Obviously, this is still very early development. Screens and art may change.

There are a lot of ways to keep your tavern profitable, and the most obvious one is to sell booze! In The Waycross Inn, you don’t just sell drinks, you actually concoct your own drinks. Alcohol can be made from anything that has starch or sugar in it, the yeast just love that stuff!

It isn’t a ‘Simulation’. Some of the less interesting parts of real life brewing ale making have been removed or streamlined. In this world, wines, bitters, spirits, ale’s… they’re all the same, and they’re called ‘Brews’.

First thing to do will be to click the ‘Brewery’ button on the main page, and you’ll be taken through to your own personal brewery.

From here you can click the ‘New brew’ button to start experimenting. Note the ‘Fermenting’ and ‘Ageing’ panels. I’ll explain them in more detail a little later. (p.s., yes I’m aware of the typo!)

You can make a brew out of anything in the game. Each ingredient has a specific flavour, alcohol potential, colour, and you can mix up to six of them together to make a brew. Make a brew from fish heads? Or perhaps a nice earthy, bitter malt from all the rats you find in your storeroom? You may even happen upon a mysterious vegetable the likes of which the world has never seen, and create a legendary ale which rockets your taverns reputation skyward.

Here, I’m making a simple ale out of carrots, watered down a little so it’s not so alcoholic. The last thing to do is to give it a name, cook it up and set it fermenting!

After clicking the cook button, the ale will move in to the fermenting tub, and the time left to ferment is displayed in the ‘fermenting’ section of the distillery. Fermentation is where the yeast turns all the sugar and starch into alcohol. After a week or so of fermenting, the brew is transferred into a barrel and moves to the cellar, where it sits and ages.

During the ageing process, brews can take on new properties and improve. For the sake of fun, the ageing process is much faster in the game than in real life, and you should start to see results within a few days.

At any point during the process, you can have a wee taste and see how the brew is doing. And if you decide it’s ready, you can prepare it for the taproom, or leave it to age some more.

And of course, once you’ve determined it’s ready, you can plug it, put it on tap, and start serving it to your guests! You can determine the selling price here too. People in this world are very aware of the value of things, and will know if they’re being overcharged, or getting a good deal. This may not have any effect on whether they buy it or not, but they might leave with a slightly better or worse opinion of your establishment.

I hope this gives you some insight into how this part of the game will work anyway. It’s likely to become much more complicated as the design becomes more refined with age (Like a fine wine).

If you’re interested in this game, and have any questions or comments, PLEASE ASK THEM because It’ll make me think about things more. YOu can leave a comment here on the site, or catch me on Twitter at @StewHogarth.

Cheers,

Stu xxx

“It’s an RPG about running a medieval fantasy Tavern, and It’s going to be a bit like ‘King of Dragon Pass’.”

And the response is one of two things… More often than not, the response is a nonplussed expression, followed by “What? Never heard of that game”. But when I tell someone who knows and loves the references, the response is a much more positive “Omigod! Take my money!”.

The Waycross Inn is going to be (it’s too early to say ‘is’) an RPG / adventure game about running a medieval tavern. If you’ve played any of the ‘Atelier’ series, or the ‘Harvest Moon’ games, imagine those, but with a ‘choose your own adventure’ novel mixed in there as well.

Again… blank expressions.

It’s one of those things you just have to play to get I suppose. And if you think it sounds hard to sell, just imagine what it’s like to be throwing hours and hours of your free time into making it. I have no idea if it’s going to work either.

So, The Waycross Inn is about running a tavern in a politically volatile fantasy world, which is situated at a crossroad between four diverse towns. Your tavern is pretty much the only place where people from these different towns and cultures will meet.

Taverns have typically been places where you might rub shoulders with people you wouldn’t normally associate with, and over a drink, realize you’re not that different and that you all share a basic humanity.

The question the game asks is this; Can one location, in the right place and with the right management, build bridges between cultures and classes enough to prevent a brewing civil war?

But that’s the much bigger picture.

Most of your time will be spent deciding upon the menu, keeping guests happy, brewing your own ales, trading for resources… and tons of other stuff I haven’t even decided upon yet.

I’ve been working on the game for two months now, and I’m aiming for a ‘Computers’ release, I haven’t ruled out mobile either.

If you like the sound of the game, please let me know in the comments below, and if you would like to keep track of development, the best place is probably my Titter Account (@StewHogarth).

Thank’s for reading, see you next time.

Stu xxx

Just a quick note to let you know what we’re up to at Smiling Bag right now.

As some of you may have read on my Smiling Blog, I had a difficult end to 2014. Sadly, as the main contributor at Smiling Bag, if my own life hits issues, then the work stops. So I’ve decided to try and concentrate on smaller projects until everything gets back to some kind of homeostasis, because the large ones keep getting interrupted by things!

The first of these smaller projects is ‘S.I.D the Snake’. When we were younger, myself and my twin brother used to write stories about a hedgehog called Tom and a snake called Sid, so that’s where the ridiculous name comes from. I might try and come up with a game about a hedgehog next. You know, for completion.

Anyway… S.I.D the Snake is the third and final part of Smiling Bag’s ‘One Touch’ trilogy (The first being I am Level, and the second being Ducky Fuzz). They’re games that can be played with a single button / touch, which makes them much more accessible.

It’s sort of like an analogue version of Snake crossed with Asteroids. the snake goes round in a circle, and you tap / hold a button to change the direction of the circle. Collect good stuff, avoid bad stuff. Easy!

I’m managing to get quite a bit done on this at the moment, so the hope is to get it finished by the end of February, and released some time in March on iOS, Android and Web. Fingers crossed.

Until then, look after yourselves.

Stew xxx

this is the first post on the new Smiling Bag 2.0 website, so I though the most appropriate thing to do would be to summarise the last year and let you know where we’re aiming to go next.

I went for a rummage through my old files to try and find a document I’d written a year ago, which contained a ‘plan’ about what I aimed to achieve in the first year. I found it, and here’s what it said…

I aimed to get I Am Level (then in development) finished and played by 100,000 people in the first year, and to release two more small mobile games. One about controlling waves and another about particle collisions.

It’s been 8 months since Smiling Bag started. I Am Level has been played well over 100,000 times, and we’re about to release our third game, iON Bond.

In summary, we achieved our first years goals in 9 months. Which is nice. So, it’s about time to start thinking about the next year. The aim is to use the momentum from the first three games to step it up a gear and make something a bit bigger with a larger team.

As for adding more people to the team… well, that’s progressing as we speak. There are regular contributors, which is why I use the term ‘we’ when talking about Smiling Bag, but I’m still the only core member. So that’s the first objective, to add more people to the team. Then it’s simply a case of picking the right project.

Currently, there are two bigger projects being mulled over. One is safe but simple, and the other is risky and niche. Not sure which one we’ll go with. Who knows, maybe both.

Watch this space.

Stu x