Shadow Wizard Money Grains is a farming rogue-like that as of writing remains in development. It is set in a dark world of wizardry and magic where you work as a farmer harvesting a unique magic crop to meet quotas and pay for upgraded spells and abilities.
The game was heavily inspired by games such as Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and Balatro. Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley were what inspired the farming aspect of the game, which was initially intended to be a far more slow-burn style of gameplay compared to the later, more arcade-like gameplay the project has since shifted towards. As development for the game continued I felt that this slower burn style of gameplay might have grown boring and caused players to become disinterested, so taking inspiration from roguelike games such as Balatro I sped up the overall gameplay loop massively which quickly made it far more engaging to play and frankly made it more fun to develope myself.
During my 4th year out of 5 in college I wanted to shift my work from using more traditional tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot to something far more restrained and unique in it's development style. The purpose was to push myself through limitation and answer a question for myself, can I make a good game with limited resources? To this end, Pico8 offered the perfect platform for me to develop this project on.