Gaia by Rodrigo Denúbila

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

Header_GJ.png

You are Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life

The balance between nature and human beings is very delicate. Your goal is to make them coexist, even if you have to make some sacrifices.

Sreenshots

2020-04-20<em>11h18</em>11.png

2020-04-20<em>11h27</em>05.png

2020-04-20<em>11h16</em>47.png

Timelapse

https://youtu.be/idV-YuxNB6A

Play the game in your browser

Ratings

Overall 338th 3.9⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Fun 402th 3.758⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 352th 3.767⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Theme 251th 4.158⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 710th 3.967⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Audio 392th 3.767⭐ 62🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1316th 2.763⭐ 59🧑‍⚖️
Mood 933th 3.543⭐ 60🧑‍⚖️
Given 38🗳️ 53🗨️

Feedback

Millhow
20. Apr 2020 · 15:04 UTC
Hello !

Your game is really polished and well done !
Graphics are nice, it's smooth, sound effect are good
Gameplay is intuitive and we always want to see the next age, what are the next objective, etc

Great job !
Maqo12
20. Apr 2020 · 15:05 UTC
The theme should be "Keep it Healthy", anyway nice game and nice graphics.
bjornkri
20. Apr 2020 · 15:07 UTC
One of my favorites so far! Really fun, hope you'll continue growing this after the jam
David Bohan
20. Apr 2020 · 15:27 UTC
Really awesome. Great game idea! If there was a bit more variety, this would be an excellent AAA Casual game!
jonah
20. Apr 2020 · 15:51 UTC
super well done!

👍 awesome concept and execution!
Unbugged
20. Apr 2020 · 17:35 UTC
Great job! Absolutely awesome. ~~The only thing I was missing was some light background music. This game screams for it.~~ Must have been some glitch in my browser. There is music!
🎤 Rodrigo Denúbila
21. Apr 2020 · 18:04 UTC
@millhow @maqo12 @bjornkri @jonah @unbugged thanks a lot for your comments. I glad you guys liked.
@unbugged actually when you played at first time the game didn't had background music yet, I added it before the jam time end yestarday.
LarsDu
22. Apr 2020 · 00:07 UTC
Awesome interpretation of the concept. Think this is my favorite so far.
jerripo
22. Apr 2020 · 00:09 UTC
Very fun and hectic. Beautiful graphics and smooth gameplay. The audio is the right amount of chill and up-beatness. Great game!!
SarahFrisk
22. Apr 2020 · 00:25 UTC
Game was well done, I have fun trying to race against humans to keep the earth alive. Well done!
Feh
22. Apr 2020 · 00:49 UTC
Very nice! Modern Age was really difficult and I missed saves according to ages so the player dont start from the beginning! Overall, it was really good! Loved the quests, graphics and sounds!
SynysterCola
22. Apr 2020 · 01:43 UTC
Wow this was harder than I thought. I had a lot of fun playing this game and the graphics are really good. Thanks!
lvl76blastoise
22. Apr 2020 · 01:55 UTC
Awesome game! It's really hard! I'm arm is sore from moving my mouse and clicking so much! :)
Jupiter_Hadley
22. Apr 2020 · 13:04 UTC
Good game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/YzvpDVUnHwU
Mathias Van Hooreweghe
22. Apr 2020 · 14:09 UTC
Lovely game, excellent graphics and good soundtrack. Well done :)
Eckkert
22. Apr 2020 · 18:14 UTC
Our sister game! Yes, one of our team members noticed your game right at the start. Our games turned out very different in the end!
Hornicar
22. Apr 2020 · 21:27 UTC
This was very nice and polished! The controll were smooth, and more impressive, there were no need of a tutorial or explanations! You could actually play the game right on and understand what to do directly!
It felt quite weird killing all those humans though ^^
Iasper
22. Apr 2020 · 22:59 UTC
Very nice concept and execution. The graphics were fitting and the music was nice. However, I found the earth rotation to be slightly too sensitive to the mouse, making it hard to navigate. Additionally, the meteors destroyed much more land than what was actually on top of it, not just causing the graphical quirk of floating houses, but also making the Modern Age significantly harder because of meteors missing while they should have hit and the associated timer. Very cool concept over, congrats!
fabula_rasa
22. Apr 2020 · 22:59 UTC
Excellent! Nice, if simple, graphics, pleasant music and quite an engaging gameplay. It sort of sneaks up on you - I didn't expect to be drawn in so much :). Great work overall!
NoobException
22. Apr 2020 · 23:05 UTC
Great calming game!

It reminded me of Spore :)

Everything about this game is so cool, the only thing I was struggling with was modern times when humans literally were faster than me :sweat_smile:

We're a plague to this planet, but nevertheless your game is awesome.
Meo-benderson
22. Apr 2020 · 23:09 UTC
Music was chill, graphics were chill, being nature was chill. But dealing with humans was very not chill! :)
Leetchi_Heda
22. Apr 2020 · 23:30 UTC
nice chill game dude ! a lot of details going on, i assume it would have been a lot of work, the idea is great and right in the middle of the theme, the objectives are nice and balanced. Good job here!
Rednaxelus
22. Apr 2020 · 23:55 UTC
it was really fun using the disasters and even seeing the terraforming through the meteorite
kjscott
23. Apr 2020 · 06:56 UTC
Was finally able to play the game!

I did notice at a few times it did look like I should have been able to place something down but the cursor suggested nothing could as the UI didn't pop up, so it was sometimes hard to judge where to click (especially when trying to frantically save everything) that it felt a little disruptive to the gameplay.

The latter parts of the game it was so hard to keep up, nearly all the time the fish of the sea where almost completely extinct and there was nothing I could do about it. I enjoyed the game and I could definitely see it having an appeal as a way of supporting the message it was focusing on.
🎤 Rodrigo Denúbila
23. Apr 2020 · 12:54 UTC
Hi @larsdu @sarahfrisk @feh @synystercola @lvl76blastoise @mathias-van-hooreweghe @eckkert @hornicar @iasper @fabula-rasa @noobexception @meo-benderson @leetchi-heda @rednaxelus @kjscott I'm so glad you liked my game!

@eckkert It's true, the final result is so different, and it's good to have different interpretations and executions on the theme

@hornicar Thanks! Usually I put tutorials on my games, but at this time, I thought that the gameplay is simple and intuitive so I decided to keep without it. Of course, running against time help me to make this decision.

Hi @iasper I agree with you, the earth rotation is too sensitive to the mouse, I would put in an configuration panel, but I couldn't manage this in the jam time. The meteor is another thing I couldn't put as much effort that I want to.

@noobexception Thanks! I think the modern ages need more balance in the game, it's pretty hard! And of course, we, humans, need to do this too. :sweat_smile:

@leetchi-heda thanks! I put a lot of effort here! I also published a timelapse of the creation of this game, take a look.

Hi @kjscott Thanks a lot! I did have to identify where in the earth the player was clicking, and I did this using the UV map, but I think this needs some adjustments to make the click work better. I agree with you that sometimes e hard to click, specially after an meteor. Another thing that really need some adjustments is about the fish extinction. I put humans objects randomly in the world, but as the world has more water than land, there are more object placements there. I had to have worked more on this, but at the and I was too tired to make this.
kjscott
23. Apr 2020 · 13:02 UTC
@rodrigo-denubila, I've found it's often at the edges between water and the darker green where the problem manifests most commonly. You'll see it as the beach kind of land colour. There's where I've encountered the main problem of not registering a click.

Fish happens!
west
23. Apr 2020 · 16:00 UTC
enjoyed the game, took a bit to get used to the sensitivity of the world spin but other than that great job
notapixelstudio
23. Apr 2020 · 16:57 UTC
Nice little touch with our beloved planet Earth - Gaia for the ancients. <3
Cool resource management idea. Unfortunately the gameplay is not really enjoyable since the earth is too small in respect of the cursor and it spin too fast. It's hard to see what's going on on the earth and humans are really the worst.
SFX are a bit too loud but the music is chilling and relaxing.


I just would imagine a more relaxing experience while playing and I found myself trying to save my planet in a big screen but with confusing commands :(
Thank you for your entry. There is a potential here.
tobiasw
23. Apr 2020 · 20:46 UTC
I like the art, music and sound effects, and the gameplay kept me engaged for quite a while. It's cool that the objectives effectively function as a tutorial.

There are two things that I tripped me up:
- When entering the second phase, I briefly had no idea what makes the earth more or less healthy. I'm still not *exactly* sure, but I assume getting rid of lots of humans helps. (I wonder if there is a lesson there :P)
- I had no idea that there was a timer until it ran out.

The controls work pretty well in general. The earth rotates a bit too fast, yes, but I got used to it after a few seconds. What I didn't like so much was that I always had to click twice to place something. I'd have preferred to have a UI where I can select what I want to build, and then every time I click on the planet afterwards I can build it. Even better if pressing e.g. 1-5 would've selected the next thing I do. But that's stuff you only learn after players test the game, and it worked as is too.

All in all, good job!
despdair
25. Apr 2020 · 20:16 UTC
great game. You can extend this game with some more features. How did you managed to release it though, google play says me I will probably wait 7 days to release game
JoaoG
26. Apr 2020 · 05:39 UTC
I enjoyed that. The game is a lot of fun, the sound and the art are good. I spent some time playing and I really loved it! I already knew that we are the ones who harm the health of the Earth, but this is insane! Hahah. Unfortunately it made me reflect a little on the current situation and I believe that maybe I got your message and it went deeper than I thought, I hope things will change after all this. Thank you for that.
WanS24
26. Apr 2020 · 08:16 UTC
Included your game in my list) https://wans24.itch.io/he-needs-healing/devlog/140983/what-ludum-dare-46-did-to-me
Max Louis
26. Apr 2020 · 11:59 UTC
Awesome to play around the globe, a great perspective. Fun, challenging and somewhat panic inducing, this game deserves good ratings all around. I would say, some progression is needed here with what you can and can't use, lots of content in the game, but would be better given to the player slower. We streamed this last night after you submitted it, really nice!
ryannielson
27. Apr 2020 · 12:26 UTC
Neat little game, I'm a sucker for god-games like this. This is pretty challenging. I did manage to crash the web version of the game though when I zoomed in too much though.

As for improvements, I'd love if the game was slowed down a bit. It gets hectic pretty quickly. Good job overall!
firellon
28. Apr 2020 · 17:57 UTC
Hey, would it make sense for humans to only spawn around, not just everywhere?

And you'd have to keep the humans alive as well, to some extent?

Otherwise, felt nice and new, great stuff!
Monish Vyas
05. May 2020 · 16:09 UTC
Thank you game for letting me kill the humans. Felt pretty good playing it. Awesome graphics and music and game aesthetics. Quite good take on the theme. A solid entry.
Amerigo Gazaway
11. May 2020 · 16:20 UTC
This is nice, not big on management-type games but this was relaxing and fun. Also liked that I was saving the planet from greedy humans. Graphics, music and UI work great together. Good job!
LCStark
14. May 2020 · 07:23 UTC
That's a nice and chill game. I wish I found it during the voting round. The art style is great, the UI is clean, the background music is just fantastic.

The game plays really well. I had some trouble during the middle age level, because those humans seem to damage the planet's health faster than I can plant new trees or animals. Eventually, I've managed to reach the modern era, where I encountered a problem - it's really difficult to destroy buildings with the meteor. More often than not, the meteor only destroys the land under and around the buildings, while leaving them intact (and apparently floating on this new lake):
![gaia.png](///raw/3cc/31/z/34296.png)

Also, there seems to be something wrong with the pause button. I've pressed it to pause the game to take a screenshot and switched tabs to start writing this comment. When I returned to the game, I pressed the pause button again to unpause, but then it just displays the "Paused" message. Clicking on `Continue` doesn't resume the game, it just closes the message window.

Overall, it's a wonderful jam entry. If there is one thing I'd change about it, I'd probably made the world a little bit bigger / everything else a bit smaller. Other than that, I love it, I had fun time playing it. Well done! ;)