Paws. There are also stacks of books with bookcases, and a pretty decent pile of stuff like that. We will be adding one pet as a crossover item as well, a cute spooky ghost cat that you can ride. It will be a variation of something we will have in Potion Paws, just as a bonus for supporting our Kickstarter. We wanted to make this game separate from Garden Paws because there are probably a lot of aspects people will not like in terms of spooky stuff like cobwebs. We didn’t want to force scary stuff on people if they didn’t want that.
Pet Ghost Cat In your stream there will be very adorable sheep in Potion Paws, will there be any other animals?
Kristina: There will be sheep in the game. We just made a penguin that will be in Garden Paws and Potion Paws along with its snow habitat. So in Potion Paws there will be cows, sheep, and penguins.
Early Look at Snow Habitat and Player Character Penguin What can we expect in these new parts of land that we can unlock?
Kristina: Specific zones might have pumpkin patches, fireflies and even ponds that you can harvest items from like fish skeletons and frog legs. There’s another area with a spooky tree where you have to harvest from a crow’s nest. But there are also secret areas that you can only access with a shrink or jump potion. It gives you a drive to keep unlocking zones.
What are the main focus points of Potion Paws? So far we have dungeons, crafting, potion-making.
Kristina: There will also be a cooking station where you create recipes as well. You can unlock more recipes and more of the land around you for more ingredients.
Cooking Recipes How long will the game actually be? Will there be a story or an end goal?
Kristina: It’s a bit smaller of a game than Garden Paws but we think it will still be a lot of fun. The end goal would be to unlock all of the upgrades. For example: a desert station and transformation potions. As for gameplay, we’re going to be putting our demo on Discord for free before the Kickstarter and based on how long it will take everyone, we’ll be able to know roughly how long the game lasts. It will probably give a solid few hours. We’re hoping to add enough items so that you can make a spooky house in Garden Paws and unlock new content for that game.
What kind of character do we get to play and will there be any customization?
Kristina: Not much customization because it is very time-consuming to develop but we did create a slight variation of the fox from Garden Paws that has a smaller face and bigger ears. So it will look a little more like a cat. A cross between a fox and a cat. We added the fox tail to it too which is bushy. There won’t be any skin customization or clothing as we need to go back to Garden Paws because we plan to release it on the Switch in December. There’s a chance you can play this on the Switch too. It would be a good place for it, it’s a great console.
It seems you love to play your own game. What kind of other games do you both enjoy and playing?
Dan: I play a lot of Night of the Full Moon and Dungeon Defenders. It’s tower defense game I put a lot of hours into. I love dungeon games and rogue-like games
Kristina: I play Animal Crossing and other chill farming games but also play shooters. I love the multiplayer aspect of games. Portal Knights is another good one, My Time at Portia is super fun. It’s funny because we are very different gamers Dan and I. I enjoy grinding and farming, and he likes dungeon games. Our goal was to make a game we can play together so we incorporated both things in Garden Paws.
What sort of projects do you have in mind going forward? Once you’ve released Garden Paws on the Nintendo Switch that is.
Kristina: We’re always going to be making games. I have ideas for more continuations of Garden Paws that we’ll be announcing in December.
Dan: We’re also going to be using the Steam Workshop in Garden Paws so people can make their own quests for people. I’m really excited about the Workshop.
What other things to you still have left to add in Garden Paws?
Kristina: We’ll be wrapping up the story in Garden Paws, basically signaling to the players that they are done the main story. Frank will be able to build you a Tardis-like house (bigger on the inside), we need to add fruit trees and berry bushes, as well as winter games and decorations. We need to add more levels to the dungeon where our goal is to have 100 procedural levels. You’ll see in the dungeon now that there are nine doors used to access those areas. We’re working on another island to add but we’re going to change that up from what you saw on our Twitch Stream. It’s going to be one of the treasure islands that you can explore. We’re adding more creatures too, like a dragon on that island.
New Jewelry Workstation Save the Date!
Make sure to mark September 5th, 2019 on your calendar for the Kickstarter of Potion Paws, giveaways, and to celebrate with the developers and friends via an online community event! We’ll have more screenshots and information for you going forward! You can also follow and help support Potions Paws and Garden Paws by going to the Bitten Toast Games official website or their social media pages such as: Facebook, Discord, and Twitter.
- Aug 28, 2019
Growbot, a colorful point-and-click indie game about a robot named Nara saving her home, is inspired by classic adventure games like Loom, and modern adventures like Machinarium. Growbot is in development by Wabisabi Play for Windows, Mac and iOS, and releasing sometime in 2020. Furthermore, you can wishlist it now on Steam right here!
A Tale of Flower Power With Twisted Roots
Growbot is a 2D point-and-click adventure about a robot saving her home from a dark crystalline force. Set upon a beautiful biopunk space station, you play as Nara, a growbot in training to become a captain. When your station home is attacked by rapidly growing crystals, it’s down to you to save it.
Key Features
- Explore a beautiful space station and repair its strange machinery.
- Interact with fantastic plants and aliens.
- Use your Brain(apilla) to solve puzzles.
- Collect the sounds of flowers and combine them to create powerful shields.
Meet Some of the Growbot Characters
You meet this adorably anxious little water dragon when you enter the underwater floor. He requests your help to free his friends, whom are trapped within a broken down maze.
This is Mavis the psychic squid with her favorite toy frog! Mavis believes she has prophetic dreams, wherein she converses with peeps from galaxies close and far. Sometimes these dreams seep into her waking reality and cause a bit of confusion, but it’s nothing her unthinking hat can’t tackle.
These little skittish Colour Brites can be found and collected along the way in the game and returned to the Coral Reef.
You’ll have to help these Light Sprites reach their destinations to collect the remaining Colour Brites. Learn more about your new home’s ecosystem of alien flowers and strange creatures right here and help return the color and its inhabitants to the Coral Reef.
For another point-and-click game with a robot, check out our article here: ENCODYA – A Futuristic Dystopian Adventure Now on Kickstarter.
- Aug 27, 2019
A Sister’s Journey is an indie game developed by Florian Lackner who is the sole developer on this upcoming title. The player takes on the role of Violet who is on a journey to find her lost sister. The path to finding her proofs to be dangerous and players will have to make their way through this beautiful yet mysterious world.
The main focus in A Sisters Journey lies on exploration, puzzle solving and of course on platforming. Besides all the features you come to expect from a platformer game, Florian also mentioned that there will be a lot of secrets to uncover on the journey to finding Violets sister. There is a heavy focus on puzzles that players will have to solve in order to advance.
Platformers can often be hectic and challenging at times, A Sisters Journey marks no exception. The tricky part of these sorta games are often what prevents some players who tend to prefer a slower paced gameplay, from being able to enjoy the beautiful and atmospheric look and feel of these beautifully crafted games, much like Celeste a beautiful game with very challenging mechanics.
According to the Kickstarter page there will be a Guidance Mode specifically designed for players who enjoy a more relaxed and laid back gaming experience – something we are personally extremely excited about. This mode will focus on the story line and lets players enjoy and play the game in a different way. Florian says “By enabling (the Guidance Mode), you will probably have a much easier time, by giving you more survivability, movability and more help in general on your journey, to beat difficult stages and defeat bosses more easily,”
A Sisters Journey is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, if you are intrigued by the game and want to support Florian on his mission to create his project and bring this game to life – head over here.
If you are looking for more pixel art games, make sure you check out Witchbrook created by Chucklefish – the company that used to publish Stardew Valley. Or take a look at Little Witch in the Woods!
- Aug 19, 2019
We’ve been keeping an eye out for Cat Quest II ever since Gentlebros, the developers, have been teasing an announcement “coming soon” and we assumed it would be during Gamescom 2019. Not long after we’ve posted Nintendo’s Indie World indie games list, showing Cat Quest II coming this fall to the Switch, an announcement on Twitter was made! The game releases later this year in the fall on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on September 24th, 2019 on PC (Steam here)!
Cat Quest II is a fast-paced open-world action RPG where you play as both a cat and a dog cooperatively. Explore a massive world filled with monsters, dungeons and quests, as you strive to bring peace back to your kingdoms during a time of war! See below for the newly released announcement trailer! This sequel returns to the world of Felingard to expand on the original with more explosive spells, expanded weapon options, an exciting new character switch mechanic, and local co-op!
Opening Night Live will be announcing some more great games soon so stay tuned with us here at myPotatoGames! We’d also like to hear from you on what your favorite announcements have been so far and what games you are the most excited to play!
- Aug 17, 2019
Games that defy genre are increasing. Eastshade belongs to the wave of games that make you question their classification. Published earlier this year, Eastshade is amazingly beautiful. And if it must be placed in a genre, then it’s probably a walking simulator.
You play as a wandering artist. Explore the world extensively, and even stop to paint pictures of anything that catches your eye. You can paint for yourself, and you can even take commissions and paint what is requested of you. (Though the painting mechanic is more like taking pictures.) Eastshade feels like it’s much more than just a walking simulator.
Eastshade is full of NPCs who are full of their own interests. They can give you quests. They even have branching dialogue chains, so what they say is dependent on how you speak to them. What’s more is that the game remembers your previous actions. Characters you meet will respond to you based on the actions you have been taking all along. Quests will be available depending on what you have unlocked, so the potential for more than one play through the game is high.
Key Features
- A peaceful open-world exploration-adventure full of character.
- Compose paintings anywhere in the world and offer them to the locals to unlock secrets and gain items.
- Acquire crafting materials and schematics to surmount obstacles and solve quests.
- Make friends along the way through fully-voiced dynamic conversations and unlockable topics.
Your actions will impact the world around you in Eastshade. You gather materials and help people in need. You can even create solutions that will allow you to explore the world more fully. Some areas of the world are unexplored because of natural impasses, but you will be able to find ways to surmount them. (And boldly go where no one has gone before!)
Eastshade is currently available on Steam, and while no firm plans have been announced, the developers are still considering other platforms. We hope Eastshade will spread to as many platforms as possible so that it can reach the biggest audience! You can also visit the developer’s official site.
If you can’t play Eastshade on Steam, why not try a game like Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles or My Time at Portia? They’re all quite different from each other, but all allow you to explore a beautiful world at your own pace. Yonder and Portia are also available on Steam as well as almost all current-gen consoles.
- Aug 16, 2019
Don’t Starve is an adventure and simulation game about gathering resources and surviving in a strange land with many dangers. It’s developed by Klei Entertainment, an indie studio that continues to add content and regular updates to their standalone multiplayer expansion Don’t Starve Together. Return of Them is a free Don’t Starve Together expansion with the most recent update being Turn of Tides.
Now you can play the expansion with the newest update since August 15th, 2019 on Steam here. Unfortunately the update will be delayed for another 3-4 weeks for console players. Furthermore, if you log into your PC game within the next 2 weeks, you’ll receive the “Roseate Sail” so you can deck out your new boat. Oh yes, there are boats now in Don’t Starve Together! Don’t worry, the item will also be offered to console gamers upon release. See below for information on Turn of Tides and the newest accompanying trailer.
Roseate Sail About Turn of Tides Update
Something ancient stirs in the night sky, and the world below will never be the same. A strange new island teeming with life has appeared, and with it, a whole new slew of challenges for our Survivors to face. Keep a wary eye out. They’re almost here.
Key Features
- New Boat Mechanics: Don’t sink together! Build and deck out a boat large enough to carry you and your fellow Survivors across the sea.
- New Seafaring Crafting Menu: Craft everything you’ll need to hit the high seas.
- The Lunar Island: Explore a strange lunar landscape filled with bizarre creatures.
- New Lunar Island Biomes: Discover 3 new biomes loaded with valuable new resources, craftables, and fearsome enemies.
- Enlightenment: See the world from a new perspective as your Sanity is replaced by an all-new Enlightenment meter.
For more on the Turn of Tides patches, you can check out their Steam update here. If you like Klei Entertaiment’s style, check out our article on their newly released game here: Oxygen Not Included Now Available For Digging.
- Aug 15, 2019
If you haven’t yet heard of Garden Paws, it’s a farming simulation RPG created by Canadian indie developers Bitten Toast Games. We here at myPotatoGames have been playing the game on Steam but you’ll also be able to play the content-complete version on the Nintendo Switch December 2019. This game has been one of our favorites this year if you want to check out our previous review.
Spring 15 Easter Egg Hunt
We’ve given you a list of tips for beginners, and now we’d like to share with you all of the Easter Egg locations in the town of Florens, including screenshots. Spring will be the first season you start with and every single year on Spring 15, Ester comes to town with the most amazing of prizes! If you’ve played through several years, like us, and get excited every time Spring comes along but you can’t quite find all of the eggs, well this is the guide for you! However, if you haven’t unlocked every new villager in Florens so far, know that there may be spoilers ahead.
If you want to try and find them on your own, you have until the end of Spring to do so but know that if you find all 20 eggs before, Ester will give you a bonus 10 Tickets! You’ll also want to do this all in a day or two as there is no indicator of which egg you found and haven’t yet found. There is an in-game achievement tracker but it only displays the amount you’ve found. Keep all of the eggs in your inventory (which you’ll probably need to expand at least once) and open all of your eggs at the same time.
Some eggs are rarer than others and will contain better randomized prizes as well as some Tickets. These prizes alone are worth the effort but on top of that, once you’ve collected enough Tickets, you can trade for select Easter-related prizes. You’ll probably need to save up and try again next year for the bigger prizes. Now onto the hidden Easter Egg locations!
All 20 Easter Egg Locations
- At the town gate, on the other side of Charlie, inside a wood bush.
- Climb inside the walled part of the town’s gate, go past the treasure chest to the other open edge.
- Hidden inside one of Malu’s cabbages behind their stall. Malu is the one that sells cloth.
- Go to Boris, the one that sells backpacks and storage upgrades, and find the egg directly behind their stall.
- Next to some crates directly behind Abby’s stall. Abby is the one that sells crops.
- Inside a Plant Fiber near Ester. Go past Ester and just beyond the first tree near the hill at the bottom where there are stones.
- Inside of the well in the middle of the town square.
- Inside a Plant Fiber just behind Miller’s wheat farm. You may not have unlocked Miller yet so go near the pond at the second cave in the town.
- Inside the town’s first mining cave, go to the left next to a torch you can light. Nestled in between a giant pointed stone and two other little ones (inside the inner edge of the pond) is where you’ll find the egg.
- Inside the exact same cave, jump on either the minecart or the lower stones to get to the very top right-hand corner above a tunnel entrance that you cannot enter.
- Inside the pond on the opposite side of the Plant Fiber cave entrance in town. You may not yet have a dock there yet but you can see the egg submerged underwater inside some seaweed.
- In the same pond area in town, jump on top of the stones to the Plant Fiber cave entrance. The egg is a bit hidden by the grass.
- Go directly behind the Mayor’s house (next to Beltran) which is on a bit of a hill. The image below may look a little different if you haven’t upgraded their home to the Town Hall. Either way, it will be in the middle near the sign on the wall,
- There’s an unused red-roofed home right across from Beltran, the town’s Blacksmith, Go to the back where there’s a door and find the egg under the steps next to a large tree,
- If you don’t yet have the Wanderer and his house/Museum, you’ll want to climb one of the tallest hills in town close to Mr. Jones. It’s inside one of the Plant Fiber bushes just below the highest point on the side facing Mr. Mooney.
- Inside the closest water bucket behind Mr. Jones and in his chicken coop. You can jump over the fence where it’s lowest or stand on something to glide over.
- Right next to Mr. Jones’ house in the front there are two buckets and a barrel. The smallest bucket has the egg inside.
- Inside Mr. Mooney’s barn area there are three stacks of hay next to the entrance. You’ll find the egg wedged in between there.
- Across from Mr. Mooney on the beach facing some islands, you’ll find an egg under a bench.
- Go all the way back around to Frank’s little balcony at the back of his house. You’ll need to climb the hill next to them to either glide or do very well-timed jump to be able to reach this egg.
Trading Tickets for Easter Prizes
Now you’ve found all of the Easter Eggs in Garden Paws! The prizes range in Ticket prices (10, 25, 75, etc) for the following items: several skins for your character, different colored bunnies (i.e. purple) for your habitats, balloons you can hold or use as decoration, decorated egg-shaped storage items, an egg tree, a bird bath, a large egg centerpiece, several aprons and crowns/hats, and a large blue flower fountain.
We hope this guide was helpful to you and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave us a comment! Next time we’ll be making a post about the newly added Summer Festival which includes several mini-games and summer prizes! Save up your coins because you’re going to need them!
