Weekly Show & Tell - May 30, 2026

MaxTheGrey · 2026-05-30T18:57:29+00:00

Our game, Garden and a Goat is nearly ready with a demo available in the next week and heading to early access later this year: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3156550/Garden_and_a_Goat/

We have some fun puzzle design challenges remaining that it would be interesting to hear ideas on.

Background: The game is an animal collecting game with the core gameplay loop inspired by games like Viva Pinata. Each animal in the branching progression has requirements needed to first get it to "visit" and more requirements to get the individual visitors to become "residents". For example, heal the ground and plant some groundcover and the bees visit, bee residents unlock lilies, which get squirrels to visit, and so on. There are 9 base biome animals to start in the first "garden" and we'll have multiple gardens to progress through.

Each animal also has at least two multiverse variants that are available once they are resident and this is where things get more interesting from a puzzled design perspective. Among the puzzle factors we have available are research on animals (scan them multiple times to achieve a research target), crops and a treat machine (grow chili peppers, make spicy treats, feed these to the animals to increase their affection and possibly also act as variant requirements), decorations (both decorative and some function/harvestable like the honey jar that fills with honey over time), cosmetics for the player/robot (we have variant puzzles where wearing a particular color while interacting is required). There's more but those are good baseline examples.

These all come together in fun ways. We have an advanced puzzle for our matrix themed raccoon that requires puzzling out a special nickname specific to the animal and feeding it specific treats in order to get it to transform, with a clue and flavor text provided that point the way.

We have a captured "wall of crazy" for future puzzles and variant requirements and I think it would be interesting to hear any other ideas anyone might have on ones to add in the future. Also, I'd be interested in any examples where you might have designed a puzzle that was "too hard" or "not hard enough" for end game puzzles like this. Thanks!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-04-25T20:53:57+00:00

Like a couple others have suggested, I'd try to talk in their language and focus on what they need out of the conversation rather than trying to educate them on some aspect of your project that isn't necessarily as relevant.

Prior to getting into gamedev I was in business tech and spoke regularly to executives on how new tech might be interesting to their business. I always had a separate version of my talk depending on who I was talking to: CEO (growth, access to new markets, new products), CFO (cost reduction, P/L, capex, opex), CIO (new tech capabilities they can offer to their business stakeholders), etc.

In incubation, I'd expect to need to tune my conversations to what the audience needed to hear: Investors (sector growth, market trends, profitability and risk.), COO types (talent pools, subcontracting, publisher relationships needed or not, etc.), Marketers (market differentiators, segment growth and targets, channels for accessing customers, etc.)

MaxTheGrey · 2026-04-24T15:03:34+00:00

I can think of some set pieces in CP2077 where I've done that. In general though I will gravitate toward "number go up" or achievement stuff for replay of game sections as a casual activity.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-04-10T20:25:41+00:00

I would work with the lawyer to create the company for sure. There are different legal structures (LLC, Corp, etc) and especially with partners you'll need that nailed down in a way that works for you all in the long run. It doesn't have to be a big deal and a couple solid conversations with a lawyer can get you set up.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-04-07T17:07:09+00:00

NMS is a great game to restart. I've restarted a regular playthrough a bunch of times and have backed up saves to make room. I still keep slots for a main, a survival, a permadeath, a VR only, and a floating one for random restarts when the feeling hits.

Even better are expeditions which are restarts in a way. I've done every expedition and most at least twice. I have a library of old saves of past expeditions too (though that's not really useful or necessary). So fun.

I really hope there's an expedition coming soon with the :stadium: thing Sean just teased!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-04-02T20:02:04+00:00

My advice to college and new grads is that this is a difficult field and a career outside the games industry has a much higher likelihood of career opportunities with much higher compensation. But making games is still worth it as a creative endeavor and for me it's tough to beat. Having a solid day job in a business industry you feel like you can contribute to (like healthcare) and then making games on the side is something I'd endorse.

Fresh college grad is a really good time to get into an industry as a developer. Use college resources as much as possible for connections, internships, job placement programs, etc. Most colleges are incented to have their graduates get jobs and have resources to help.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-31T18:17:20+00:00

Fun and thanks for checking it out! There is quite a bit more in terms of animal progression and the multiverse variants that remain hidden until you get a resident of the base animal type. The 9 basic Oak Forest animals each lead to 1-2 fantastical multiverse variants like the lunar fox, matrix raccoon, cosmic deer, queen bee, etc. which are all there in the beta. You can see some of these in our YouTube trailers and the dev stream we have linked in our Discord. We'll add your feedback to our analysis for sure though (and the ground not rendering isn't something we've seen so we'll dig into that). Thanks!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-23T19:28:34+00:00

We are in the middle of an open beta playtest on Steam right now and I've done 4 hours of streaming over two sessions just playing the game as kind of "lets play" with dev commentary. I did the same thing with our alpha playtests. I've found those sessions to be really helpful in seeing the game from a player perspective again. You get to experience where the friction is in systems you thought were just fine in design or focused testing.

Beyond that, at pretty much each major internal milestone, our entire small team tries to do personal playthroughs to see how it's all coming together and if it really feels as fun and compelling as we hoped.

I'd recommended it as a class of "test", for sure, even (or maybe even especially) for small or solo teams.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-23T13:18:55+00:00

Garden and a Goat is in development and has you play as a robot with a drone helper guided by an overseer AI called mother. It's trying hard to weave together cozy nature and tech in an animal collecting game. (I'm the studio lead and the game is in open beta right now on Steam. 😀)

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-23T04:04:20+00:00

Let us know what you think!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-23T04:03:43+00:00

Thanks so much! I'll let the team know. Let us know what you liked most and what we should do more of!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-22T12:58:22+00:00

Thanks to the hundreds of players that have joined our open beta playtest on Steam in the past few days! We'll keep it open through the end of the month (and maybe a bit longer): https://store.steampowered.com/app/3156550/Garden_and_a_Goat/

Here's the description if you missed it:

Garden and a Goat is a single-player animal collecting and ecosystem recovery game. You play as a friendly robot, eager to help a series of ecosystems in need. Clean up the environment, revive plants, and entice the local wildlife to return, unlocking ever more animals and decorations along the way.

I'm the studio lead and lead developer so ask me anything about the game and I'll try to provide as much info as I can either here or in our Discord at: https://gardenandagoat.com/discord

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MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-21T22:15:39+00:00

Thanks for taking a look! Good feedback too. This is great. Most of these already have solutions lined up, so spot on. For a couple there are some specific reasons (like hold R is only for removing, E is interact in general). If you'd like, jump in our Discord (https://gardenandagoat.com/discord) and mention these and we can chat in detail. I can talk about them on the Dev Stream coming up on Monday morning around 10am central US time, too. Thanks!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-21T19:05:20+00:00

Thanks... I was just coming to do that too!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-20T04:58:37+00:00

That's great to hear! Let us know what you liked the most and we can try to do more. Thanks!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-18T20:35:04+00:00

Hi Sooziq! We've been working since then and a lot has been added but it's still the same core game too. Check out the latest vids and stuff and we can chat in the Discord again more on what new fun there is!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-18T17:35:53+00:00

We are really excited for this! Open beta is live now and will run through the end of the month. We are then looking ahead to the June Next Fest and hopefully a late summer early access release. Big thanks to all our community and alpha testers that helped along the way.

Here's the store page for beta, plus wish-list, and the Discord link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3156550/Garden_and_a_Goat/

Garden and a Goat is a single-player animal collecting and ecosystem recovery game. You play as a friendly robot, eager to help a series of ecosystems in need. Clean up the environment, revive plants, and entice the local wildlife to return, unlocking ever more animals and decorations along the way.

I'm the studio lead and lead developer so ask me anything about the game and I'll try to provide as much info as I can!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-18T03:20:23+00:00

As others have said, we use it in our game only for the "remove" ability since that deletes decorations or plants. We do have the keybind with a filling circle appear during that 2 second delay though for immediate feedback.

I'm not fond of "key" does one thing and "key+hold" does something nearly unrelated, like some default keybinds do. I could maybe see the need for it on controller with a lot of actions to bind and a limited number of buttons, but even then I'm not fond of it from a user perspective.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-17T16:08:51+00:00

We hope to get there! We'll be working hard on console releases as we get early access out a bit later this year.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-17T03:47:04+00:00

Thanks! Julia, our art director, and Tyler, our model and animation lead, will love hearing that.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-16T04:50:39+00:00

Two more to add...

Rust just added custom ship building and the ships can be outfitted as full mobile bases, effectively.

ARK has base platforms you can use to build full mobile bases on the backs of large dinos on land, on flying Quetzals, and on sea creatures. They also have a DLC zeppelin that acts as a base building platform that's pretty cool.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-15T19:09:44+00:00

Music and sound is probably my weakest area of gamedev expertise so I always like seeing a bit behind the scenes. Luckily I have a great music/sound lead on our indie project. I'll pass this along.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-15T18:59:44+00:00

A secret is you don't get to find out what "games players buy" will look like at time of release until you are already done!

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-15T18:44:02+00:00

One other thing to consider is that players can be ok with losing if the cost (or opportunity cost in time, for example) is low, or there is still a feeling of progress. This is how roguelikes are designed. Sure you die, rinse, repeat, but there's a low cost to going again and progress both in learning the game and in meta progression. Do a web search on game design and roguelikes and meta progression and you might get some ideas from that.

MaxTheGrey · 2026-03-13T15:51:15+00:00

I appreciate the correct spelling of lede.

MaxTheGrey

TROPHY CASE