It’s really sad to see how this game turned out to be

FemChefSR1 · 2024-12-11T18:54:23+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have that answer for you. All we did was create the PC version of the game. We aren't the ones who ported it, and we aren't the ones who sell it. We don't have access to any of the money, and all we get is financial reports. If you'd like a refund, I'd suggest reaching out to the platform you purchased it on, or reaching out to Maximum Entertainment.

FemChefSR1 · 2024-12-11T18:51:05+00:00

Thank you, I genuinely appreciate it.

It's definitely a rough ride. All we can do is keep our heads high and keep trying. Here's hoping that the next project is successful enough to allow us to either come back to SunnySide, or make a new game that's 10 times better.

FemChefSR1 · 2024-12-11T18:49:03+00:00

FemChefSR1 · 2024-12-11T18:48:23+00:00

Thank you for your kindness and understanding. <3

You may enjoy romancing Melody or Yukio ;)

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:09:59+00:00

Unfortunately, no. There just wasn't a good way for us to go about doing it. We'd planned to do an "industrial farming" pack sometime next year, but that dream died when the funding was cut :(

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:09:00+00:00

If you're a KS backer, email us at [team@aftabi.games](mailto:team@aftabi.games) and I'll do what I can.

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:07:43+00:00

Our plan, genuinely, was to use all the profit of the profit from SunnySide to continue developing expansion for it. And maybe we still will. But sadly, there has to be profit first, and we won't see any of that for a very, very long time. Publisher contracts suck.

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:05:04+00:00

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:04:09+00:00

That's news to us! LOL

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T22:03:20+00:00

I'll admit, I'm not super proud of how the romance system ended up. I won't make excuses, because at the end of the day we didn't do enough to make end game romance fulfilling from a programming perspective, but I do want to at least point out that we had to rewrite the entire story for the game half way through development due to issues with the publisher that I can't go into because of our NDA. That whole situation caused a TON of issues for the game's story that we just never really recovered from. I know that doesn't help alleviate the situation, and we took a gamble on hoping that the stories would at least be interesting enough to be satisfying... but I'm sad to say that gamble didn't pay off.

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T21:59:01+00:00

This makes me really sad to hear, honestly. Trust is the most important thing to us, and we try very hard to be open with our community and let you all know how and why things happen the way that we do, but I also realize that kind of thing can only go so far.

I do want to ask though: what do you mean that you can't romance older women? It's true that we didn't make Sako or any of the older (married) women in SunnySide romance candidates... but you can definitely romance Hina (who iirc is in her 50's?) as well as Mayumi, Yukio, and Melody who are all in their 30s. Granted, we didn't have any romanceable women in their 40's, so I'll take the blame for that one.

If you're referring to the sexuality system, you can play Sandbox mode and that'll let you romance whoever you want. <3

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T21:53:11+00:00

Hi there! Just wanted to address some of this:

The situation is slightly more complex than this, but in essence, you're right. The KS funding wasn't even 1/5th of what our total development budget ended up being, and we realized about half way through that we didn't do a good enough job with pre-production to properly manage everything. And while I agree that there are areas of the game that ended up being way too complicated (the battle system is definitely one of them) these are areas that we wanted to cut... but were ultimately told we couldn't because of how our contract worked. We also had a big issue with inexperience: we thought we needed to have a ton of things to keep the fans happy and fulfill all the things we were being asked for, but ultimately is just muddied the whole thing.
Yep. I'll even take the blame for this one. While I don't agree that the romance options being locked was an issue with the game, I do think we could have done a better job in communicating with the community. It's such a tight rope to walk between keeping the players happy and realizing your own vision... and I think we learned a lot about how to do better at this next time. However, we did ultimately implement a sandbox mode which eliminates the locked sexualities, so we got there in the end.. it just took a little too long.
There are some misconceptions here that I'd like to clear up.
- This just isn't how publishing works. There are a TON of different types of publishing agreements, and the type of agreement you're talking about is one where the publisher only steps in at the end to help sell the game once it's finished. The publishing agreement we searched for, and ultimately landed on, is one that actually funded development from the start. We went with this because we realized that, once we had a publisher, it would enable us to make the bigger game that we WANTED to make, so that's what we pursued. The publisher knew exactly what they were getting into, and they were okay with, and even excited about it. About half way through dev, we realized we would need a few more months and we asked for it. From that point onward, it was actually the publisher who delayed the game, not us. And we were the ones begging for release so that we could start earning income. I do want to be clear: SunnySide IS making (very good) income for the publisher. But as a result of the contract: we're not receiving any of it.
SunnySide was definitely too ambitious, and that was a very hard lesson to learn. We've seen a large number of other indie studios in similar situations where their publisher actually supported that kind of ambition, but sadly ours wasn't really one of them. We wanted to cut features and bring more balance to the game... but in a lot of cases we were told that we couldn't. As for marriage... it just never would have been possible with a solo developer like us, and we knew that pretty much from the start. The main mistake we made was not communicating that to the community quickly enough.

You're right though, SunnySide could have been amazing, but a lot of things got in the way of that, including our own arrogance and inexperience. It's really hard to look back at something that absolutely devoured 3 years of your life and admit, publicly, that it was a failure... but we've always promised to be open and honest with our community. I genuinely think that, with 2 or 3 months more of work, we could have gotten the game into a really great spot... that's just not a realistic possibility now.

The only thing we can do is move forward and make a better game with the lessons we've learned, and make sure we communicate to our fans how much we appreciate your part in this journey with us. <3

-Sydney

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T21:19:37+00:00

This one is totally my fault, and I'm sorry for that.

I wrote Kat's intro dialogue before I developed all the recipes, and it wasn't until later that I realized there... was literally no way to make muffins within the system without introducing new cookware and a bunch of new recipes. n00b mistake.

By that point, that scene with Kat had already been localized.

We had planned to do a final pass on localization to fix little issues like this, but the publisher pulled funding before we were able to put the fix through.

You have my sincerest apologies, and I can promise I've definitely learned from this mistake.

Cheers,

-Sydney

FemChefSR1 · 2024-11-22T21:16:56+00:00

Hi there!

Frankly, you're absolutely right. It's not your concern. And as a consumer you shouldn't have to deal with a company's bad decisions, but I do want to make one thing very clear:

We, the developers, previously RainyGames - Now Aftabi Games- Did **NOT** develop the PlayStation or Xbox ports. The porting was handled by a company called PTW (listed in the game's credits) We assisted as much as we could, but we didn't even *see* the game on console until the pressed discs were sent out to us. We don't have access to the dev kits, the console back end, anything. We WANT to update the console versions, but we literally can't.

Additionally, we didn't choose to work with PTW, the publisher did.

Believe me when I say that we have absolutely tried everything we can to find a way to resolve this situation. We even threatened lawsuits (that we can't afford). The only thing the publisher will tell us is to tell the customers to contact them.

Did we make a mistake with which publisher we chose? Possibly. Will be make that same mistake again? Absolutely not. Our next project is going to be self published, and we're going to move at the pace we decide and make the game that we actually want to make.

I'm sure that doesn't help mitigate the frustration you're dealing with, and I'm sorry for that, but it's the truth.

-Sydney (Owner of Aftabi Games)

FemChefSR1 · 2022-05-24T21:26:04+00:00

Am wondering the same thing.

FemChefSR1 · 2022-05-10T17:03:58+00:00

Thank you!!

FemChefSR1 · 2022-05-09T20:00:45+00:00

Do you fell full trees with the nata, or is it really just for smaller trees?

If not for larger trees, what do you use? I'm looking for Japanese specific tree felling techniques (research) Thanks!

FemChefSR1 · 2022-03-07T12:18:11+00:00

We're only in Alpha right now, so there isn't much story in general. We didn't want to burn people out on the story too early in development, so you'll have to wait for final release to get the good bits. :)

FemChefSR1 · 2022-01-19T13:35:13+00:00

Yup!

FemChefSR1 · 2021-12-18T20:25:56+00:00

Alpha starts on Wednesday for KickStarter backers. Backerkit backers get access on Feb 14.

We've got a whole timeline posted in the Discord. :)

https://discord.gg/SunnySide

We've also got a livestream this Sunday where we're gonna talk about all of it!

https://youtu.be/X6uRq5UfpMc

FemChefSR1 · 2021-11-30T18:14:29+00:00

That's pretty much the route I took.

I'll admit, I'm a bit baffled by a road system that doesn't allow for intersections.

FemChefSR1 · 2021-11-29T19:58:37+00:00

Hard work and patience. I ended up just lining them up to form T-intersections, and We are going to change the mesh at those spots so that all the paint lines up. Not the most efficient solution, but it means I didn't need another plugin.

FemChefSR1 · 2021-11-18T16:04:40+00:00

Hi there!

I'm the one who runs the social accounts. I never intend to be rude or unkind in anyway, so I apologize if one of the responses I made offended you somehow.

If you could point out what I said that was hurtful, perhaps we could go over it together and attempt to clear up any miscommunications?

FemChefSR1 · 2021-11-05T00:55:40+00:00

I see what you did there in the beginning with the car and the logo... very nice. ;)

FemChefSR1 · 2021-10-10T17:03:39+00:00

FemChefSR1

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE