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Ova Magica - An adorable farming and monster taming game!

Created by ClaudiaTheDev

Inspired by Stardew Valley, Slime Rancher and beloved classics like Harvest Moon and Pokémon! For PC, Switch, XB1/SX and PS4/5.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Last Update of 2023!
3 months ago – Sat, Dec 23, 2023 at 11:37:30 AM

Claudia here♥

Here is the last update of 2023. Top Hat Studios(publisher) and I are thanking you for being part of the development of Ova Magica for so long, for making the game possible in the first place as backers and especially for your patience and understanding that development takes longer.

We are approaching 2024, which will be 100% the release year of Ova Magica! 

All involved developers are working very hard on finishing the game. Especially the writers are doing a fantastic job working on the final events and dialogs. Also our composer "Tekkera" (pseudonym) has been super productive and has finished almost the complete soundtrack by now.

Together with the publisher, we are currently working on the best timeline for the release. This is indeed a huge challenge, because:

  • Ova Magica will be released on PC and all major consoles and needs to be certified and marketed for them.
  • The game has about 200k (!!!) words that will be translated into several languages. That's an insane amount and far more than most games have. It's due to the life/farm sim genre, 13 characters + numerous events, festivals and side characters. A lot of content is waiting for you! The writers and Claudia are working hard to finalize the last things for the translators. You can probably imagine that the translation is a big challenge and also expensive.
  • Since the game is so extensive, we also need enough time for QA, polishing and bug-fixing. Unlike many other games, we decided against and Early Access release, so the quality of the game is very important at release.

We can't commit to an exact release date yet, as everything depends on so many factors at the moment and we'll have to see how it develops. We prefer to take enough time to avoid stress+crunch for the developers and publisher. But also to avoid having to delay initially announced dates and disappoint you.

Even when we can't say more about the release timeline now, out of fairness we still say that it won't be probably before mid-2024 (because of the points mentioned above). We will reveal more details in one of the upcoming updates and hopefully give an exact date soon!

But one thing we know for sure, 2024 will be a great year, because then you can finally play Ova Magica!!!

We are so looking forward to the release, and even though I (Claudia) was often uncertain, I believe that your expectations will be met with Ova Magica. We put so much effort, time, and love into it, and I hope the finished product will reflect that.

We also want to be transparent with you and explain why we don't showcase many dev content WIPs anymore in updates (like Claudia usually did). Main reason is that a lot is end-game content. But also a huge reason is that both Top Hat Studios and Claudia are Indies with limited resources. It's very hard to get into bigger game marketing events or showcases. Many actually demand exclusive and never shown content or announcements. That's why I (Claudia) sadly cannot share with you as much as I usually did because we need to make sure to be able to get Ova Magica at least into some of the opportunities for marketing (Thank you for your understanding).

Actually you, the community of Ova Magica, was by now our strongest force helping to spread the news about the game! We are super thankful for it and to all who share Ova Magica with their friends/family or content creators who showcase the game♥

As last words of 2023, we wish you happy holidays and a nice time with your family and loved ones! Thank you for being on this (long ;-)) journey with us!

Q4 2023 Dev Update
5 months ago – Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 10:02:39 AM

Happy Spooky Season!!!

Tokyo Game Show

September was truely an amazing month! Our publisher Top hat Studios visited the Tokyo Game Show with an exclusive playable demo. Maybe some of you visited too and found us?

Dev Update

We hope this update finds you well and excited for the future of Ova Magica. As a game developer, we understand how eager you are to see tangible progress and exciting visuals from the game's development. We appreciate your patience and dedication to our project, and we want to give you an update on what we've been working on, even if it's not something we can easily show through screenshots at this point to avoid spoling too much of the final game.

Over the past few months, the team has been hard at work.  We can assure you that significant progress has been made on several fronts:

  •  Romanceable character event progress: With 13 characters there are a log of "heart events" that need to be written and added into the game. We progressed a lot in Q3 with these and the writing team is very hard at work to finish all events for the final game.
  •  General content progress: We worked on the Beauty Salon, Spa, Theater, Boutique and other places in-game.
  •  Music: Our composer is working hard to create the music for the game. We progressed with the seasonal tracks as well as many blob world and festioval themes.
  1.  Bug Fixing and Optimization: We've been diligently identifying and addressing bugs and issues to make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible. These efforts are essential to ensure a stable and bug-free experience for you when we eventually release the game.
     

While we understand the excitement of seeing new screenshots and teasers, we believe it's important to maintain a focus on the critical behind-the-scenes work that goes into making a game truly great. Rest assured, we are committed to delivering a polished, enjoyable, and memorable gaming experience, and we appreciate your support in this journey.

We'll continue to keep you updated as our progress evolves. In the meantime, we're always open to hearing your thoughts and suggestions, so please feel free to share your feedback with us. Your input is invaluable to us as we work to create the best game possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We can't wait to share more about Ova Magica with you as soon as we can.

Shoutout: Tavern Talk

Tavern Talk is a cozy visual novel about running a tavern in a D&D-inspired fantasy! Gather rumors, serve magical drinks, and meet adventurers on a life-changing quest. 

Make sure to check out the time-limited and heavily discounted early bird reward tierslike early access to the entire first act of the game (12% off) or the strongly limited in-game guest book entries (16% off).

Update Q2 2023 - Dev Update + Release Timeframe Update
8 months ago – Thu, Aug 03, 2023 at 10:56:44 AM

Dev Update (by Claudia)

It's getting harder to share a lot of new things without spoiling!😅 In the beginning, I actually showed almost everything there was to see. But, it's important to me that you will be surprised and amazed when playing, and not having seen everything there could be before, so it's getting harder to choose what should go into updates! 

Nevertheless, I made a selection of some of the new or not yet shown things, which I can share without spoiling too much♥

Performance + Load Times Optimizations

The game will release on PC and all major consoles. Some hardware and PC setups have lower specs, and especially the Nintendo Switch.  So, before we get to the juicy images + videos I want to take a moment to discuss something important which is not visible - but "you will feel it". This is actually probably one of the most important aspects of the game, despite the fact that it is "invisible", and it's also the thing I worked most on in Q2.

  • Improved load behaviour process to decrease loading times (we got from some real bad places of 30-35 seconds down to 3-5 sec)
  • Improved frame rates on low specs
  • Optimized back-end processes and invisible logic to prevent/reduce stutters and lag
  • Reworked battle loading mechanism. You had a very feel-able loading time before starting a battle on all platforms. Now, the battle will start instantly after the transition effects. This improves the quality of life by a lot in the blob worlds, and places where you fight often - the game doesn't feel like it's stop-starting or interrupting you as often.

To achieve the above I actually needed to rebuild and refactor the whole game core code, optimize a lot of 3d models, and rework many things (+test all). I am very happy with the result and thankfully the biggest chunk of the optimization work is done!

I worked extensively with Top Hat Studios engineer Mikus to implement some new technologies that will help the game handle better and also accommodate the functionalities he needs to implement for console, as well as for him to be able to make the optimizations needed that are specific for the console version too. The aim is for the console versions to feel just like a "native" experience of the game, not just a churned out and mindless port! On that topic - yes, on PlayStation the game will have a Platinum and on Xbox offer a full Gamerscore!

There's also something else I want to also point out here. The game will release not as Early Access, but rather as a Full game on PC and all consoles. The work mentioned above took a lot of time, and is very much a necessity to have the polished product you deserve. 

Blob Trainer Academy

The Blob Trainer Academy (located in the Blob League) offers various courses, which help you to learn more about blobs, battles, and several in-game mechanics.

Approach the teacher, and you'll be given a choice of many different courses to select. All relevant topics to playing the game and making progression are covered. More courses get unlocked as you increase your trainer rank (by progressing in the Clover Cup)!

In a simulation area, you will play the selected course and learn step by step the mechanics (similar to a tutorial or ).

Map

The map is finally done, and it came out so cute! Some places are not painted in/missing, or are simply hidden (spoilers), but you can see it for yourself below. 

The map shows icons and symbols for all interesting events and NPCs, like:

  • Active quests (orange exclamation)
  • Available events or quest (yellow question mark)
  • Romanceable npc (chibi face icon)
  • Heart event (yellow heart with question mark when npc not met or chibi face when met)
  • Festivals

The map also changes with your progress building around Clover Town. After building the museum, the museum appears and the icon begins to be displayed on the map:

Events

The writers and me have also been progressing well with the heart and main game events. I can't share here too much without spoiling (and it's becoming really hard to choose things that won't act as spoilers the deeper we get into the game!), but here is a small funny sequence:

In one of the early main events, Saphir gifts you some basic, but tasty and filling cooking recipes.

Various Things

It's not easy to get a cherry tree seed in Clover Town, because as is the same with the palms, these are not native trees in that area. However, there's been some rumors circulating that they can be found in the blob worlds... 


With the fillet table, you can make fish fillets out of the fish you catch, and use it for cooking. Fish and chips or sushi, anyone?


And what better to go with home-grown food? Buy a cold soda from the vending machine located in the blob league! Who knows... maybe it might have some special effect?

Dev Insights

In case if you are interested where most of Ova Magica is created: This is my "office" (just cleaned). I work from home but have a separate room. I prefer a clean and simple space without lots of things. In the vitrine on the very right are some Ova Magica handmade pieces i got gifted from very kind Kickstarter backers and Ova Magics fans.

As final thing and before the important news below: 

I want to thank you all for supporting Ova Magica so far, and for being so patient too! Thank you for being here on this long dev journey, and for always having so many kind and motivating words for me. Without you Ova Magica would not be possible, and I am so happy to have such a positive and nice community!

A toast to all of you!

Game Release Estimate (by Top Hat Studios and Claudia)

As you can see, the game is being worked on constantly, and big strides are made all the time in making new content and improvements to what already exists.  With looking at how demanding game development is, and all of our desires to have a solid, functioning game that is truly worthy of the love and anticipation people have, it seems like the best option is to release the game sometime in 2024.

We understand that this is frustrating for people who wanted to play the game sooner, and we know a lot of you are eager to play. However, this is the best thing to do in order to deliver a quality product - we definitely don't want to join the stable of botched releases and comically broken games that have been launched as cash-grabs, with everyone then at the mercy of it maybe being patched later. 

This isn't an arbitrary decision, nor is it one done that just strings out the development for the sake of it; making the choice to delay a game, and taking the time to finish, polish, and deliver it with all planned content, means more time without any sales. It's a risk, but one both ourselves and Claudia think is worth taking to deliver a truly complete experience at launch.

Ova Magica is certainly an impressive and also ambitious game, and it's a big undertaking for a small team (especially having been through covid!) - and it's important that not only is the game taken care of correctly, but also the people making it. Trying to squeeze the game out this year would have meant a huge crunch, which just isn't acceptable.

Both ourselves and Claudia understand that there's other similar games which have already been 'released' that were crowdfunded and using Early Access, and that some of you might want to push for the game to take the same direction; the state of Ova Magica currently is in a comparable state to the EA of those other titles, but the distinction is that here, there's significant importance on delivering a complete full game experience on all platforms.

The extra time to develop the game means that come 2024, the full release will be something that definitely sticks out in your memories and fulfils the sense of wonder and excitement you felt when backing the campaign!

-Top Hat Studios, Inc. & Claudia

Another Great Indie Game To Support!
10 months ago – Tue, May 30, 2023 at 09:49:41 AM

This update is not our regular quaterly dev update (coming end of June) but a special one.  

As indie dev myself i got so many support from other devs during the Ova Magica Kickstarter! So i myself now share from time to time games with the community to support other devs and give a little love back♥ And i really think the game below is something worth supporting!

Today it's about Solarpunk which just launched! 

Click to go to the Solarpunk Kickstarter campaign

Solarpunk is a survival game in a technically advanced world of floating islands. Alone or together with your friends, you can construct buildings, grow food, craft gadgets and hop on your airship to explore distant islands in the sky.

Ova Magica is at PAX EAST!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 24, 2023 at 09:02:25 AM

The Ova Magica Preview Demo is playable at PAX East!

Hi everybody! A special update today for you all... if you're out and about at PAX East, you can come take a peek at Ova Magica! You can find it at the Top Hat Studios booth, where you can also try out a bunch of other fun games. In addition to Ova Magica, you can play Tiny Life, Elementallis and Athenian Rhapsody. 

Here's a little snippet of the map, so you know where to find the booth! As you can see, the booth number is 15093. Have a great time!


Shoutout time: Windswept!

Lastly, we're ending this update by paying it forward for another developer on Kickstarter: Windswept! Classic platforming is back, and it's brought company! Windswept is a 2D collect-a-thon platformer paying homage to the good old days. After a gigantic storm blows them away, a duck and turtle friends try to find their way home. Play as both 🦆Marbles and 🐢Checkers by tag-teaming -- You control the lead character while the other follows close behind.

Available with local co-op, and with a treasure trove of hidden challenges, bonuses, and secret modes, as well as 5 different regions with more friends to meet along the way, Windswept is inspired by the legends of both retro and modern platforming such as Donkey Kong Country 2, Celeste, and Yoshi's Island. Be sure to sign up for their campaign launch by clicking this link, or the image below!