Devlog #1: Planting the First Seeds

What's Playable Right Now

So, what's playable right now? I start as Filli with five seeds and a shovel. I can plant anywhere under the cursor—tap, little sapling, quick growth—and soon those trees start generating more seeds over time. Waves of enemies crawl in from random zones, and crucially, they target the trees first, which forces me to dart around, kite, and protect the grove. When enemies die, they leave corpses. I can scoop those up, add a few seeds, dig a grave, and grow a corpse-tree. These aren't just reskins: corpse-trees bring new attacks, buffs, or even weapons, so each burial feels like a little power spike. The loop already has a nice rhythm—fight → grow → power spike → bigger fight—and it's surprisingly satisfying to turn a messy battlefield into a deadly orchard.

Under the Hood

Under the hood, I've wired up a bunch of systems to make everything feel snappy and consistent. Filli is built on my STC character base a 3rd person character controller I've made, so movement, camera, and input behave exactly how I want. I'm using Enhanced Input for move, plant, interact, and bury, and the cursor-to-ground tracing makes planting feel instant. There's a tidy inventory component handling seeds, shovel, and corpse materials, with a one-liner "starter kit" that drops the 5 seeds + shovel at begin play. Planting runs through its own component too—tiny input lock, quick growth timers, and a bury-from-inventory flow that picks grave size based on the seeds I commit.

For content authoring, I made a base tree class that reads from a DataTable, so I can add new tree types without touching code. Trees can both produce seeds and hook into attacks, which keeps expansion simple. Enemy pressure is handled by a multi-zone spawner plus a small wave director: short, predictable beats where enemies prioritize trees over Filli, which keeps the tension focused. I also built a reusable spawner actor that can either spawn Filli for Player 0 or batch AI on a timer; it keeps the level setup clean and modular. And, thinking ahead, I wrote a tiny MoveTo → Gather → Deposit component with a clean state machine. It's not center stage yet, but it'll be handy if I add workers or automated hauling later.

What's Next: One-Week Vertical Slice

What's next is a tight, one-week vertical slice to make the build presentable end-to-end. On the feel side, I'm polishing the dash (i-frames + a little VFX), adding a touch of hit-pause for impact, damage numbers for clarity, and tightening the wave beats so the run never drags. Content-wise, I'm doing basic animations (Filli run/attack/dash; enemies move/attack/die; trees grow/attack), a lean SFX set (plant, spit, hit, death, pickup, dash, UI), and one looping music track with a small finale stinger. For UX, I'm cleaning up the HUD (seed count, wave timer), adding a single-screen "How to Play" card, and sprinkling in small error toasts like "Need corpse + 3 seeds" when you try to bury without enough resources. And for performance/QA, I'm pooling projectiles, keeping shadow/cull distances sane, hunting down red logs, and making sure both gamepad and KBM paths feel good.

If time gets tight—and it always does—I'll trim to two enemy types and two corpse-tree variants, and keep the finale simple. The goal is a stable, readable slice that captures the heart of the idea: plant fast, defend hard, bury for power, and turn the night into your ally.