4F - Faith, Forests, Fire and Floods by KayZ

[raw]
made by KayZ for LD 41 (COMPO)

ld41_turn502terrain.png

Play 4F - Faith, Forests, Fire and Floods (HTML5)

tl;dr

A turn based sandbox god game!

Move the map with WASD/cursor keys. Space to center map. Mouse to use godly powers. Mouse wheel to zoom.

F11 for fullscreen.

Description

You are God. You have created flat earth. But it is devoid of life. Create the very first humans and support them by burning down forests and by flooding barren soil to create the promised grassland where the humans can build their farms and thrive and multiply.

The inspiration for this game was my last LD entry (hexagonal grid) combined with a cellular automaton (think Conway's Game of Life). For the theme I combined turn based gameplay with a god game. While it doesn't sound incompatible, I can't think of any god game that is turn based. If you know one, please tell me in the comments - I'd like to play it.

I almost achieved all the goals I set myself except for two things. * The graphics are still placeholder graphics * I wanted to add a mechanic where the glaciers would melt if too many settlements produce too much heat causing the ocean to rise and the land to shrink

Other than that, I'm quite happy with my game. Have fun, enjoy being God and leave a comment :).

Ratings

Overall 527th 3.094⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 486th 3.031⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 346th 3.375⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 477th 3.297⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 664th 2.25⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Humor 332th 2.679⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 598th 2.426⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 38🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

Tomáš Selmeci
23. Apr 2018 · 08:25 UTC
Who doesn't like being a god? Game is awesome
ditzel
23. Apr 2018 · 08:27 UTC
The WASD is a strange way to scroll. Maybe you can implement something like dragging. But besides that, it looks good.
WongKongPhooey
23. Apr 2018 · 08:27 UTC
Really impressive stuff! Was not expecting to end up playing such an in-depth game from a jam, the amount of logic going on is clearly large and it didn't take me long to get the hang of it and start enjoying it. Great job!
bcvery1
23. Apr 2018 · 08:48 UTC
Good fun. I found the key quite difficult to match up to the grid (colourblind), so maybe tooltips would have improved that? Awesome job though!
Aterlamia
23. Apr 2018 · 10:21 UTC
Cool game, what surprised me is that the fire burned more then just square :) so i set fire to my settlement
Sophie
23. Apr 2018 · 12:57 UTC
It was satisfying exploring and learning how the different cells interact! It was interesting trying to find ways to use fires and floods to make the land more habitable, without destroying settlements in the process.
theviraldragon
23. Apr 2018 · 13:39 UTC
"A group of settlers found a nice place to die and drowned" LOL. Nice game
Distrait
23. Apr 2018 · 16:42 UTC
I chose to let time take it's course. I'm a passive god. 1000 clicks later and the world was populated nicely.
morphine
23. Apr 2018 · 23:15 UTC
I did not expect this to be a clicker game! But yea lots of clicking and the word populated itself. I don't know if the faith meter is correct though because mine looked like it was fully filled but I couldn't place people anymore or maybe that's the way it's supposed to be?
Apples_mmmmmmmm
23. Apr 2018 · 23:29 UTC
Interesting mechanics. I enjoyed flooding and burning the settlements.
James Dunlap
23. Apr 2018 · 23:33 UTC
I found that there wasn't really much to do or that I would want to do. After placing the first humans, the world gets settled very nicely on its own without my intervention (other than clicking end turn, of course.) You do have to be really careful with that fire. Many turns in, I set one hex to fire and burned practically the entire world!

It was well done, but how do you get rid of water without burning things around it and why do settlers drown instead of walking around?
🎤 KayZ
23. Apr 2018 · 23:33 UTC
Thanks for all the comments :)

@ditzel I didn't have time to add scrolling by dragging, but scrolling using the keyboard isn't that unusual (cursor keys are possible too, if it's just WASD that's weird)

@WongKongPhooey Yeah, a lot of time went into tweaking the parameters so that there isn't a type of terrain that is overpowered and removes all other terrain.

@bcvery1 Sadly adding a colorblind mode in just 48 hours is kinda hard :(, the terrain tiles aren't even sprites so adding a symbol would have been quite a bit of extra effort for which I didn't have the time - considering my placeholder graphics ;)

@Aterlamia playing with fire is always fun :). Don't try this at home!

@Sophie you were just afraid that her royal highness might be in one of the cities ;)

@Distrait and @morphine maybe that's why it's 2 incompatible genres - in the beginning you have to click to get some FAITH and in the end you have click because you just want to watch. Concerning the FAITH-meter, at the beginning you have 1001 FAITH, but afterwards you can only get up to 1000, so you only have one shot at creating humans. After all, they evolve, and another group of newly created humans just wouldn't fit into society and would turn into outcasts who would never be happy and someday might be put onto a cross for doing stupid stuff like walking on water. And as a benevolent God you wouldn't want it to come to that, now would you?
🎤 KayZ
23. Apr 2018 · 23:37 UTC
@James-Dunlap use a flood to douse the flames. Concerning the settler: it would be too boring if they just found a place to settle. If they choose to take a swim but cannot swim it's their free will to do so. Who am I to tell them not to? God?
Dooda
24. Apr 2018 · 09:05 UTC
This is a great game given the constraints of the jam, but the only part that I think it lacks is a sense of progression, I understand the idea of toying in a god sandbox, but it would be nice to gain new abilities over time or something.
Bitten Toast Games
24. Apr 2018 · 12:18 UTC
Great game, can't wait to see it with the full graphics!
Richard N Silva
24. Apr 2018 · 13:19 UTC
“A group of settlers found a nice place to die and drowned” 10/10
Great job! I really liked it, specially the fire and flood mechanics. It has a type of dark humor that is essential for a God game :)

We are looking for feedbacks for our entry, “Type ‘n Jump”. Please consider checking it out too :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/type-n-jump
Kensou
24. Apr 2018 · 13:45 UTC
I accidentally burned all settlements T__T 10 fried settlers from 10
Lerg
24. Apr 2018 · 15:06 UTC
Interesting concept, but not sure how to play it. They just grow cities and I destroy them and they still believe in me.
Laguna
24. Apr 2018 · 16:30 UTC
Nice take on the theme. I like the mechanics and the console output is hillarious! I am not quite sure how temperature and humidity influence the settlement behaviour, but my settlments had no problem in surviving (given I did not burn them down).
Nice Take on the theme!
Theras
25. Apr 2018 · 08:48 UTC
Nice game! It was kinda hard to get rid of the humans again... A small improvement would be to have shortcuts for the diffrent abilities
Jimbly
27. Apr 2018 · 17:00 UTC
Wow, a "web" game without a giant, long Unity loading screen, cheers! I wasn't sure what to do for a while, seems like mostly just clicking "End Turn" over and over again, without being able to influence much. Tried starting a fire to clear out some forests and everyone died. Tried again and let the people grow quite a bit before interfering with them, and then had a little fun using fires to remove forests, and managed to get the whole map covered in farmland and settlements for the most part, I guess I'll burn them all to the ground now...
markusfisch
27. Apr 2018 · 19:21 UTC
First time I played I lost my settlers almost immediately what basically means game over because I couldn't get any faith to build more. Second time I had fun with fire and flood and slowly get a hang of it ... ;) The depth of the game is just amazing for a compo and I really liked the humor very much. Well done!
Jupiter_Hadley
29. Apr 2018 · 09:57 UTC
Neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOCRSij5jBI
LemonBalmGames
29. Apr 2018 · 11:21 UTC
I'm not really a strategy game kinda guy but when I play one it often has a God theme (other than Warcraft, Populous: The Beginning was probably the first strategy game that I liked) so I might be slightly biased. I've also spent a bunch of time on Civ titles so I like the hex grind + turn-based aspect of it. I think you followed the theme fairly well. Turn-based God game might not be that incompatible but sandbox God game is a bit unusual (both Populous and Black&White, for example, had clearly defined goals).

The game has rich mechanics and it definitely has potential. The only bad thing about it is the placeholder art but this isn't even that important in the context of a strategy game made for a jam. Good job!
guckstift
06. May 2018 · 14:35 UTC
Dang, that seems like an interesting game, interesting to see the ecosystem react and develop with the actions you take. But you definetely should expand it, make it more graphical and self-explaining. Thumbs up for the cool idea!
cristiano.m.garcia
06. May 2018 · 23:59 UTC
Good job! Cool game!

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
Ellian
15. May 2018 · 19:02 UTC
It's a strange game, mostly because it's devoid of real goal, but I'm always fascinated by automated systems. Congrats on making something this complicated in such a short time!