achievements are divided into "basic and master"

Farming adventure game Everdream Valley is on the way to Xbox, bringing with it a sense of childhood summertime adventures. We reached out to developer Mooneaters to learn more.

Everdream Valley looks all kinds of awesome — we don't yet have a release date, but we had to learn more, so we reached out to developer Mooneaters, with Mooneaters CEO and Everdream Valley developer Marek Maruszczak having been kind enough to answer our questions.

What is Everdream Valley?

Everdream Valley is an adventure game about spending the summer holidays at your grandparents’ farm. It mixes together exploration, crafting, and farming, and is in development from Mooneaters, and published by VARSAV Game Studios.

When does Everdream Valley launch?

We don’t yet have a release date for Everdream Valley, but we’ll update here as soon as we know!

What’s it about?

“Everdream Valley tells the adventures of a child who spends his first summer vacation without his parents on his grandparents' farm. At first, the new place seems strange and alien. As time goes by, he begins to feel more and more comfortable as a farmer,” Maruszczak begins. “At some point, however, he begins to have strange dreams during which he takes on the role of various animals of the valley. For example, as a dog, he defends sheep from wolf attacks, or in the body of a magpie he travels through the sky above the farm in search of treasures. From then on,” he continues, “the player's goal becomes to unravel the mystery of these strange dreams… the player learns the stories of various animals living in the valley and helps them solve their problems. This is also an opportunity to learn about life in the countryside, forest, and meadow from a different perspective. For example, the mouse, which at first seems to be just another pest, turns out to have its own needs, and satisfying them can help the farm run better in the long run,” Maruszczak concludes.
A sense of childhood adventures in the summertime really seems to stand out in Everdream Valley. “The common denominator for most of the adventures that inspired the creation of the game was summer,” Maruszczak explains. “This is when life flourishes most exuberantly, and children have the most time to explore it. We also wanted to show how different the summer months in the countryside were from city life.” The Everdream Valley Steam demo manages to exude that sense of the countryside as full of adventure and potential, and Maruszczak says the game’s focus on childhood adventure was inspired by the team’s own childhood experiences. “Visiting grandparents or other relatives in the countryside is quite a popular way of spending vacations in Poland. We remember this time very well,” Maruszczak says. “Back then, a new adventure could lurk behind every tree. Dozens of mysterious creatures waited under every stone, and a clump of nettles could turn out to be a deadly enemy that must be pacified with a sword made from a stick. We wanted to convey this atmosphere of uninhibited summer adventure and playing as explorers of new places, plants, and living creatures. Escaping from a goose, milking a cow for the first time, or building a tree house are activities that are memorable for a lifetime.”

Since our time in Everdream Valley revolves around those two months at our grandparents’ farm, we wondered whether this time limit placed any restrictions on the game or how long we could play it for. “The two months of summer vacation serve to conventionally set the game in a specific season, which in turn translates into the appearance of the environment and the type of adventures experienced by the player,” Maruszczak says. “In the game, there are no time constraints applied to the entire gameplay. There is, of course, a day and night cycle, which affects the activity of various animals, the growth of plants, or the behaviour of NPC characters.” Maruszczak tells us that “the story part alone should take the player about 15-20 hours, but the farm can be developed almost indefinitely, acquiring new species of plants and animals and discovering new insects, and frogs, and visiting more places in the valley.”

What’s the gameplay like?

Everdream Valley will keep us busy — we’ll be farming, building and upgrading equipment, fishing, training our dog, exploring, gathering, and a lot more. Seriously, a lot more: on top of all that, Maruszczak says we’ll be catching butterflies, raising bees, shearing and milking the animals as well as breeding them, crafting, cooking, riding pigs and sheep, fighting geese, chopping wood, grinding flour, picking vegetables, making and decorating your own treehouse, herding and tracking animals with your dog, building pens and other farm structures, cutting grass, handling fires, looking for magpie nests, catching frogs, chatting with NPCs, and more.

“What a typical day looks like for a player depends primarily on what he or she likes to do most and what kind of farm they want to create,” Maruszczak explains. “Of course, there are story missions that can be done. However, it is up to the player to run a small diversified farm and, for example, go in search of new fish, butterflies, frogs, fruits, and other curiosities. Would he water his few vegetable beds, feed the chickens, and stroke the sheep, or would he opt for a gigantic farm focused on breeding and shearing sheep, sewing clothes from wool, and selling them to the merchant? Among the players, there were some who searched for new seeds almost all the time and ‘painted’ the surrounding valley with them,” he continues. “Others preferred to catch butterflies, of which there are as many as 30 varieties in the game," or else to catch some of the 16 different types of beetles and 12 different types of frogs.

We asked Maruszczak about Everdream Valley’s farming mechanics, and how it differs from other farming games, and it sounds as though Everdream Valley will be richly detailed and reactive to the player’s actions. “We wanted to convey in the game the sense of freedom that accompanies a vacation in the countryside, and the feeling of a vibrant world that surrounded us,” Maruszczak begins. “Therefore, the gameplay is conducted in an open world, which we can change, but which also changes on its own without our participation. The game features dozens of species of grasses, flowers, trees, bushes, and other plants. Almost every one of them can be replanted, destroyed, or sold.” On top of that, “the player can create vast fruit orchards, fields of wheat or clover stretching all the way to the horizon, or charming apiaries and flower meadows.” Everdream Valley’s level of detail extends to its animals, too. “This gradually transformed world is filled with more than twenty species of farm and wild animals, each of which can be petted. The animals interact with the player and with each other, they can eat crops and run away, but also, for example, play ball… The animals also react to each other. Some run away from each other. Others like sheep and alpacas willingly herd with each other, some others like a cat can hunt mice or beetles or steal your things like a magpie.” What’s more, “most of the activities the player does on the farm have their own mini-games, such as milking, shearing sheep, cooking, or sawing wood.”

We will have a cat and dog in Everdream Valley, “which act as the player's sidekicks. The dog needs to be trained, and the cat needs to be played with to increase its level of training and affection for the player.” When we’ve trained our dog, it’ll help us herd animals and find objects. A cat “with a high level of affection for the player, on the other hand, will inform the player of sick animals and give back to the player the insects and mice he catches.”

Maruszczak continues, adding, “We tried to make sure that the player always has something to do on the farm and that his actions affect what happens to his environment. E.g., if he creates too large a herd of sheep, the animals can eat up all the grass in the valley and lead to a small ecological disaster. Wild animals will also have nothing to eat and will come driven by hunger to the farm to wreak havoc on the player's crops.” If it rains, meanwhile, “slugs come out of their hiding places and attack the vegetable beds. The player can catch them manually, but he can also bring ducks to the farm, which as soon as they see a snail, immediately try to eat it. Such dependencies are plentiful.” Maruszczak tells us that “most things can also be done in several ways, such as watering, which can be done with a watering can, which you fill in a well and any other water tank, but also with a bottle. Or you can wait for rain, or even create an automated irrigation system using a wind turbine, water pump, and lawn sprinklers.”

On top of all this, Everdream Valley’s gameplay has another twist to offer. At night, when we dream, we’ll take on the role of the animals in the valley. Maruszczak explains that as a dog, we might defend the farm’s sheep from wolves, while our time as a mouse might help us meet that creature’s needs and create a more efficient farm. The Everdream Valley Steam page gives more examples: “If you don't fend off the wolves as a dog, you may not have anyone to build pens for when you wake up. The goals of two ducks, who seemingly do not interfere with the life of the farm, may turn out to be completely contrary to the plans of the inhabitants of the henhouse. A cat that is at most a bit cranky during the day at night may aspire to be a war criminal, and war, war never changes.”

We asked Maruszczak about this decision to add a little magic into the story and world of Everdream Valley. “We wanted the player to see the farm and life in the valley from a different side than usual,” he says. “So that he could see what it's like not only to build homesteads, but later to guard them against wolves, or how the farm buildings and plants look from the perspective of a mouse. So that he can feel what it's like to race other wild horses through meadows and pastures that he recently traversed in human form.” What we do in our dreams will be reflected in the waking world. “At one point, the player meets a talking scarecrow who mediates the transition from the daytime realm to the dream realm,” Maruszczak says. “By completing various tasks, bringing different animals, and finding items, the player unlocks games and night dialogues conducted from the perspective of different animals. When he performs a given dream mission for the first time, he unlocks its subsequent levels. For example, in the case of a horse, there are increasingly difficult races, and in the case of a goat, there are different obstacle courses over which he must jump.” Maruszczak adds that “the vast majority of sleep missions” occur in the same map that we have during the day — “therefore, how he prepares the pens, where he puts up various buildings or plants trees influence how easy it will be for him to find food in the body of a mouse, or chase away wolves in the body of a dog. Each dream mission affects what happens during the day. Sometimes success allows one to get a unique item or speed up egg production, other times failure will make the player have to search for his kidnapped sheep all over the valley.”

What’s the world like?

It sounds as though Everdream Valley’s map will offer up a lot of variety. “The map of Everdream Valley is about two square kilometres and is divided by rivers and streams. To cross to the other side, you must first rebuild a bridge,” Maruszczak says. “The different biomes differ, among other things, in the vegetation and animals found there. For example, we have vast meadows, wetlands, steppes, old forest, beaches, and mountains. In order to collect all the animals, catch all the beetles, frogs, and insects, and find the recipes and furniture, you have to visit all these places. Most of them, by the way, will be led to by story missions, and in some of them, the player will discover further tasks and stories.”

Any news on the Everdream Valley achievements?

We don’t yet have the Everdream Valley achievements, but Maruszczak gave us an idea of what to expect. “We wanted the player to feel the satisfaction of successive achievements relatively quickly on the one hand, and on the other hand to make completing them quite a challenge,” Maruszczak says. “That's why most of the achievements are divided into two types: basic and master." There's "Animal Friend," for example, which is "earned after stroking several animals besides the dog and cat," and then a master achievement, which requires "stroking a really solid herd of creatures. There is a lot to do and see in the game from animals to farming and exploration, so there is something for everyone, but getting everything 100% will not be easy.” As for Maruszczak’s idea of an ideal achievement list: “In my opinion, achievements should first and foremost give you the satisfaction of earning them. They should be neither too difficult nor too easy, which is always the hardest to achieve. Some should reward accuracy and some should reward cleverness or ingenuity, and none should be boring.”
So what, out of all of this, is Maruszczak most excited for players to experience? “What I find most enjoyable is watching players (e.g. at trade shows) discover more elements of the world,” he says. “E.g., that an alpaca can be stroked or shorn, chased to another enclosure, played with… There are a bunch of activities in the game, which are gradually revealed to the player and give a lot of satisfaction from discovering them. It is also very enjoyable to look at the reactions to the beautiful landscapes and cute animals that can be found in them, or hear how beautiful the world of the game is.”

So, what do you think? Will you be keeping an eye on Everdream Valley? Let us know what you think in the comments!