This is the devlog for Tidewell Inn, a cozy game about running a small crossroads inn. It's also my first real game, so I'll be figuring a lot of this out as I go.
Here's the idea. Each morning you look at your inn, your handful of crew, and the travelers passing through with their little wants. You put your crew to work across the inn's stations, someone in the kitchen, someone in the garden, and then you press End Day. Everything you planned plays out at once, and the world moves on before the next morning. It's meant to be warm and low stakes. A bad day means grumpy guests, not a game over.
Where things stand right now. Still rough, but the loop is there.
If you've played something like Frozen Synapse or Wildermyth, the "plan everyone's turn, commit, then watch it all happen together" rhythm will feel familiar. I've just pointed it at a cozy inn instead of a fight.
Why this game? I come from web development, and honestly a management game like this sits close to what I already know. Underneath, it's mostly entities, rules, and turn resolution over data. There isn't much of the hard real-time stuff, no physics or frame-perfect timing. It also stays small on purpose. One inn, one season, and a handful of guest types is already a full loop.
A few things I decided early, mostly so I wouldn't paint myself into a corner:
- Keep the game rules separate from the screen. All the real logic lives on its own with no ties to the UI, a bit like keeping business logic out of your controllers. That way I can test the game without clicking anything.
- Put the content in data files. Crew, guests, and stations are plain data, not baked into code. Adding a guest is editing a file.
- Make luck repeatable. Every roll runs through one seeded generator, so a given day always plays out the same way. Easier to test, and no "it only happens sometimes" bugs.
That's the skeleton. Not much to look at yet, but the bones are the part that's easy to get wrong. Next up, making a day you can actually sit down and play.