MV - Forest Life: Christmas Edition - A Fishing / Life-Sim

Forest Life: Christmas Edition is a cozy life-sim about catching fish and making friends with melancholy animals. Similar to Animal Crossing but with a narrative and a GBC inspired aesthetic. Play via Web Browser (or Download) at: https://lunacero.itch.io/forestlifechristmas

This is a stand-alone expansion to the original Forest Life. It contains 100% of the base-game's content with an additional 1-2 hours of new holiday-themed content. If you've played the original, you can import your save. Otherwise, this is the perfect place to start if you're looking for a cozy winter game!

I was inspired by Animal Crossing and Christmas NiGHTS, the kind of game you can play on a lazy winter day in December. Much of Christmas Edition is the same as in the original but this is the definitive version of the game with its new features and quality-of-life improvements.

You're the new villager in a town that's preparing to celebrate the holidays. Explore the village and the surrounding forest. The story is pieced together through exploration and character interactions. There are 8 characters to befriend, each with their own stories that will unfold as you get to know them.

• Catch and sell fish, garden, gamble, and do what you must to earn your keep in (insert your town name here)! You can spend your money on fishing rod upgrades, home expansions, new furniture, and clear roads in the forest to explore new locations.
• New to Christmas Edition: A relationship system. Interact, do favors, and exchange gifts with characters to strengthen your friendships. Maxing out all 8 friends is the primary goal introduced to Christmas Edition; You'll attend the Christmas party and receive the strongest fishing rod in the game!
• Customize your home with over 150 pieces of unique furniture, floorings, and wall hangings. You can upgrade and expand your rooms. There's over a dozen new Christmas-themed furniture items to collect.
• Explore the Forest. You'll meet characters, solve puzzles, catch new fish, and uncover the truth behind the idyllic village.
• Play the Pachi-Pachi minigame to earn candy. Exchange the candy for gifts you can give to villagers or you can acquire furniture items for your home.
• There's about 4-6 hours of gameplay to reach the game's ending (depending on your playstyle). It's a simple and laid-back story-driven game, so I hope you enjoy it with a cup of hot tea. Happy holidays!

MAKE FRIENDS


CATCH FISH


CUSTOMIZE YOUR HOME


A STORY-BASED EXPERIENCE




The game is available for free at https://lunacero.itch.io/forestlifechristmas

its so pretty and neat! great work, so kuuurisssmaasuuu! the sounds and graphics style, lots of mini games :)

@xabileug Thank you! Yeah, I got a little obsessed with making minigames, haha. I think there's like 7 or so alongside some neat minigame plugins by Galv and Mjishi. Feature creep got the better of me!

It looks so cute

This is so adorable! I love the minigames. I can't believe there is so lack of comments. Merry Christmas @Lunacero

@MintyKaru Thank you!

@fizzly I appreciate that!! I don't mind the lack of comments; I definitely made a niche game, haha! And merry Christmas to you too~

Cool art! Very unique indeed. Very impressive. Also, the theme is very appropriate for this time of the year. As I have published my game, I am taking the time to look at what other great devs are coming up with. Great work!

It was just amazing.

Hi sweetheart!:kaoluv: I've had this game lying about for a while now, dunno why but I just now got to playin' some! Had fun so far!

I never wuz big into fishing minigames, but this one was pretty relaxing. :wub Altho, I noticed that gardening had a bigger payoff, so I switched to doin' that 'cuz I feel bad for the fishies... Also all these characters are soooo cute!

The movement felt a bit sticky for me, I guess because of how you can change your orientation without takin' a step? Is that something that's possible to fix? Not a big issue tho.

Also, decorating yo own house is pretty fun, altho it's kinda hard to do it in a really satisfyin' way, because most of the furniture only looks really good when set up against the northern wall. I know that's probably hard to fix 'cuz of engine limitations tho... :kaoswt:

@alice_gristle Ah! Hi! Thanks so much for giving it a try. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts as well. Christmas games can be enjoyed year-round, huh?
I've a friend who said the same thing! I think I'll add a catch-and-release feature sometime. I regret not thinking of it sooner haha

Yeah, I added a turn-in-place feature to allow follower-chat with Chloe on friend-dates; I triied to fine tune it to meh results without making it impossible to talk to her. In hind-sight, I could've added a chat-key instead.

I'm glad you liked it! If I had more time, I'd invest in making more multi-direction furniture. Might have helped some?

Thanks again for the feedback; it's super helpful and it makes my day to hear that someone had fun with this!

So I played about 45 minutes of this.

Overall, well done. It definitely captures "Animal Crossing on the GBC" or maybe "Harvest Moon with Animals" vibes. It's comfy and on the easy side, but it's what I expect from this type of game.

I played this game over the Forest Life base game because the description said to if you are a new player as it had all the base game content.

However, I feel the game being entirely Christmas-themed as the definitive edition hurts the experience as people might not be in the mood to play a Christmas game out of season, especially since it has public domain Christmas music like The First Noel which some people get sick of from it being overplayed in stores and on the radio. I also don't think the fact that it's Christmas adds much to the game other than the trees and buildings being decorated for it. Edit: Apparently there is some Christmas gift-giving gameplay element and story but I didn't get that far.

Minor nitpicks: When you choose to plant a seed it should only show seeds from the select menu. It also shows the veggies which had me confused for a bit as I thought those were the seeds for the veggies, not the veggies themselves.

Gardening is considerably less effort and more profitable than fishing. Since everything is money-gated, it seems like you could unlock all the areas by just gardening, which is kind of tedious from a gameplay standpoint but is the best way to farm money.

I thought a couple more characters could have benefitted from having portraits like the bait and seed merchants since you interact with them often.

I can also see this game quickly getting repetitive after you unlock all the areas. Yes, Animal Crossing is also repetitive but has a massive pool of dialog, clothes, collectables, redesigning the town (not just the house) and real-life time gating so you can't binge through the game all at once.

Lastly, it could have used some new or interesting mechanics or built upon them in new ways as almost every mechanic is derivative or other games (the Frogger clone minigame, Link's Awakening fishing and crane games, Harvest Moon farming, etc). Maybe some twist or spin to the tried and true gameplay elements to keep it fresh.

I uploaded my playthrough to YouTube

Hey @AquaEcho! Thanks so much for checking out the game and sharing your thoughts.

I totally agree: I shot myself in the foot by making the "definitive edition" Christmas themed. I've been meaning to change that with a big update but haven't gotten around to it yet. I spent so much time on FL that I needed a break and haven't gotten back to it.

And in hindsight, I'd make a few larger changes. I kinda regret including gardening. It's too OP in the early game and loses usefulness halfway through. But I'm still proud of how things turned out.

I really appreciate the honest feedback. I'm working on my next game and I'm trying to learn as much as I can from the development of FL. And thanks for sharing gameplay footage! I hope you get to check out the rest sometime!

'TIS THE SEASON. To celebrate the Christmas season and recognize this game's (very) short window of relevancy, Forest Life: Christmas Edition is now available to be played via Web Browser. No download needed!

Had to make a few minor changes to fit the game within Itch's 1000 total file limit. Furniture crafting has been removed and replaced with trading wood for random furniture items. Also re-balanced some of the early-game progression.

It should work on mobile devices now (controller required). Been play testing on an Anbernic RG slide. The game looks great on a 4:3 display.