Update 2.4 saw some big changes – This update simplified some core mechanics and introduced several new features but I wanted to highlight the new quests specifically here, since I’ve been enjoying them a lot myself!

Quests can be accepted by building the notice board and taking whichever quest suits your fancy. The rewards and tasks are randomized based on your game progress, so there’s often a mix of great rewards and less useful rewards, with difficult or easy quests.

In addition to generic quests, there are also one-time permanent unlock quests, which unlock new content like new NPC merchants or Trinkets. More of these will for sure be added in future updates.

I like this mechanic a lot because checking new quests provides another point of interest every game-year plus more opportunities for players to choose quests based on their personal playstyle and goals.

For the next major update I’m working on a QoL improvement to allow more bulk actions to be made, with more content following afterward. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d love to see added!

Description

The world is a barren wasteland, ravaged by storms and radiation. Can you grow an orchard to rebuild civilization?
Select your desired resistances and fruit attributes as you cross-breed more trees and plant more seeds! Explore more of the procedurally generated map each run to gather more resources and trade with townsfolk.

Your trees in Wasteland Orchard continue growing while your away so check back daily to harvest, plant, build, and explore more of the world!

  

Gameplay

Wasteland Orchard is an idle farming game with roguelike elements. The goal is to survive progressively more-destructive storms as you expand and grow an orchard of trees. Choose which resistances and other attributes you want for your trees by cross-breeding trees and carefully selecting the best seeds. Time passes and trees continue to grow and produce fruit while you are away in typical idle game fashion, with the world map and game events being randomized every run.

The play-style is to check on your trees, harvest fruit, and expand your orchard once or twice or a few times a day if you like, making use of the refilling time-warp feature which lets you fast-forward time for a bit. With various gifts, restocked shops, new trade offers, new upgrades, and new animals arriving at your orchard, the daily check is meant to be always rewarding and interesting for the player.

Collect rare golden seeds to acquire permanent upgrades that persist through future runs!

I have a few content updates planned for the coming months as I shift back into Order of Athanor development, so if you have any ideas or feedback on what you liked or would like to see in Wasteland Orchard, let me know!

-Dustin

Order of Athanor is an action RPG currently in development where the entire game’s world will be built as directed by the players, featuring a 2 week cycle of suggestions, voting, and a game update that adds the new content. It will be released through Early Access on Steam for PC, with a TBA release date (likely 2026).

Every two weeks (called an “Epoch”), the player community will suggest virtually any idea they want for content they would like to see in the game. The suggestions will be compiled and then voted on in-game by the players. The top-voted suggestions will then be added into the game in the next epoch. I’ll write some more details on this as it’s own post soon, describing the timeline, voting points, and limitations in more detail.

Gameplay

The gameplay will be a mix of combat similar to the Mana series, with an Alchemy system similar to the SNES classic Secret of Evermore, a personal favorite game of mine. This is like “magic” in most RPGs except ingredients are required to cast spells instead of MP. Spells will be very powerful and often used in strategic situations to provide more interesting strategic combat vs spamming the same spell multiple times, to complement the ingredient-based mechanics. The game is party-based, with the ability to freely switch between characters at any time when they are in your party. The ability to play co-operatively with your friends is something I’d love to include if the demand for that is great enough.

In addition, I’m focusing a lot on making the fundamental battle mechanics as fun as possible, with a variety of spells and skills available to use. The environments will be very interactable by both the player and enemies, with various objects available to be thrown, burnt, frozen, exploded, rolled, or otherwise used to suit both the player and enemy’s combat strategy. Dungeons will also feature a variety of Zelda-like puzzles both required for completion as well as particularly difficult optional puzzles for bonus items. There will be multiple ways to defeat enemies, secret passages and treasures to discover, and various side-quests available from the world’s wacky citizens.

Story and Characters

The game begins with a small team of adventurers Laila, Olivia and her dog Barry, Theo, and Dr. Graves exploring a jungle to search for some ancient ruins that are rumored to hold a mysterious power. This section makes up the prologue of the game and will provide the player with some content to play immediately on the game’s release and familiarize themselves with the gameplay mechanics. The party finds more than they bargained for in the temple when they are ultimately transported into the strange, new world of Athanor, which is empty initially but eagerly waiting to be built with whatever players can imagine for the first Epoch.

Within Athanor, the party must work both together and against the native citizens of the world, to find out what the heck is going on, and to ultimately find a way to return home. While exploring this new world, you’ll encounter a wide assortment of powerful, suspicious, or curious characters, including more playable characters that have a shared interest in helping you with your mission.

Every character in the game is well aware of the world being built around them, and this theme of world creation is in fact central to the story. They will eagerly rush to explore new areas and meet new citizens of this unpredictable world, with varying motives of both good and bad. The fundamental story will be fully written when the game is released, with it’s focus on the interpersonal relationships of characters and communities to allow for flexibility as the world is quickly built around them.

Order of Athanor is an ambitious project, but I’m extremely excited to work on it. I have a very talented team of Artists, Audio Designers, and Writers helping me with this project, with more possibly being added later in development to meet demand during release. This is an extremely unique project, but it’s an idea I’ve had for several years, so it’s wonderful to finally be able to work on it today.

Community is critically important to this project!

If this game sounds interesting to you, I’d love to hear what kind of content you’d suggest for the world of Athanor, so please leave a comment either here or on any of my socials! I invite you to follow the development in my community Discord server, or follow me on Twitch where I stream weekly development streams. I’ll be streaming regularly during the development of the game, and after release, at least once an epoch to go over the suggestions for that epoch.

If you’d like to see past streams, I post those on my YouTube, and I also post quick 1min shorts to recap what I finished on my streams on both YouTube and TikTok.

You can also catch new updates and read about the development progress on the game  here on my blog, or Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

        

On your journey through Athanor, you’ll meet a variety of characters, like this studious, well-dressed rodent, Mr. Vole. He’ll provide an optional sidequest for you if you decide to help him!