Bread, Butter... and Eggs!

Egg Man's Egg Farm—very original name, I know—has officially opened on Barter Toast. You can visit the farm, pick up some eggs, maybe hatch it into your next favorite character. I think the release is quite timely; Easter is just around the corner. But no, eggs are not a seasonal event. They are here to stay, and I hope they bring you as much joy as they've already brought me.

I was searching for a way to make bartering more fun, and it seemed like there were a thousand ways to solve that problem and at least twice as many ways to fail at it.

One of the early ideas I threw around included a fun tracking system—think StoryGraph reading charts but for barters. Since Barter Toast has always followed a bread and butter theme, I thought we could also do something related to baking. Maybe barters could earn people different types of bread and dairy products. You could combine different items to create new recipes for fancier bread and combine fancy breads to make... What were people supposed to do with all that bread?

Bread is for Eating

I'm not exactly sure when (or how) the bakery concept turned into eggs, but I believe I concluded that bread and butter are meant to be eaten... By dragons or monsters or people.

And I don't think there's anyone I, a writer would rather share a loaf of bread with than the characters I poured my heart and soul into.

Once I started thinking along those lines, I realized that I would love for my characters to be part of Barter Toast and that others might like that too. After a lot of brainstorming and outreach to other writers, I continued in that direction... although it did mean moving away from bakeries (for now).

Presenting: Pokemon for Book Characters!

A random selection of mystery eggs drops at Egg Man's Egg Farm every hour. These virtual collectibles hatch into characters from the books/projects of your fellow writers. When fully grown, will tell you what book they come from. The goal is to collect them all—or at least all the characters you want. It's a fun new way to discover new characters and books... or to have others discover your own! If you'd like to learn more about how this whole egg thing works (and how you can add your own characters to the project), you can read about that here.

My Personal Connection to Eggs

I shouldn't have found this direction as surprising as I initially did. After all, I got my start with creative writing, art, and tech through virtual pet collecting games like Dragon Cave, Egg Cave, and GPXPlus (Pokemon). These games inspired me to build my first web app, a classic pet clicker game. I made tons of pet art for this game and wrote extensive amounts of lore... Which ended up turning into the world building for what eventually became (years later) my debut novel.

I never expected pet sites to reappear in my life after all this time, but life is full of surprises, and surprises can be very pleasant.

What's Next

I definitely have a few ideas in mind and on the backlog. The UI is an absolute mess. Expect updates and fixes the moment I settle on some cohesive design vision.

Right now, Barter Toast eggs also feel rather like a separate thing from the rest of the site's bartering functionality, and I'm perfectly fine with that. It's just meant to be something interesting, relaxed, but still meaningful for the community. You don't need to participate. There is no penalty. As with all things around here, it will likely continue to evolve as we figure out the best way to do things... and that is part of the fun.

Happy egg collecting, and I hope to see your favorite characters around!