Golden Harvest: from zero to a published game

Golden Harvest (Colheita de Ouro) is a calm 3D farm: you plant, water, harvest and sell from the pickup truck to keep growing your land. We made it in Godot, with models in Blender, and it has been free in the browser on itch.io since November 2, 2026.

From zero to launch, in code

These are the main building steps, each with a short snippet of the game’s real code, in GDScript, Godot’s language. The first five happened between October 31 and November 1, before the first commit to Git, so their snippets show the code as it was in the published version. In the game the code is written in Portuguese; here the names and comments were translated into English, with the same logic.

1. Step 1Oct 31 to Nov 1

   Farm camera and controls

   There is no character: the camera is what moves around the farm, with WASD or the arrow keys.

   func _process(delta: float) -> void:
       var direction: Vector2 = Input.get_vector(&"move_left", &"move_right", &"move_up", &"move_down")
       if direction == Vector2.ZERO:
           return
       # The "Camera speed" option multiplies it (dragging with a finger still follows the finger).
       var speed: float = keyboard_speed * _camera.size / initial_zoom * Options.camera_speed
       position += (_right() * direction.x - _forward() * direction.y) * speed * delta
       _clamp_position()

2. Step 2Oct 31 to Nov 1

   Plant, water and harvest

   A plant only grows while it has water, and watering it in time restores its health.

   func is_ready() -> bool:
       return growth >= 1.0 and not wilted
   
   
   func water() -> void:
       if not wilted:
           water_level = 1.0
           health = 1.0  # watered in time: the wilting countdown restarts

3. Step 3Oct 31 to Nov 1

   Market and coins

   The harvest goes into the pickup truck sale slots, and each unit sold slowly turns into coins.

   while slot["progress"] >= time and slot["remaining"] > 0:
       slot["progress"] -= time
       slot["remaining"] -= 1
       var value: int = price(slot["item"])
       slot["earned"] += value
       GameState.add_coins(value, &"sale", slot["item"])
       GameState.count(&"sold")
       changed = true

4. Step 4Oct 31 to Nov 1

   Autosave

   The game saves on its own when the window closes or when the phone sends the game to the background.

   func _notification(what: int) -> void:
       match what:
           NOTIFICATION_WM_CLOSE_REQUEST, NOTIFICATION_APPLICATION_PAUSED, NOTIFICATION_APPLICATION_FOCUS_OUT:
               save()
               upload_to_cloud()

5. Step 5Oct 31 to Nov 1

   Two-finger touch

   On phones, the camera tracks each finger on screen. With two fingers, the move, zoom and rotate gesture begins.

   func _handle_touch(touch: InputEventScreenTouch) -> void:
       if touch.pressed:
           _touches[touch.index] = touch.position
       else:
           _touches.erase(touch.index)
       if _touches.size() == 2:
           _start_gesture()

6. Step 6Nov 2, 2026

   Live in the browser

   In the browser build Godot makes the scene too bright, so we adjusted light and colour for that build only.

   ## In the browser, Godot renders in "Compatibility" mode, which makes the scene too bright (the road
   ## turns white); there, the sun and the ambient light are multiplied by this value.
   const COMPATIBILITY_LIGHT_FACTOR: float = 0.55
   const COMPATIBILITY_SATURATION: float = 1.25
   ## Saturation of the 3D world (1 = the original Palette colors).
   const WORLD_SATURATION: float = 0.72

7. Step 7Nov 5, 2026

   Ready for Android

   The phone back button now works like the Esc key, instead of closing the game.

   func _notification(what: int) -> void:
       if what != NOTIFICATION_WM_GO_BACK_REQUEST:
           return
       for pressed: bool in [true, false]:
           var event: InputEventAction = InputEventAction.new()
           event.action = &"cancel"
           event.pressed = pressed
           Input.parse_input_event(event)

By the numbers

The game launched with 132 scripts and almost 17 thousand lines of code. A week later, it already has 160 scripts and more than 20 thousand lines, with new versions published on November 3, 5, 7 and 8.

The next steps for Golden Harvest will show up here on the devlog too. See you at the next scene.