Inspired by classics like Harvest Moon with deep social sim aspects of a Persona game. Sunnyside is the next chapter in farming sims.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Small October Update (A Prelude to Greater Things)
7 months ago
– Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 06:44:41 PM
Hey everyone!
It’s been about a year since we’ve given you a proper update, and the last 12 months were full of some crazy ups and downs. We had a lot of things planned at the beginning of the year that we had to put a big pause on when our Co-Founder and Director, Rainy, fell ill in March… and it feels a bit like we’ve been playing catch up ever since. I know I say it a lot, but I wanted to give a very humble thank you to our entire community for your patience, understanding, and unwavering support. We love you all.
Now, I am a firm believer in thanking people for their loyalty, and y’all are no different. That is why, this coming Sunday, October 22 at Noon CST (6 pm BST/ 1 pm EST) We will be having another live stream. Now, I know… I hear y’all… not everyone is interested in live streams. That’s totally fine. However, this one is special. This live stream will be a live Q&A for the whole community.
From now until Sunday, we’ll be taking questions about SunnySide, RainyGames, development, and anything else you may want to know more about. You can post any questions you’d like to have answered as a comment here, in Discord, or you can email us at [email protected]. Your questions will be answered live on stream, and then I’ll post typed answers here the following week as another update, so that everyone can get as much information as possible in the format they prefer.
This live stream will come with a few important updates as well, which will also be shared here shortly after. I do want to get the big question out of the way, however: We will not be announcing a release date during this live stream or in this next update. Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up or have you all feeling disappointed. It’s a good update, promise… just not THAT update haha.
We look forward to seeing and answering everyone’s questions, and will be posting another big update very soon.
Until then,
-Sydney and the RainyGames team
(ok, ok, just a few sneaky pictures…)
Cheers!
May + June Update
11 months ago
– Wed, Jun 07, 2023 at 12:10:56 PM
Hey SunnySide Fans!
I've been informed that there was some kind of error on Backerkit's end, and an email was sent out to you all pointing you to the April update.
Just wanted to let y'all know that this wasn't something we did, and we believe it was just a mistake in Backerkit's system.
That said, I figured we'd give you a little bit of an update anyway!
I'll be honest, these posts usually take me a full day to write, and I'm getting to the point where I just don't have that kind of time. Additionally, we're getting to a point in development where we're not really making anything new any more, but rather tying up systems, polishing things, adding content, and so it's getting harder and harder to find new and exciting things to share. On top of that, it seems the average readership for these posts is only about 35 ish people, which I hope means that y'all are getting plenty of updates elsewhere, too.
So for this update, I'm going to point you all to the latest developer live streams! These will remain the best way to see what's going on at RainyGames, and Rainy and I have a ton of fun doing them. In the last live stream, we talked about the farming system and all the ideas we put into making it the best it could be within this genre. We're really proud of it, so I hope you'll take the time to watch us gush about it for an hour :) A development blog that goes into the system a little more is also going to be uploaded to the Patreon soon... wink... wink.
We've also started up a podcast! Rainy and I have learned a lot about game development over the last couple years, and we realized that not a lot of developers take the time to talk to gamers about our perspective on the industry. If you're interested, you can find the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube!
That's it for now! I hope you'll can forgive us for taking the time to focus on the game and its promotion rather than typing up Kick Starter updates. It's a fine balance of keeping you all informed and engaged while also spending enough time actually MAKING the game... and I know in the end it's actually getting your hands on SunnySide that you all really care about, so that's going to remain the focus for now.
Love you all, and until next time!
-Sydney
P.S. Okay, okay. It wouldn't be a KS update without some sneaks, so here you go...
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 to you all!
2023 Update
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 12:07:06 PM
Hello SunnySide Enthusiasts across the globe!
As a studio, RainyGames has always strived to be as transparent and honest with our community as possible. For that reason, we’re just going to jump right into it.
A little over a month ago our lead developer, programmer, director, and creative figurehead, Rainy, fell severely ill. After a lot of testing and a month spent in and out of hospital, the doctors finally determined that Rainy had developed a rare case of meningitis that has the potential to become chronic.
As a team, we decided it was best to not share anything until we had more information from the doctors, but we’re happy to say that Rainy is home, on the mend, and working again… albeit at a reduced pace and workload. Given his central role in not only developing the game, but supplying the team with creative direction, this has obviously impacted SunnySide’s production.
The good news is that despite this serious setback, SunnySide is finally nearing completion, and we have hit major milestones such as finishing all the music, crops, achievements, and character art. The RainyGames team has really stepped up during this difficult time, and I couldn’t be more proud and thankful for them and all their hard work.
We also want to thank the members of the community who have reached out with kind words of encouragement, as well as those who check in occasionally to make sure everyone at RainyGames is taking care of themselves. Knowing that you all have our well being in mind and care more about the team than how quickly you get your hands on SunnySide is incredibly reassuring. It reminds us that it’s okay to be human, and that message is more valuable than you all could possibly know.
So, all this said, thank you all again for your continued patience and support. We will continue to work on rolling out MVP and Beta tests soon, and will update you as soon as we have concrete details on those. We also still plan to launch the Patreon and our Podcasts soon, so please stay tuned for more info on those as well.
Love you all,
Sydney and the RainyGames Team
October + November Update
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 09:46:04 PM
Hello to all our SunnySide friends across the world!
If you missed our last live stream, you can catch it here:
If you often skip the LiveStreams, we're going to highly encourage that you attend this next one coming up on the 18th. We will be making some BIG announcements, and we don't want anyone to miss anything.
As a note, our studio will be going dark from December 22nd to January 2nd to give the whole team a very much needed break, but we will be back at it on the 3rd to continue making you the best game we possibly can.
Let's Play
In the last few months, Merge has been teaming up with various people across the team to record "Let's Play"s of SunnySide. We have released 2 so far, and another will be coming out later this month! Here are some handy links to the first two!
Also! We released a brand new trailer during RazerCon in October! There was a little bit of confusion about this trailer, as it's very different from everything we've done so far. It's not that the game is any different, but we decided to highlight some different things because we felt we'd shown a lot of the farming and building parts of SunnySide, so we wanted to show off some of the more RPG elements as well. We hope everyone else is as pumped as we are! You can check it out here in case you missed it: SunnySide Battle Trailer
Spot the Gabe
We've created a new mini game on our Discord Server as a result of the map team accidentally leaving "Gabe for Scale" models all over the place. It's called Spot the Gabe! Here is last week's! If you find him, let us know in the comments. And join our Discord for the next one!
As is our custom, RainyGames has added a new member to the team this past month.
This one, honestly, is a bit special (not that our whole team isn't special). It's Charlie, aka PrismaticaDev! He's a rockstar programmer known for his Unreal Engine development videos, showcasing work on his own game, Prismatica. He was kind enough to join the team for a little while to get us through this last push of development, and he's added his own unique and creative flair to the game that we know you're all going to love.
(He will occasionally be streaming live development of SunnySide on his Twitch Channel, so follow him to check out some awesome live game updates!) (oh, and bonus kitties!)
Our Team so far:
Co-Founder/ Producer/ Studio + Narrative Director: Sydney Stockdale (Fem)
Co-Founder/ Game Director/ Programmer: Siavash Shahlaei (Rainy)
Composer: Matt Thompson
Production Assistant/ Concept Writer / Researcher: Kenna Hartshorn (Kitty)
Lead Artist: Kaori Mitsuse
Lead Generalist - Models/ Rigging/ Animation: Ken Heslip
Writer: Jade Greene
3d Modeler- Characters/ Creatures: Allan Mitsuse
Game Generalist- Models/Textures: René Simard (Ren)
Game Generalist- Level Design: Kiril Kostadinov (Kai)
Game Generalist/ Programmer : Charles (PrismaticaDev)
Artist- Environment/Key Art/ Concept Art: Elizabeth Steele (Liz)
Artist- Environment/ UI Design: Laura Kane
Artist- Icons/Key Art: Lauryn Hammett
Artist- Clothing Concepts: Anastasia Smith (Andi)
IT Support: Kyle Sylvester
Volunteer Linguist: Dante
Volunteer Translator: Curtis
Drone and Art Winners:
Just a reminder: We haven't forgotten about you. <3
Early Access
Many of you have signed up for early access of the game and are wondering what will be offered to you now that the Alpha is over but we're not released yet. I wanted to remind everyone to sign up for the Merge MVP Program, through which we will be sending out some invites in the coming months to begin testing specific portions of the game. We want everyone's feedback, so if you haven't signed up yet, please do!
In the same vein as our last updates, we want to share pieces of development with you all, but also have to be careful not to share too much. So, here are a bunch of pictures from SunnySide's development over the last two months:
What's Next?
With the Holidays coming up for a lot of us, we just want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has supported us all this way. SunnySide is a very different game from those early days of the KickStarter Campaign, and it means a lot to us that you've all believed in us this whole time and stuck it out through all the ups and downs.
To all of our amazing supporters: we love you all!
If you want to stay up to date, please join our Discord and follow us on Twitter and YouTube, if you haven't already. We also have a new TikTok account now that is fully dedicated to SunnySide, so go check us out there as well! Moving forward, we will be pulling away from Twitter a little as out main way of reaching out to fans, and will be focusing on Steam, YouTube, TikTok, and Discord instead. So if you're not following us everywhere, definitely do!
All that said, Discord continues to be the best way to follow RainyGames and SunnySide, with Steam and YouTube running close for second. We post lots of sneak peeks on Discord (and special ones for KickStarter backers), stream live development, run contests, and even ask for suggestions from the community. If you join, just remember to message me (FemChefSR1) with your KickStarter backer # (if you backed at one of those tiers) so I can give you your Backer Tier Role. If you pre-ordered on Backerkit, please DM someone on the support team with your proof of purchase, and they'll get you set up with your Backerkit role.
That's it from me! As always, thank you for reading, and don't forget to comment below! We continue to love and appreciate your feedback, so don't be shy!
Cheers!
-Sydney-
August + September Update
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Oct 12, 2022 at 12:44:07 PM
Hello to all our SunnySide friends across the world!
If you missed our last live stream, you can catch it here:
You'll notice that the 3rd Nintendo Life article had a big announcement about us partnering up with Epic YouTuber Epic Gardening!
We're really thrilled about this. And it's something that's actually been ongoing over the last year or so, but we're only now getting the details worked out in a way that allowed us to announce it. So, what does this team up mean?
Mostly, it means that we are finally giving credit to Epic Gardening for inspiring a lot of the innovative game designs in SunnySide. The hose, the water containers, the tools, plant growth cycles, task mechanics and so much more we can't even talk about yet... these are all direct results of watching Kevin's awesome videos. We're not really looking to make gardening and farming more realistic (no one wants to deal with garden pests in a video game), but we do want to ground everything in reality so that the mechanics are intuitive and thoughtful. Thanks to Epic Gardening, we've been able to do that, and we owe them a huge thank you!
If you're not a fan of Epic Gardening and Epic Homesteading yet on Youtube, definitely check them out!
It seems like there are new updates to the team every month! We've added a new writer, a new concept artist, and a translator! Here is what we look like now:
· Co-Founder/ Producer/ Narrative Director: Sydney Stockdale (Fem)
· Production Assistant/ Concept Writer / Researcher: Kenna Hartshorn (Kitty)
· Lead Artist: Kaori Mitsuse
· Lead Generalist - Models/ Rigging/ Animation: Ken Heslip
· 3d Modeler: Characters/ Creatures: Allan Mitsuse
· Game Generalist- Models/Textures: René Simard (Ren)
· Game Generalist- Level Design: Kiril Kostadinov (Kai)
· Artist- Environment/Key Art/ Concept Art: Elizabeth Steele (Liz)
· Artist- UI Design: Laura Kane
· Artist- Icons/Key Art: Lauryn Hammett
· Artist- Clothing Concepts: Anastasia Smith (Andi)
· Artist- Animal Concepts: Emily Eiswert (Lily)
· Writer: Jade Greene
· IT Support: Kyle Sylvester
· Volunteer Linguist: Dante
· Volunteer Translator: Curtis
Drone Winners:
Just a reminder: We haven't forgotten about you. <3
Music:
We have some really exciting things in the works that we can't share just yet, but at this point most of the game music has been written at this point, and everything is in the process of being recorded, mixed, and mastered. Here is a glimpse at half of the current list:
We will have a 6 ish minute interview and a brand new trailer during this year's RazerCon, so don't miss it! I believe we will be going live around 10:45pm BST (5:45PM EST/ 4:45PM CST/2:45PM PDT). There will be a watch party going on in our Discord, or you can watch it yourself here:
In the same vein as our last updates, we want to share pieces of development with you all, but also have to be careful not to share too much. So, here are a bunch of pictures from SunnySide's development over the last two months:
What's Next?
We still have a ways to go until SunnySide is finished, but the next few months will have a lot of new information coming your way, kicking off with the new trailer being revealed at RazerCon this weekend! We're going to keep working hard to make the best game we possibly can for you all!
As always, bit thank you to all our supporters, we love you all!
If you want to stay up to date, please join our Discord and follow us on Twitter, if you haven't already. We have a little over 4,800 people on Discord, and that continues to be the best way to follow RainyGames and SunnySide. We post lots of sneak peeks over there (and special ones for KickStarter backers), stream live development, run contests, and even ask for suggestions from the community. If you join, just remember to message me (FemChefSR1) with your KickStarter backer # (if you backed at one of those tiers) so I can give you your Backer Tier Role. If you pre-ordered on Backerkit, please DM someone on the support team with your proof of purchase, and they'll get you set up with your Backerkit role.
That's it from me! As always, thank you for reading, and don't forget to comment below! We continue to love and appreciate your feedback, so don't be shy!
