Gaia by Rodrigo Denúbila

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



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🗨️ |
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 !
👍 awesome concept and execution!
@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.
It felt quite weird killing all those humans though ^^
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.
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.
@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.
Fish happens!
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.
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!
As for improvements, I'd love if the game was slowed down a bit. It gets hectic pretty quickly. Good job overall!
And you'd have to keep the humans alive as well, to some extent?
Otherwise, felt nice and new, great stuff!
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):

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! ;)