Hey there, this is Siavash from the dev team! Thank you so much for the detailed review, I really appreciate it! While our finances look really grim, we're hoping to come back to updates in early 2025 for PC (the only platform we have access to) however we can. I know there's so much love out there for our game and I really hope we can get it to a place deserving of the community. Thank you again for all the kind words and the clear and actionable criticism
So the developers had a really interesting livestream tonight about Sunnyside. All about the pitfalls, the publisher problems, how they got sued, etc. How they should have scrapped the battle system, how they should have had less romanceable characters (and made the ones that were romanceable more in-depth), and more. How one of the devs hasn't taken any pay for a year in order to fund Sunnyside... and how Sunnyside has made no money. Basically, Sunnyside ended up suffering from "what can go wrong, will go wrong." Anyway, if anyone wants to check that out the title is "Aftabi Developer Livestream #1 ~ Halloween 2024" on the AftabiGames channel. (Yes, they are re-branding, but also going solo for publishing their next game.) Also, no they are not abandoning Sunnyside... they are going to do all they can to get it running right for everyone, but they have zero control over the distribution of things like game updates. So yea, they introduced their new game. It's going to be a game more in the style of Lofi Sessions. They are using the same musician from Sunnyside, Jelly Fox, for the new game... which is absolutely awesome! The music in Sunnyside is absolutely stunning. They previewed the new game on the development stream tonight and it looks pretty stellar. They are going to be really involving the community in the game's development via things like polls to decide game elements. The game will be a lot simpler than Sunnyside, but they are using a lot of the design elements that made Sunnyside so beautiful. I got more and more excited about their new project the more they talked about it & showed on stream.
It seems a lot of indie developers are having these issues lately - going without pay etc. it's such a shame. They're doing such amazing work, I wish there was more support out there for them.
love your review, have been curious about sunnyside for a year or two since seeing early trailers. Really hope they keep developing this game and maybe redesign the combat and just tweak and improve most bit and bug fix. The game is such a wonderful foundation. Tryed looking online for a roadmap but could not find one, think will wait a year and see what happens.
For Sunnyside, unfortunately they have zero control over the publishing... even game updates are handled by the publisher. And they have had a LOT of publisher problems. However, the devs themselves are committed to getting the game fixed for everyone. BUT, as the game is making zero money it's going to be a slower process than they hoped for (ie: they might only be able to work on it during their spare time). Hopefully, eventually, the game will be what people were hoping for.
Yea, Sunnyside had a lot of publisher issues.... including the publisher wanting the game to be released before the devs were ready for it to be released.
Nice review, Lamo. And yeah, playing with the fear of losing all your progress is pretty bad, the games should be tested enough to prevent this. I understand now why you lef the game at the 30th our mark.
@@LamoGaming Yeah, it's a little the samey as those old 8 and 16 bits games, yo advance a lot and they a small error cost your whole playthorugh. But it's not correct at this day to have games with bugs that make you lost a lot of your advance. Well, some save every ten minutes, but still...
Well, i agree with basically everything you said here, with thus farming sim to be my almost-perfect sim I've always wanted. I have it for PS5 and first experienced my first crash within the caves, after all of my hard work ..then on i hope they continue updating and optimizing for the system not just PC. To be able to.save anywhere is a MUST
It's too bad the game didn't have more financial support. The devs bailed now, which i think bodes ill for their future games. How do you trust them when they don't stand behind this potential farming masterpiece? If they fixed the bugs and finished everything as planned, it would become a classic. It sort of reminds me of Pumpkin Days.
Also (sorry for bombarding your comment section...), there is now a sandbox mode on PC where everything is unlocked and stuff. May be much more what people are looking for. Side note: Once you defeat an enemy in the cave system it does not respawn. Eventually you'll get them all and the caves will be free and clear to mine in without bother.... so that's something for when they get that whole cave debacle fixed.
@@LamoGaming I just remembered when I woke up that something you can try if you are having crashing issues and stuff is to turn shadows all the way down. I remember it being something a lot of people found helpful for performance.
I feel the same way. Sunnyside was the game I always wanted in a farming sim, but it just feels so incomplete. I still have no clue how the card system works-smh. I was done after 6 hours in.
You just put down things in the best and worst way possible; this looked like the perfect farming game but with such issues it is a no-go for sure :( Sadly it seems that it is a very complicated product, looking at some of the comments, so chances that it will get better are basically close to zero. Too bad because we need more games like this, where you have more realistic setup like in a small town like this; without combat or cave systems with monsters maybe, and more of the realistic stuff but not necessarily a farming simulator as there are already a couple. Maybe what some people wants is an anime/realistic rural Japan version of Dreamlight valley with interactions with characters, that is not animal crossing, Story of Seasons or any of the other games we already got ? :)
Thanks for the detailed review: its a shame to see such a promising game have so many awful glitches. Oh well, I’ll keep an eye on it in case it gets patched up
The Sunnyside devs have said that in hindsight they should have scrapped the battle system, if not the whole cave system. They suffered for wanting to do so much with their very first game... but they have learned from it and are putting the lessons into practice for future releases.
Hey there, this is Siavash from the dev team! Thank you so much for the detailed review, I really appreciate it! While our finances look really grim, we're hoping to come back to updates in early 2025 for PC (the only platform we have access to) however we can. I know there's so much love out there for our game and I really hope we can get it to a place deserving of the community. Thank you again for all the kind words and the clear and actionable criticism
So the developers had a really interesting livestream tonight about Sunnyside. All about the pitfalls, the publisher problems, how they got sued, etc. How they should have scrapped the battle system, how they should have had less romanceable characters (and made the ones that were romanceable more in-depth), and more. How one of the devs hasn't taken any pay for a year in order to fund Sunnyside... and how Sunnyside has made no money. Basically, Sunnyside ended up suffering from "what can go wrong, will go wrong."
Anyway, if anyone wants to check that out the title is "Aftabi Developer Livestream #1 ~ Halloween 2024" on the AftabiGames channel. (Yes, they are re-branding, but also going solo for publishing their next game.) Also, no they are not abandoning Sunnyside... they are going to do all they can to get it running right for everyone, but they have zero control over the distribution of things like game updates.
So yea, they introduced their new game. It's going to be a game more in the style of Lofi Sessions. They are using the same musician from Sunnyside, Jelly Fox, for the new game... which is absolutely awesome! The music in Sunnyside is absolutely stunning. They previewed the new game on the development stream tonight and it looks pretty stellar. They are going to be really involving the community in the game's development via things like polls to decide game elements. The game will be a lot simpler than Sunnyside, but they are using a lot of the design elements that made Sunnyside so beautiful. I got more and more excited about their new project the more they talked about it & showed on stream.
It seems a lot of indie developers are having these issues lately - going without pay etc. it's such a shame. They're doing such amazing work, I wish there was more support out there for them.
love your review, have been curious about sunnyside for a year or two since seeing early trailers. Really hope they keep developing this game and maybe redesign the combat and just tweak and improve most bit and bug fix. The game is such a wonderful foundation. Tryed looking online for a roadmap but could not find one, think will wait a year and see what happens.
I really hope they do fix these issues. This game could be so epic if they fix this stuff. Fingers crossed!
For Sunnyside, unfortunately they have zero control over the publishing... even game updates are handled by the publisher. And they have had a LOT of publisher problems.
However, the devs themselves are committed to getting the game fixed for everyone. BUT, as the game is making zero money it's going to be a slower process than they hoped for (ie: they might only be able to work on it during their spare time).
Hopefully, eventually, the game will be what people were hoping for.
I felt the same way, I kept wanting to make excuses but it was released incomplete.
Yea, Sunnyside had a lot of publisher issues.... including the publisher wanting the game to be released before the devs were ready for it to be released.
Nice review, Lamo. And yeah, playing with the fear of losing all your progress is pretty bad, the games should be tested enough to prevent this. I understand now why you lef the game at the 30th our mark.
Super stressful, especially after id been in the mines getting loads of stuff done haha
@@LamoGaming Yeah, it's a little the samey as those old 8 and 16 bits games, yo advance a lot and they a small error cost your whole playthorugh. But it's not correct at this day to have games with bugs that make you lost a lot of your advance. Well, some save every ten minutes, but still...
Well, i agree with basically everything you said here, with thus farming sim to be my almost-perfect sim I've always wanted. I have it for PS5 and first experienced my first crash within the caves, after all of my hard work ..then on i hope they continue updating and optimizing for the system not just PC. To be able to.save anywhere is a MUST
"Sample movie name" sounds like a great movie :D lol.
It's too bad the game didn't have more financial support. The devs bailed now, which i think bodes ill for their future games. How do you trust them when they don't stand behind this potential farming masterpiece? If they fixed the bugs and finished everything as planned, it would become a classic. It sort of reminds me of Pumpkin Days.
Also (sorry for bombarding your comment section...), there is now a sandbox mode on PC where everything is unlocked and stuff. May be much more what people are looking for.
Side note: Once you defeat an enemy in the cave system it does not respawn. Eventually you'll get them all and the caves will be free and clear to mine in without bother.... so that's something for when they get that whole cave debacle fixed.
Thanks for letting me know, im keen to check out the sandbox mode and see what I can do with it ☺️
@@LamoGaming I just remembered when I woke up that something you can try if you are having crashing issues and stuff is to turn shadows all the way down. I remember it being something a lot of people found helpful for performance.
@@pixy-onewing thank you!!! I really hope that works; I've been dying to play this again. Thanks!
I feel the same way. Sunnyside was the game I always wanted in a farming sim, but it just feels so incomplete. I still have no clue how the card system works-smh. I was done after 6 hours in.
She mentioned this was going to go on the Switch? I'd need to upgrade my video card before I could play it.
You just put down things in the best and worst way possible; this looked like the perfect farming game but with such issues it is a no-go for sure :(
Sadly it seems that it is a very complicated product, looking at some of the comments, so chances that it will get better are basically close to zero. Too bad because we need more games like this, where you have more realistic setup like in a small town like this; without combat or cave systems with monsters maybe, and more of the realistic stuff but not necessarily a farming simulator as there are already a couple.
Maybe what some people wants is an anime/realistic rural Japan version of Dreamlight valley with interactions with characters, that is not animal crossing, Story of Seasons or any of the other games we already got ? :)
Do they have needs, goals and wishes like in the sims or foes that not matter?
You have a hunger bar but that's about it
Thanks for the detailed review: its a shame to see such a promising game have so many awful glitches. Oh well, I’ll keep an eye on it in case it gets patched up
Hopefully it does, I'm keen to play it again
Shame about the glitches as it looks awesome
Dungeon and fighting are so out of place, not even with the game vibes.
The Sunnyside devs have said that in hindsight they should have scrapped the battle system, if not the whole cave system. They suffered for wanting to do so much with their very first game... but they have learned from it and are putting the lessons into practice for future releases.