Gaia - Keep It Alive by Hereward

[raw]
made by Hereward for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

On a distant world known only as Gaia, life has emerged. Your must help that live survive and thrive by ensuring the conditions are as favourable to life as possible. Use all the tools at your disposal to counter the hash realities of the universe; but be careful of side effects that can persist for thousands of years.


Meteors provide a lot of heat, but they can destroy land.

| Before| During| After | |:---:|:---:|:---:| | meteor-00-small.png | meteor-01-small.png | meteor-02-small.png |


Volcanoes can provide new land for expansion, if they ever cool down.

| Before | After | |:---:|:---:| | 10.png |11.png |


Remember, life is precious; keep it alive.


Ratings

Overall 705th 3.708⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1151th 3.354⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 36th 4.271⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 26th 4.438⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1264th 3.6⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 982th 3.5⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 19🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

tripl3m
21. Apr 2020 · 13:46 UTC
If only we could launch huge meteor to cool down earth, that'd be easier. Nice game, was up to 1500 year. It feels like there were a lot of works involved in this game.
RiccaStudio
23. Apr 2020 · 15:54 UTC
I like the Idea. The onley thing i didnt really like is the laggy movement
Arcus
23. Apr 2020 · 18:34 UTC
Ha ha - it's kinda funny how you re-enforced the game jam theme at the end of the desc - great game. Always very fond of cartography stuff :smile:
Flamti
23. Apr 2020 · 18:40 UTC
This idea very good! Need more tools and effects.
Daniel Whittaker
23. Apr 2020 · 18:45 UTC
very unique i like it
Giordas
23. Apr 2020 · 18:50 UTC
Pretty nice game, I actually enjoyed playing it! It's interesting to see how everything evolves! I woluld love to see some updates in the future!
Shardykins
23. Apr 2020 · 18:57 UTC
I kept it alive! Really cool, performance was a little low but I've got a good machine so I assume the browser's resources are artificially restricted somehow. It did devolve into just spamming hot or cold stuff fairly quickly so the last 1500 years were very repetitive. With a few more properties for you to control it could be a really interesting little experience :)
jaybaus
23. Apr 2020 · 19:05 UTC
It has a nice, relaxed pace to it which the music complements well :) Good job!
Tudvari
23. Apr 2020 · 19:22 UTC
Very good idea, always wanted to make something like this.

Sadly I've always stopped making it, because I wanted it to be real, which makes it either really hard or really imbalanced. For example comets and meteor behave the same, and only heates up planet temporarily, because after a few years a "nuclear winter" like situtation will began :\

But yeah, maybe we have to sacrifice some of the realism to make it playable, like you. Or maybe there is a both playable and realistic design. Who knows.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game, and it was fun to erupt lots of volcanoes to prepare for an ice age. Loved the low poly style and realistic music. By the end of the session I had some performance issues, maybe the too many volcanoes caused it.
Joule
23. Apr 2020 · 19:36 UTC
One of the best games I played in this LD46! If I needed to give advice, I would say to improve the UI for something more appealing. Good job!
🎤 Hereward
24. Apr 2020 · 13:07 UTC
Thank you everyone for your lovely comments. We really enjoyed making the game and we are really appreciative of your positive comments and constructive advice. Knowing that we've created something that actually

I'm going to comment specifically on a couple of things:

*Performance*
If the game is too laggy try "Low" quality mode. It doesn't look as good but it should be more responsive. We know performance is an issue and will try to fix this if we keep enhancing the game.

*Tools & Effects*
We had so many ideas for other mechanisms that we just couldn't get into the game in the time available. We had to focus on ensuring what we had was a playable game. If we come to enhancing it we definitely will be adding more features to help make the game a little less spammy.

@arcus I was being a _little_ cheesy reinforcing the theme - putting our finishing touches in place in the middle of the night was not ideal.

@tudvari There was a constant tension between realism and pragmatism as we developed the game. We had to be very pragmatic because of time constraints. I expect if we'd had longer we could have improved realism without compromising playability.

@joule I, personally, take full responsibility for the state of the UI. I am still very glad you enjoyed playing it!
hgcummings
02. May 2020 · 15:26 UTC
This was very satisfying and absorbing to play: spawning volcanoes/meteors and watching the fledgling population slowly spread out across the globe. I really like how you managed to make the topology important and a key part of the gameplay: volcanos providing more land, and population being slow to grow past mountain ranges, etc.. The graphics are really impressive and the music is very well-chosen.

It feels like not quite a whole _game_ yet, more of an enjoyable interactive simulation. But all the gameplay components that are present work really well, and it wouldn't need much more (maybe a couple of extra tools and some kind of objectives or challenge/conflict) to make it into a really compelling game.
NoNumbersGames
11. May 2020 · 21:39 UTC
A very interesting game with clear and impactful mechanics and nice visual feedback. Was fun balancing the temperature and landscaping the planet, looking at the different overlays and seeing how my decisions affected the planet and its inhabitants.

Switching between overlays provided different perspectives and experiences - near the end of the game I was trying to make sure all planet was nice and cool, but only when I switched to population did I realize that some of my attempts to cool a volcano have ended up making part of the continent non-habitable, and thus separating a fraction of the population to live as an isolated society.

Overall, was fun and engaging, everything working smoothly.