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Devlog · Case Study · Released, still in development

PIE'S FARM

A cozy idle farming sim starring a very good dog. Pie plants, waters and harvests on her own — you decide what the farm becomes. Built solo in Godot 4.6.

  • PLAYABLE IN BROWSER
  • GODOT 4.6
  • SOLO DEV

▶ PLAY IT ON ITCH.IO Free · runs in the browser

PIE · IDLE · 4 FRAMES

  • 23 crops in the roster, each with its own seed art
  • 6 playable systems, from bots to land expansion
  • 44 GDScript test scripts keeping refactors honest
  • 2 currencies — coins at pickup, treats from converting

01 · The game

A farm that runs itself

Pie's Farm sits in the "second-screen idle" genre pioneered by Rusty's Retirement: the farm ticks along at the bottom of your day while you work, and rewards a glance every few minutes. The player never controls Pie directly — they plant seeds, place structures and buy land; Pie and her helper bots do the walking, watering and hauling.

The economy splits into two currencies. Coins pop the moment a crop leaves the soil and buy land, patches and structures. Treats only come out of the Treat Converter — a machine that wants three different crops at once, quietly nudging players to diversify what they plant.

THE CORE LOOP

  1. 1 · PLANT

    Drag-plant seeds across soil patches.

  2. 2 · WATER

    Pie or a water bot keeps soil wet from the well.

  3. 3 · HARVEST

    Coins pop instantly at pickup.

  4. 4 · CONVERT

    Three different crops in the converter become treats.

GROWTH
STAGES

  • SEED
  • STAGE 1
  • STAGE 2
  • STAGE 3
  • STAGE 4
  • +COINS

Twenty of the twenty-three crops have their four growth stages drawn; the rest still run on placeholders. Coins pay out at pickup — instant feedback, no trip to a sell bin.

02 · Systems built so far

Six systems, all playable

  • PIE + HELPER BOTS

    Autonomous carriers share one task pool with strict priorities: harvest beats restock beats water. Bots dock, charge and path on the tile grid.

  • TREAT CONVERTER

    Three slots, three different crop types, a 45-second churn — treats out. Carriers reserve slots at pickup so two bots never race for one.

  • WATER WELL

    Watering draws from placed wells. Well placement becomes a layout puzzle: coverage versus walking distance.

  • MAP EXPANSION

    Locked land sits behind fences with for-sale signs, rubble and an old truck. Buy a parcel and Pie clears it for farming.

  • SHOP + PROGRESSION

    Crops unlock by total harvests; new unlocks glow in the shop until revealed. Patch prices scale with how much land you own.

  • SAVE + AMBIENCE

    Full save/load of the farm state, plus an effects layer — butterflies, drifting petals, splashes — and an audio manager with mixable buses.

03 · Art evolution

Grey boxes to a living farm

Everything shipped as generated placeholder art first — a script draws flat-colour stand-ins so systems are never blocked on sprites. Final pixel art comes from an AI-assisted pipeline (PixelLab + prompt batches kept in the repo), imported and wired by tooling scripts.

  • THE FARMHOUSE

    PLACEHOLDER

    CURRENT

  • HARVEST BOT

    PLACEHOLDER

    CURRENT

  • TREAT CONVERTER

    PLACEHOLDER

    CURRENT

  • CARROT CROP

    PLACEHOLDER

    CURRENT

04 · The art, in full

Every sprite in the farm

The whole art set, boarded out: cover art, branding, Pie's animation states, the crop roster and the robot crew. Click any board to open it full size.

  • IDLE · 4 FRAMES
  • WALK · 4 FRAMES
  • BARK · 4 FRAMES

  • COVER ART

    Pie's Farm — cover art

    The cover: Pie on the doorstep, the well, the first planted rows — the game in one frame.

  • KEY ART & BRANDING

    Pie's Farm — key art & branding

    itch.io cover, logo lockup and the mascot pose set.

  • CHARACTER ANIMATION

    Pie's Farm — character animation

    Pie across 13 states and 8 directions — idle, walk and bark shown here.

  • CROPS & GROWTH

    Pie's Farm — crops & growth

    23 crops, each with a seed icon and a 32×32 shop preview; 20 have their full four-stage set drawn.

  • BOTS & STRUCTURES

    Pie's Farm — bots & structures

    The harvest drone in 8 directions, docks, buildable structures and the land-expansion props.

05 · Under the hood

Tested like software, because it is

The codebase is signal-driven GDScript: a GameState autoload owns currencies and progression and emits granular signals; UI and world nodes subscribe rather than poll. All carrier behaviour — Pie and every bot — flows through one task pool with strict priorities (harvest > restock > water), so adding a new worker type is a data change, not new AI.

Forty-four GDScript test scripts cover the economy, crop growth, pathfinding, save/load and even the generated UI theme. Repetitive work is automated: scripts generate placeholder art, styleboxes, the pixel theme, and import crop sprite batches.

  • STATE GameState autoload: currencies, harvest counts, unlock thresholds — all signal-emitting.
  • TASKS One TaskPool for every carrier; priority-ordered, reservation-based, interrupt-safe.
  • WORLD TileGrid + A* pathfinder; managers per structure type (bots, converters, wells, construction).
  • UI Generated pixel theme + styleboxes from a single palette file — 30 colour tokens, one source of truth.
  • TESTS 44 test scripts: economy math, growth timing, save round-trips, task arbitration.

06 · Progress so far

Milestones

  1. PHASE 01 CORE LOOP Tile grid, pathfinding, plant–water–harvest with Pie as the only worker. Save system landed here too — persistence from day one.
  2. PHASE 02 AUTOMATION Water and harvest bots with docks, and the shared task pool that arbitrates who does what.
  3. PHASE 03 ECONOMY REWORK Coins moved to pickup-time, treats moved behind the converter. The house became storage instead of a sell point.
  4. PHASE 04 WELLS + LAND Water wells as placeable infrastructure, then map expansion: locked parcels, pricing curve, clearing crews.
  5. PHASE 05 ART + FEEL Placeholder art replaced across the board; particles, ambient critters, audio, floating reward pops.
  6. PHASE 06 FIRST RELEASE HTML5 build exported and shipped free on itch.io — the first public playable, in-browser with no download.
  7. NOW POLISH PASS Crop roster balancing, shop UX (unlock reveals, info popups), and folding feedback from the live build back in.

07 · What's next

The road to players

  • NEXT

    PLAYTEST ROUNDS

    Structured playtests against the live build — focused questions, watched live, rather than open-ended "what did you think".

  • THEN

    STEAM PAGE

    Store page up early to accrue wishlists; Steam Playtest in monthly 48-hour rounds.

  • OCT 2026

    STEAM NEXT FEST

    One shot per game, ever. A polished 20–40 minute demo that ends on a hook, submitted for the October fest.