The Follower by Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
Populous, Terraria, From Dust, Dungeon Keeper, Diggers 2: Extractors. If you know all these games, then you know what this is about.
The time is The Stone Age! You are a deity, with powers beyond comprehension, but these days people are sparse. You only get one Follower, Tanri.
You two need to work together to make it.
Controls: WASD keys and mouse
WHAT'S IN THE GAME ***********************
A full terraria-like engine to handle terrain.
A sandbox tutorial level.
Your follower can eat, dig, and pray to create mana. You can create earth to build stuff, by using up "Matter" or by using up "Mana". Matter is the earth you've already dug up. Mana comes from making Tanri pray at the altar. If you have no matter, mana will be used instead, but matter will always be used first.
When you're building, beware of earthquakes, single earth tiles come crashing down.
WHAT IS PLANNED ***********
- animation and eyecandy ( I restrained myself this time! )
- claim the wheat and the altar, so they can produce food and mana even when you're not there. When you *are* there of course, your production doubles.
- build new rooms
- give Tanri some more AI. Choosing what tiles to dig has already been more difficult than I anticipated, and it isn't working 100%. I'd like her to have some more agency, climb single steps on her own, and if she has no orders, try to go and feed herself, or pray.
- Battles with dinos, turn-based
- If your one follower dies, and you have the mana, you can reincarnate her, instead of losing all your stats.
UPDATES:
27 Dec 2013: made a lava engine which can create ground tiles.
______
I never want to stop doing LDs!!!
The time is The Stone Age! You are a deity, with powers beyond comprehension, but these days people are sparse. You only get one Follower, Tanri.
You two need to work together to make it.
Controls: WASD keys and mouse
WHAT'S IN THE GAME ***********************
A full terraria-like engine to handle terrain.
A sandbox tutorial level.
Your follower can eat, dig, and pray to create mana. You can create earth to build stuff, by using up "Matter" or by using up "Mana". Matter is the earth you've already dug up. Mana comes from making Tanri pray at the altar. If you have no matter, mana will be used instead, but matter will always be used first.
When you're building, beware of earthquakes, single earth tiles come crashing down.
WHAT IS PLANNED ***********
- animation and eyecandy ( I restrained myself this time! )
- claim the wheat and the altar, so they can produce food and mana even when you're not there. When you *are* there of course, your production doubles.
- build new rooms
- give Tanri some more AI. Choosing what tiles to dig has already been more difficult than I anticipated, and it isn't working 100%. I'd like her to have some more agency, climb single steps on her own, and if she has no orders, try to go and feed herself, or pray.
- Battles with dinos, turn-based
- If your one follower dies, and you have the mana, you can reincarnate her, instead of losing all your stats.
UPDATES:
27 Dec 2013: made a lava engine which can create ground tiles.
______
I never want to stop doing LDs!!!
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.09 | 269 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.17 | 179 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.60 | 369 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.05 | 92 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.50 | 226 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.99 | 226 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.24 | 162 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.29 | 113 |
Good job with the mechanics although the follower dies of hunger really easy.
Little bug report: got a permanent earthquake because I did something with UI during one.
I can't even begin to imagine how amazing this could be with a bigger team and more time; putting more focus in simulation+exploration+survival is a combo just too could to be true.
Damn, I don't even care about LudumDare anymore. I just want to see this game succeed and want you to know you have my full support.
The sprite-art is gorgeous, could use more depth/contrast with the colours.
The UI is wonderful, tutorial was super easy to understand. Seeing the bread and mana swirls pop up and float above the object you are "harvesting" is both pretty and emphasises the point.
Clicking and dragging works smoothly with the keyboard and mouse combo.
My main gripe is that the earthquake is glitchy as hell, but for the time you had I'm blown away.
As I was saying before, I would do anything to make this game become a fully-fleshed out reality that all us Populous and tribal fans so desperately need in this current generation.
Gameplay has a lot of potential, and the references you mention are already tempting for me, so keep at it!. As for things to improve, I had some issues with the camera, and after unlocking the "Create" tool I wasn't too sure of what to do next, so I just sent my follower to dig around.
Amazing job, keep at it! The planned features sound great :)
Nice job Graphist-dev buddy :)
For the first ones, all the mechanics are there and easy to comprehend, for the others, there is a little bit of time/confusion as to "what do I do ?".
But as most of the comments, I concur that the art/audio/mood is really nice, I commend you on the technical realisation during the jam's period and support you in continuing your effort on the making of that game.
It fits nicely the theme as well, one follower, good idea, good start.
It's more a proof of concept than an actual game at the moment but good job anyway Christina, congratulations ;)
@Lyje : you're right, I ran out of time
@BrothersT : haha thank you! Yes I'm remaking the engine as we speak, and then I'll start adding to it
@Dremelofdeath : you're quite right. Will work on those!
@Venks : Aww thank you so much! I'm doing it at the moment. What would you like to see more of? Exploration (digging), survival? What aspects of Populous2 and From Dust would you like to see?
insane66 : Thank you! Yeah she does that, it's because I wasn't smart enough and let her have collisions enabled while dragging. I found a fix for that.
McDonaldsWizard : Thank you so much, and you're absolutely right about the tutorial
Enneract: Got it! Thank you!
Carduus: thank you!
Ludipe : thank you, let's hope so
Nelien : Aww thank you, I will do my best!
KunoNoOni: such a nice comment! I will work on it!
kewry: will do!
Javifugitivo: thank you!
AtomicVikings: I get it, you're right.
Diptoman: right on! Thank you!
JohnnySix: thank you! I'll do my best, promise
howieV: thanks so much!
Kyatric: thank you!! I didn't know you did LDs! I'll go check your stuff right now! Agreed, this is a proof of concept, I hope to make it something more soon
@lotusgame : Yes I did. Thank you!
The environment dangers (like dinos or lava) sound fun and have a lot of potential to differentiate the game from other sandboxes.
Your lava engine looks really cool! did you write it from scratch? I would love to read more on how it works.
@taocayo: Thanks for the kind words. The earthquake was just an incentive for having a well-built home that won't be destroyed, but I didn't have time to fix it.
Yes I wrote my lava engine from scratch in Scirra Construct 2 . You can check out the source here: http://www.scirra.com/forum/topic83305.html
It's basically made with metaballs