If you were part of the Alpha test, you should have received an email around April 5th that included an end of alpha survey as well as a link to sign up for the Merge MVP Program. The MVP Program will give you access to our future Playtests, and priority will go to those who were part of the alpha. If you missed this email, you'll want to search your email for RainyGames or MailChimp.
These play tests were originally intended to be slated for summer, but they are being pushed back a bit. Keep an eye out for future updates
Timeline Expansion
We are a new studio, and we are always learning. It's one thing to understand how to put a game together and make it fun, but the business aspect is a whole other ball game. Porting, localization, rating boards, pre-production, accessibility, marketing ... all these aspects of game development take so much more time and effort than we ever realized. For that reason, we've decided to push the launch date of SunnySide to next year. We aren't exactly sure when, but it's important to us that this game is as good as it possibly can be at launch.
We think this decision is what is best for both the game and you all, the players and backers. It wasn't an easy call to make, but we know it's the right one, and we appreciate your continued support and patience. <3
Nintendo Life
Y'all. This is probably one of the coolest things that we've had the honor to be a part of so far in developing SunnySide. Nintendo Life decided to not only feature a beautiful video about SunnySide... not only did they also include an interview with Rainy and I... but they're also going to be putting out MORE SunnySide videos in the coming months!
We couldn't be more excited to FINALLY share these with you all!
If you haven't seen the Nintendo Life Article or watched the first World of SunnySide video yet, just click the link v.
There is another video coming out this week, so keep an eye on our socials!
The Team
We've had a couple more changes to the team. Sadly, our QA team is no longer with us, but fortunately we have access to Merge's talented QA team who will assist us in testing from here on out. We wish our departed QA team all the best, and thank them for all those crazy late nights during the Alpha.
Another addition we will be receiving from Merge is our very own community manager! He is on holiday right now, but when he returns, Benny will be taking over community and social media management. So get ready to give him a warm welcome!
And what's more, RainyGames has a new team member! Our awesome Intern, Laura, is now an official member of the art team!
The SunnySide Team now looks a bit like this:
Our Current Team
Producer/ Studio + Narrative Director: Sydney Stockdale (Fem)
Game Director/ Programmer: Siavash Shahlaei (Rainy)
Composer: Matt Thompson
Lead Writer / Researcher: Kenna Hartshorn (Kitty)
Lead Artist: Kaori Mitsuse
Lead Generalist - Models + Animation: Ken Heslip
Character + Creature Modeler: Allan Mitsuse
Game Generalist- Models/Textures: René Simard (Ren)
Game Generalist- Level Design: Kiril Kostadinov (Kai)
Marketing + Concept Artist: Elizabeth Steele (Liz)
Animal Concept Artist: Emily Eiswert (Lily)
Junior Artist: Lauryn Hammett
Junior Artist: Laura Kane
Volunteer Linguist: Dante
Drone Contest Winners
Firstly, big thanks to everyone who participated in the drone contest! Seeing all the artwork was incredibly fun for us, and we continue to be impressed by the creativity of our community.
Up first, some honorable mentions! These were designs that we liked the idea of, and want to expand into larger categories of potential skins.
Cool Idea! We're totally gonna run with this one and make it look super extra.
Love the Acorn Dragon Balls. Sadly.. we can't use them. That dragon will make a really awesome design though, with lots of potential for a variety of colors. Love it!
Bugs! We have some pretty awesome bug artwork, and putting it on the drones is an excellent idea!
Another super cool dragon skin! We also love the mask idea, will probably run with that as well. Thanks!
We loved this two tone color idea, and want to do a whole series of colors!
Animal Prints! This gave us some really awesome ideas to play with. Thank you!
And now for the winners! Every winner will have the chance to see their skin in game, will get credited, and will also receive a free digital game key for Steam!
These are in no particular order.
WINNERS
We LOVED this one. We will likely be changing out the SS sticker for something a little prettier and more obvious to SunnySide (For sensitivity reasons), but everything else is fantastic!
Beautiful art work! And lilipad propellors?! Awesome.
Sushi Drone. Love it.
Shady Side! If you know, you know.
The art on these is just adorable, and we absolutely love the backgrounds.
That FOX! SO. GOOD.
Loved the ocean theme on these, and that art work is CRISP. Excellent work!
Development
Similar to the last updates, this update will primarily be lots of pictures without much explanation. The further into development we get, sadly the more we have to keep back... because.. well... marketing is a thing. Mostly we just blame our Product Manager at Merge. He doesn't mind. (Love you, Callum)
However, there is one small thing are really happy to finally be able to announce! SEASONAL OUTFITS!
We've been working with a very talented studio called Lanot Design who has been helping us make sure all the seasonal outfits are modeled and ready for the base game! YAY!
Moving forward, we're gonna keep working hard to make SunnySide the best game it can possibly be! We'll continue to share sneaks on Discord and Social Media, Live Stream at the end of every month, and post Kickstarter Updates every two months (or when necessary).
That's all from us for now! Big thank you again to all our supporters, we love you all!
I say it every update so you know it already: Your support means so much more to us than you could possibly know. Your continued motivation, love, and encouragement helps us get up every day and get this hard work done! <3
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!
Cheers!
-Sydney-
April + May Update
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 11:46:32 AM
Hello to all our SunnySide friends across the world!
We've been hard at work over the last couple months, and while we can't show everything, we are excited to share our progress with you!
As always, in case you missed our last live stream, you can catch it here.
If you were part of the Alpha test, you should have received an email around April 5th that included an end of alpha survey as well as a link to sign up for the Merge MVP Program. The MVP Program will give you access to our Summer Playtests, and priority will go to those who were part of the alpha. If you missed this email, you'll want to search your email for RainyGames or MailChimp.
If you would like to take part in the Summer Playtests but were not part of the Alpha, we will be sending out a link to join the MVP Program through email, social media, and our Discord, in a week or so, so definitely keep an eye out.
Sadly, we have lost a couple members of our team. Our Junior artist, Cherry, and our lead QA Conlan (aka Tater) have parted from the team on very friendly terms, and we wish them the best!
We've had a couple additions as well! Our lovely Lauryn is finally on break from school and has stepped in as our junior artist, taking Cherry's position, and we also have a new intern! She will be working with us over the next 10 weeks, gathering college credit while she learns more about web development and game design! We're super happy to have her, and so far are really enjoying assisting her through her educational journey!
The SunnySide Team now looks a bit like this:
Our Current Team
Producer/ Studio + Narrative Director: Sydney Stockdale (Fem)
Game Director/ Programmer: Siavash Shahlaei (Rainy)
Composer: Matt Thompson
Lead Writer / Researcher: Kenna Hartshorn (Kitty)
Lead Artist: Kaori Mitsuse
Lead Generalist - Models + Animation: Ken Heslip
Character + Creature Modeler: Allan Mitsuse
Game Generalist- Models/Textures: René Simard (Ren)
Game Generalist- Level Design: Kiril Kostadinov (Kai)
Marketing + Concept Artist: Elizabeth Steele (Liz)
Quality Assurance : Dalton Geil
Quality Assurance : Brayden Silvea (bdog)
Animal Concept Artist: Emily Eiswert (Lily)
Junior Artist: Lauryn Hammett
Volunteer Linguist: Dante
Intern
Development
Similar to the last updates, this update will primarily be lots of pictures without much explanation. Hopefully it's still fun though!
Moving forward, we'll continue plugging away at development, sharing sneaks on Discord, ramping up our Social Media presence, Live Streaming at the end of every month, and posting Kickstarter Updates every two months (or when necessary).
Next live streams: Sunday, June26 at 6:00 PM GMT and Sunday, July31 at 6:00 PM GMT
That's all from us for now! Big thank you again to all our supporters, we love you all!
I say it every update so you know it already: Your support means so much more to us than you could possibly know. Your continued motivation, love, and encouragement helps us get up every day and get this hard work done! <3
If you want to stay up to date, your best bet will be joining our Discord and following us on Twitter, if you haven't already. We just hit 4,700 people on Discord, and it 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!
Cheers!
-Sydney-
February + March Update
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:37:37 AM
Hello to all our SunnySide friends across the world!
It's been a crazy couple months, y'all, and there is lots to cover!
If you missed our past live streams, you can catch 'em here:
The most exciting things covered in the live stream, if you missed it (and the Steam Updates), is that we were finally able to announce our publisher!!
We signed with Merge Games back in December, and they have been an incredible asset to the development of SunnySide. They've been fully supportive of our vision of the game, and have been willing to give us complete creative control over the project. We're really looking forward to our continued partnership, and we know the whole community will come to love them as much as we do!
A little note from our new friends:
“Hello everyone!
This is Danny, the Community Manager at Merge Games, and it gives me immense pleasure to share with you that Merge Games have joined forces with the wonderful team at RainyGames to publish SunnySide!
You may know us from titles such as Spirit of the North, Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX & Smalland. We fell in love with SunnySide as soon as we saw it and we are so excited to get involved with the community and help to bring SunnySide to gamers all around the world.
We’re looking forward to getting to know you all so you’ll find us in the SunnySide Discord and you can follow Merge at the links above!"
Honestly, we couldn’t be more excited to be working with Merge. They bring an incredible amount of industry knowledge and experience to the table, but on a personal level, they have been an absolute joy to work with. Their whole team is so supportive of our goals and vision for SunnySide, and that kind of support is a huge blessing. We’re really excited to see what the future will bring!
Along those lines, our new partnership allowed us an opportunity the Rainy and I have only dreamed of for the last year or so: a trip to the Game Developers Conference!
If you missed the announcements, we were invited to participate in The Mix 10th Anniversary Showcase at GDC this year! The whole thing was very last minute and sort of sent us into a tail spin for all of March, so we're sorry about the delay on updates :(
The event was a ton of fun, and we got to show off SunnySide to developers and press from all over the globe!
(That giant poster from Merge may or may not be sitting in my living room right now...)
Along with our attendance at The Mix Showcase, we released a shiny new trailer for SunnySide!
SunnySide Alpha
With the Alpha having now come and gone, it's time to look forward at what the rest of development will look like for SunnySide. We'll be focusing on fleshing out the remaining systems and testing them this summer in closed door playtests through Merge's MVP program. If you were part of the Alpha, you should have received an email about this a few hours ago. If you can't find it, search your inbox for RainyGames,and check your Promotions folder if you use Gmail.
If you choose to be part of these Playtests, please note that the only way to sign up for them will be through the email that was sent to you. Additionally, these tests will be under NDA, so if you're a content creator, you will not be able to share or create any content or information about them.
At this time, there is no plan to open the Summer Playtests to anyone who wasn't already part of the Alpha, but if something changes we will let you all know. ^_^
Whether you choose to take part in the Summer Playtests or not, everyone who had access to the Alpha will be receiving a new game key for the Beta test this fall. More info on that to come.
Development
We're at a point where we will be sharing less about development so that we can keep certain aspects of the game a surprise but we'll share what we can! A ton happened in the last few months, so please enjoy this enthusiastic image dump!
Moving forward, we're gonna keep plugging away at development, sharing sneaks on Discord, ramping up our Social Media presence, Live Streaming at the end of every month, and posting Kickstarter Updates every two months (or when necessary).
Next live stream: Sunday, April 24 at 6:00 PM GMT
That's it from us for now. Big thank you again to all our supporters, we love you all, and I say it every update so you know it already, but we couldn't have come this far without you all! <3
If you want to stay up to date, your best bet will be joining our Discord and following us on Twitter, if you haven't already. We're about 150 members away from 4,500 people on Discord, and it 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, just 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!
January Update
over 2 years ago
– Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 09:10:32 PM
Hello to all our SunnySide friends across the world!
This past month, the whole team has been working hard to get the game ready for our Backerkit Alpha release on February 14 at midnight GMT.
If you're more of a visual person, like me, everything in this update was pretty much covered on our Live Stream yesterday, so feel free to give that a watch!
As of yet, we've not announced publicly who our publisher is, but we do plan to do that very soon. Even though the relationship isn't quite public, they've still been working closely with us over the last month to tighten up our production schedule, get organized, begin forming relationships with other video game companies, and generally supporting us in whatever way we need. We're moving along at a nice pace, the whole team is getting paid, and we can't wait to share more info with you all at a later date!
Early Access
By now, all the Kickstarter Backers who were interested in playing the Alpha version of SunnySide have had access for a little over a month, and we've released a couple updates in that time. The biggest updates were version 0.8.1 and 0.8.12. We've added the Summer season and goats to the game, a new shelter mechanic for animals, and updated a whole slew of bugs reported by the community. Thanks for that!
For those who missed the Kickstarter campaign but were able to pre-order on Backerkit, you'll be receiving your Steam keys to the alpha via email in just a couple weeks!
Development
Between now and the Backerkit release, we're going to keep working hard to bring some exciting updates to the game. Namely: Inventory, Battle and Skills!
New Inventory System and HUD
So far, we haven't been too happy with the inventory, how it's organized, and how the player interacts with it. As a result, we've overhauled the whole system. Now, you'll have 6 different inventory types that items will automatically sort into: Backpack, Bento Box, Harvest Basket, Tackle Box, Fishing Basket, and Battle Pack. Your backpack will act as a catch all for all types of items, the Bento Box is reserved for edible or perishable food, the harvest basket for all your crops or items you receive from animals, the tackle box will hold all your lures and fishing poles, the fishing basket for the various fish you catch, and the battle pack will be reserved for all your battle items.
Additionally, we've updated the HUD (Heads Up Display) a bit! You'll be able to scroll through the hot bars of your different inventories, and we've also moved the mini map (to make room for Streamer faces!) and shrunk the time stamp a bit to be less intrusive.
Battle System
We talked about this a bit in the live stream but we were a little all over the place with it, so here is some more concrete information about the battle system without giving too much away.
Attacks:
The player (that's you!) will have two attacks to choose from: Physical attacks and Spiritual Attacks. Physical attacks will use physical weapons! Here is a little taste:
Spiritual attacks, however, will use an item called Ofuda. These can be purchased in packs of 5, 7, or 9, and opened up. Once opened, the Ofuda will live in your Battle Pack in your Inventory.
That's it! Keep an eye on your mailboxes for your Backerkit Alpha key, and be sure to follow the instructions carefully!
I know I say this every month, but we've come this far in development because of all you, the fans. The fact that you all continue to believe in us despite the delays and chaos of last year really shows us that you not only believe in SunnySide, but also in our ability to see it through and make it happen. So far, the new year has been a pretty smooth ride, and we're looking forward to seeing where the next 9 ish months take us.
So once again, thank you for your continued support!
As for what's ahead of us, once we release the Backerkit Alpha, there will be a couple updates, but mostly we will begin working towards meeting the development milestones that we've set up with the publisher. We'll still have our monthly streams and Kickstarter Updates, but our main focus is going to be development and marketing.
If you want to stay up to date, your best bet will be joining our Discord and following us on Twitter, if you haven't already. We're about 80 members away from 4,000 people on Discord, and it 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, just please DM someone on the support team with your proof of purchase, and they'll get you set up with your Backerkit role (new and shiny!).
That's it from me! As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to comment down below!
We love hearing your feedback and answering questions, so don't be shy!
Cheers!
-Sydney-
An Update to Pre-Orders
over 2 years ago
– Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 04:43:35 AM
Hello SunnySide Community!
Out of respect for our new publisher (who we will be announcing within a month or so), we closed our pre-order store on January 1st. I will admit, however, that we did not do a good enough job of notifying our community about the exact date and time when orders would close.
So, we are happy to announce that we have had some discussions with said Publisher and have all agreed to open up the pre-order store for a limited time.
Pre-Orders will be available through Backerkit only from January 10, 2022 at 1:00 AM GMT, to January 24, 2022 at 12pm Noon GMT.
Once we close the pre-order store on the 24th, per-orders will not be reopened again.
To better support our fans, we have also enabled the ability to purchase through Backerkit with PayPal. Pre-Order on Backerkit Here.
About Early Access
-If you decide to purchase Early Access (EA) this will give you access to the Backerkit Alpha on February 14, 2022.
-This Alpha will be on Steam (Windows, PC) only and will run for a limited time (length TBD, but at least a month).
-You will receive your Steam key through whatever email address you use to pre-order, and said email will have specific instruction for how to redeem your key accurately. It’s not just any other Steam key, so please read and follow these directions closely.
-Once the Alpha ends, keys will be revoked and you will no longer have access to the game.
Additionally, anyone who has Early Access, whether it was through our Influencer Event, Kickstarter, or Backerkit, will receive new access (with a new key sent to email) to the Beta version of SunnySide when it is released later this year. Date TBD. Alpha saves will not carry over to the Beta.
If you have any questions, please join our Discord and ask there. I’m only one person, and fielding questions through multiple platforms can eat up a LOT of time, specially if they are the same questions. Discord is and will continue to be the best way to receive updates about SunnySide, is free, easy to learn, and is mobile friendly.
That’s it for now! We hope that this update to pre-orders will support our community, and we can’t wait to share the next Alpha updates with you all!
