Climate Change Simulator 2018 Chinese Hoax Edition by smbe19
Climate change is progressing and destroying planet earth. One day, nature had enough and decided to get rid of this pest called humanity. More and more nature disasters take place and decimate the human population. As many cities are not habitable anymore the people are running out of living space.
You probably thought you will be helping the humans, but you are wrong! You play as nature and your goal is to get rid of every last human being. To do this you have a large tool set of nature disasters at your disposal. Will you send a meteor, a tsunami or even a bear?
How to play
In each turn you draw a card from the pile. You then have to perform the action displayed on the card. Most of the cards are disaster cards. With these you can choose a city, or for some also a road, where the disaster will take place. There is also a city and a road card. The first will establish a new city and grant humanity some more space to hide from you. Although you can not prevent the creation of the city you can choose where it is built. After drawing the road card you have to build a new road between two cities. To do this, click on the first city and then on the second city. After the action was performed you may draw a new card.
If you don't want to play a card right away you may save at most one. To do this you can click on the card to the left. You can not do this if there is already a card there. To use it later you click the card before you draw a card from the pile.
Each city has an associated attractiveness which is influenced by many factors including population, number of connected roads, age and occurred disasters. People will move from cities with low attractiveness to directly connected cities with high attractiveness. The rate at which they move depends on the difference in attractiveness. The attractiveness is displayed with the hearts above the city. The number below the hearts is the population of the city.
A nature disaster will lower a cities attractiveness and thereby might drive people to neighboring cities. It will also kill part of the population. Some disasters kill a certain percentage of the population while others kill a fixed number, or a combination of both. A few disasters can be applied to roads and will destroy the road. The following table shows the effects of the different disasters.
| Disaster | Relative | Absolute | Attractiveness | Road? | | ------------ | -------- | -------- | -------------- | ----- | | Heat Wave | 5% | 20 - 30 | 0.1 | No | | Thunderstorm | 5% | - | 0.2 | No | | Earthquake | 10% | - | 0.8 | Yes | | Forest Fire | 40% | - | 0.8 | No | | Bear Attack | 50% | 50 - 200 | 1.2 | No | | Plague | 70% | - | 1.7 | No | | Meteor | - | 50 - 100 | 2.0 | Yes | | Tsunami | - | 20 - 30 | 2.0 | Yes |
If the same disaster happens several times in the same city it will boost the effects of the disaster. For this only the last three disasters are taken into account. They are displayed under each city.
You win as soon as the global population reaches zero.
Controls
You can play the game without a keyboard. For some actions there are keyboard shortcuts:
- Move map: W/A/S/D or Arrow Keys
- Next card: Space or Enter
- Save card: Q
If you wish to turn off the music you can click the button in the top right corner.
Credits
Design, Code, Audio by Matteo Signer and Benjamin Schmid. Art by Patricia Schmid. Created in Godot.
HTML5 does probably not work correctly, your browser needs to support both WebAssembly and WebGL 2.0
Ratings
| Overall | 463th | 3.511⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 198th | 3.682⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 152th | 3.733⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 675th | 3.395⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 906th | 2.966⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 557th | 2.965⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 317th | 3.125⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 606th | 3.114⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 42🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
You need to replace "If you wish to turn off the music you can click the button in the top right corner." by "If you wish for the humans to stop annoying you with their music, kill them."
I tried the win version, I like the game idea but I think some small stuff could have been polished... but overall really catchy and fun game!
Win 10, Chrome
I think my tactic was not good haha, or I undertood it too late xD
Do you plan on develope it more?
I just really wish that the card descriptions were in-game.
0 - Main Mechanics:
The mechanics of taking cards at random and using them as a weapon in a choice reflected from where to use ... Very interesting your idea. It was well implemented in this regard.
1 - Secondary Mechanics:
There is a card that forces the player to enlarge the human contingents (new cities) and another that forces to create new roads. I found these mechanics equally interesting and well implemented.
2 - Learning Curve:
The game has simple control, so learning how to use the cards is quick (at least for me). And the cards are explained by themselves.
3 - Flow:
The challenge of the game grows if the person goes bad at first, with bad choices or even by chance. For the game to become more challenging to the "good" (experienced, lucky, I do not know); I believe that the ideal would be to implement ways of hindering (more letters that complicate, or events triggered by time or by low population number).
4 - Love Points:
The mechanics of the game itself were very good (very interesting, fun and well implemented).
5 - Presentation of the Narrative:
The narrative presented was simple, the game seems to be able to be embedded to other narratives (perhaps some of them can be more in depth). Since the focus is not the narrative (except for the humorous (or critical, I do not know) effect), then there is not much to evaluate in this matter.
6 - Art Polishment:
The art can be polished, for more elaborate frames for the letters (etc). In Ludum Dare's time the art was very good.
7 - Monetization Attractiveness:
I think this game could be monetized if it was released for smartphones (with advertisements). For this there should be several challenges (hence I do not know if it would totally combine with the current narrative, whether it would have to be presented gradually or not etc).
8 - Community Generation:
A Facebook page (invite me to follow if I create) could help to generate a community of game players.
9 - Cultural Dialogue:
Humanity is often accused of doing harm to the environment, I believe that from there arises the criticism made through the game (indirectly or directly). The game may (intentionally or not) reflect a little on the relationship man and nature (although it does not seem to be the focus). For the game to have a stronger character in terms of game-culture and culture-game, I believe that the narrative would have to be better worked on.
Please do check my game maybe you’ll like it and leave some feedback.
Good luck, Don't forget to take a look at ours if you don't mind and see what it's like when we just focused on graphics in this game jam!
Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42a
Web version of the game was sadly not working.
Destroying all the cities (and people) is very easy. Start from one corner, force the population to move to the other corner (build cities there too), and then take them out with the bears and plagues (what a combo!). There aren't any decisions to make after figuring out that optimal strategy.
In this case the more traditional take, working with the humans, would facilitate decision making better. Try to build the most effective city network, with limited space (and time/turns?), while having to choose which cities are affected by which random calamities. Touch choices, especially if the disasters had long lasting effects. They could also affect the connected cities, or roam around the place (the bears!)
The visuals are basic, but functional. The music does go off the scale at times, but otherwise sounds ok.
Solid effort, no bugs. The design is lacking.