Building a Living World: Pyria’s Progress Report

Hey there, it’s Kay and Ele, back with another cozy update on Pyria!

This past week was a mix of celebrating Ele’s birthday and making exciting strides in Pyria! As a birthday gift, we got our friends involved in the development process by doing a soft playtest and adding some of their own creations to the game. Ele created a document to help our friends integrate new characters into the world easily—and it was a blast seeing their creativity come to life in Pyria. This is exactly why we’re building this game: to have a world where we can bring our friends and family together to explore, share stories, and leave a little bit of their essence behind in the world we’re creating. Here’s a peek at what we’ve been up to:

• Feb 8: Our friends did a soft playtest and added new NPCs to the world.

• Feb 9: We fine-tuned NPC implementation.

• Feb 10: Ele started brainstorming dragons for Pyria—stay tuned for our Draglings!

• Feb 13: Our main characters’ backstories are getting deeper and richer.

• Feb 15: Kay implemented weather and time cycles for a dynamic world.

• Feb 16–17: Kay played with procedural content generation and created tools for building walls and fences.

• Feb 18: Kay worked on making weather and time systems interact with the world—snow building up on surfaces, rain creating puddles and reflections, and more.

• Feb 19: Kay synced up the time and NPC routine systems, and we’re starting with a day cycle similar to Stardew Valley.

• Feb 16–17: Kay played with procedural content generation and created tools for building walls and fences.

• Feb 18: Kay worked on making weather and time systems interact with the world—snow building up on surfaces, rain creating puddles and reflections, and more.

• Feb 19: Kay synced up the time and NPC routine systems, and we’re starting with a day cycle similar to Stardew Valley.

Through all of this, we’ve been focused on making Pyria feel truly inhabited and inhabitable. With the addition of day/night cycles, NPCs going about their daily routines, and the beauty of nature interacting with time and weather, the world is coming to life. We’re so excited to see how everything is shaping up, and we’re grateful to have our friends’ creativity contribute to making this world feel even more vibrant.

Big things are happening in Pyria, and we are excited to share more updates soon!

Until next time, Kay & Ele Crowknuckle Studios

Written February 19, 2025