Dev Diary September 2025
Hello everyone, welcome to our third dev diary.
In this entry, I will be focusing on the following things:
- Some of our new environments
- Creature concepts
- “Juicing” the game
Decorating the Island
Our artists have started designing and making more assets for the island. These are things like houses, flora, and decorations.
In this example, we start with an early rough 3D model of a house, then add some greenery in 2D to brainstorm what the finished version could look like, and finally create another 3D model that incorporates some of those changes.
The process itself can vary slightly and often artists start with a 2D sketch.
Sketching out concepts in 2D is much faster than sculpting it in 3D, so artists will generally start with sketches including variations of the subject before creating it in 3D.
More Cute Critters
Like I mentioned in the last dev diary, bugs will have different attributes which means they will look different up close.
Here is a bug in 3D and what its 2D variations can look like. (I’m not sure we have landed on a name, but my favourite is Tricerahops.)
Of course we are still coming up with a bunch more critters for the game. I’m not gonna bore you with the details, but if you have questions, I would love to hear from you. You can always reply to this email or hit us up on one of our social media pages.
Cotton Spider
Yeller Bee
Snug
Getting JUICED
What is “juice” in video games?
To add juice to a game simply means to add animations or effects with the purpose of making it feel better. There are lots and lots of small ways to add juice to a game, most people won’t even consciously pick them up but they are very important to elevate a experience.
When slamming your net down near pinwheels, they start turning.
The grass sways gently in the wind 🍃
There are a couple things here: the bugs move around both when they talk and as an idle animation. And you can only see it vaguely in this gif, but letters pop up and big and get a bit smaller to give the dialogue more action.
What’s Next?
I know I have been saying this for a while, now but the announcement trailer is pretty much done. We are adding music and sound effects. Right now we are figuring out when we will release the Steam page. We will make a big announcement and finally be able to reveal the name of the game when we do.
Until then, follow us on our socials if you’d like to support us. 🙂
Thanks for reading this far, I truly appreciate it.
-Flo
Grand Duck Games 