How Are They Doing This?

October 12, 2024 9:55 PM

Watch game reviewer Raptor be endlessly delighted by the simple, elegant building game Tiny Glade.

Tiny Glade is a building game by Pounce Light, an indie studio of two developers, Anastasia Opara and Tomasz Stachowiak. Opara has been at the forefront of procedural generation in games, leveraging the power of Houdini to create environments using algorithms. It's a different way to create 3D Art than traditional modeling and texturing, and lends itself to a lot of happy accidents.

posted by ishmael (12 comments total)

It's great game, and one I'd been following for a while until its release, when I realized it needs a bit more computer than my aging laptop can provide. For now, I'm still just sort of following vicariously. It's got the fun bit of tactility (sure, it's a word) that made Townscaper so much fun, and if they happen to one day make it available on iPad, I'd probably buy it for that, too.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:14 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Tiny Glade is so much fun! I watched City Planner Plays play it and thought, that’s the game for me, and it is! So far I’ve made two lovely castles and I’ve been working on an inn, which deserves a village, so what the hell am I doing on Metafilter?
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 11:06 PM on October 12 [4 favorites]

I keep procrastinating on buying a steam deck, but this might be the tipping point. In the past year the only games I’ve enjoyed that aren’t main line Nintendo titles are Dorframantik, Islanders, Townscaper, and Grow Song of the Evertree. All of which kind of circle around this tiny town building landscaping sort of thing. It’s like nesting, I guess.

And maybe if I had a steam deck I’d actually play some of my hundred unplayed random games languishing in my untouched steam library. RIP PC gamer Mizu, you never really stood a chance after the Switch came out.
posted by Mizu at 11:09 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

I'm on a cozy gaming kick right now. Mostly Stardew Valley clones, Roots of Pacha and now Sun Haven. But I like this whole move to games that are meant to simply entertain you and make you feel nice. My particular weakness is building games where you construct stuff out of functioning parts that have some in-game simulated mechanics. Factorio is the extreme end of that kind of thing and not usually referred to as cozy since it has intense game mechanics (and combat, although most people turn that off).

But my thing is I need gameplay and mechanics, so I don't think Tiny Glade is for me. I've enjoyed Townscaper, Islanders, and Dorfromantik a little but just for an hour or two, not longer. The former two are mostly paint programs, the latter has a bit of a puzzle game element to it. See also Engare, based on Islamic geometric art.
posted by Nelson at 8:05 AM on October 13 [3 favorites]

Tiny Glade is so nice. It's like if Animal Crossing had fewer constraints, and none of those pesky animals.
posted by Adridne at 10:43 AM on October 13 [2 favorites]

Ooh it's out? Lovely! My favourite bit of Townscaper is the export feature for 3d printing, does tiny glade have that?
posted by Iteki at 10:54 AM on October 13 [1 favorite]

My favourite bit of Townscaper is the export feature for 3d printing, does tiny glade have that?

I don't believe they do, but they are very responsive to their feature request forum!
posted by ishmael at 1:15 PM on October 13

I will hit them up, thanks! I wish I could export to unity or something too and walk around in VR!
posted by Iteki at 1:28 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Tech-oriented folks here might like this interview at 80 Level where they talk about the development process, and their choices of Rust and Bevy.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:40 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

From what I have followed of the development, a lot of the final detail is being done on the GPU with shader trickery rather than as actual geometry, so figuring out a way to export cleanly would probably be a bit of a nightmare.

If you just want to get something approximate for a 3D print you could record a little video panning around your glade and plug that into something like NeRF.
posted by St. Sorryass at 3:36 PM on October 14 [2 favorites]

Can't stop playing this, it is so well polished. The procedural generation works delightfully well, but also the controls just work exactly how you think they should. Really well tested and refined.
posted by danfreak at 3:21 AM on October 15 [1 favorite]

So I bought this on a whim and my initial reaction is being underwhelmed with how few building tools there are. But I think that's a failure of imagination on my part, the community screenshots have a lot of beautiful complex stuff. I guess there's a lot to learn about what gets generated when you combine various objects.
posted by Nelson at 6:57 AM on October 16 [1 favorite]