Play the game here

At the time of writing this, the game still has only 5 ratings. I'd really appreciate it if you rated it :heart:

Summary

Populous is my first Ludum Dare entry, and also my first ever game. It is a card game where you manage population growth and CO2. Population and CO2 gradually go up, while food goes down. Use your cards to lower CO2 and increase your food supply.

The Idea

This theme was my least favourite of all of them. At first, I thought of a game where you carry things, but I didn't feel safe coding a physics game, especially because the engine I used was also pretty unknown to me.

I then thought of a resource managing game, which sounded pretty stupid. Then of a diamond production card game, which didn't really fit the theme. But then: I had it.

Combining the resource managing from my second idea and the cards from my third idea, I came up with "Populous"!

Day 1

Since I live in Europe, the compo started for me at 3 AM in the morning. So I slept (maybe a bit too long), had breakfast, and then started coding.

It went pretty smooth at first, creating the GUI, planet, people, resources, infobox, etc, but then I had to code the cards.

I have never coded a card game before, let alone getting a game balanced. But I did know how to JSON, so I created a JSON file to store all my cards in, which could be loaded at launch. This required a few overhauls to accomplish (I admit, my order of coding things wasn't prioritised correctly) but then I had cards.

A few overhauls later, they actually did something, and so I went back to sleep.

Day 2

With the mechanics pretty much done, I felt confident that I'd finish it. And so... I decided to do some polishing instead of adding more cards. Specifically, making the people jump around the planet.

But after that distraction, I wrote some cards. But then I realised that the game was pretty easy now. There was a point where you could just click on "Finish" indefinitely and your food and population would just rise on its own.

But I had to celebrate Sinterklaas (Dutch Christmas) with my family, so I was going to continue in the evening.

Back at my desk, I realised: "Wait... CO2 still does nothing". So I coded in that CO2 gives a penalty to population growth and food production, and all was well (well, not for the people on lil' Earth).

Finally, I added some sounds, music, and published it a few hours early, because I had to wake up early the next day.