Welcome to the first blog post documenting the development of my cozy city builder game, The Cowzy Game! This project is not just a passion project but also a journey into learning Unreal Engine and designing a cozy experience where players can build a town and take care of adorable cows.
Beginning
Over the past 3 months I have begun to dig into Unreal. It was overwhelming at first, especially with recently being laid off from a dream job, tackling other projects, getting married, and more. My time in Unreal was largely spent learning the basics: learning Blueprints, creating a Player Controller and useable camera, behavior trees, objects in the scene. It's been a lot and I will admit, it's been hard with everything going on. That being said, let's talk Cowzy!
What is The Cowzy Game!?
The Cowzy Game is a cozy city builder where you create a charming little town and care for cows that drive your town’s economy. Your villagers harvest resources to build and expand the town, while you tend to your cows, using their milk to craft and sell goods that fuel the town’s prosperity.
I've taken inspiration from many city building games like Sim City or Caesar III, and farming games like Stardew Valley and Garden Paws. Cowzy should be colourful, fun, cozy, while giving the players options to build a thriving village with all kinds of happy cows, all the while selling milk to better build your village.
Cowzy is build around three pillars: Cow Economy, Townsfolk Management, and City Builder. Each mechanic gives and takes from one another.
The Cow Economy, where the cows are central to trade and resource generation.
Townsfolk Management, ensuring that every citizen has a role to play in this pastoral utopia.
City Building, designing a charming and functional environment for both cows and humans.
Villagers can gather wood and stone to help build buildings like barns or crafting stations, which can then be used to create farms to get food to feed cows. Barns host cows, which generate quality milk based on their happiness and food levels, and that milk is then used to craft goods to sell for gold to help enhance your village and cows quality of life.
Some fun ideas!
For the cows:
Ensuring milk generated by cows has quality levels that enhances based on cow happiness.
Did you know cows have best friends!? Of course in The Cowzy Game they could have best friends that provide a happiness bonus.
Cow brushing!
Buying upgrades for barns using gold, stone, and wood to increase cow happiness.
Different cow types that provide different types of milk with different selling points.
For the villagers:
Villagers will have hangout spots when not working
Villagers can interact with the cows by brushing them and taking care of them.
Villagers will have their own names and homes they live in.
Villagers will participate in festivals.
For the town:
The town will have a museum that collects rare artifacts your villagers can find.
Building will feature some procedural generation to give each building a unique twist.
I've already done some work on this for the homes, where it will generate a new window on begin play!
Day & night cycle, along with seasons that impact what crops villagers can grow!
What's next?
My current focus is getting villagers to collect resources, which I've made excellent strides towards.
Right now, when a villager is selected and we right click on a resource, the game recognizes which resource type they selected!
Next step is to get the right tools and hat equipped for the job!
Once villagers are collecting resources and depositing them, I will be working on building structures using said resources.
Currently, I'd like to get homes and barns functioning in the game, which would serve as ways to increase the population of the town and finally get cows moo-ving in the game.
Why Write About This?
Documenting this journey helps me reflect on the progress I’ve made, but it’s also about connecting with others in the game development community. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting out, I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or experiences with Unreal Engine.
Thank you for reading!! I’m excited to share more updates as The Cowzy Game evolves from a dream into a delightful reality.
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