When I saw the various theme options during the voting rounds, I was inspired to make a game about the Mariana Trench, and I was really happy when a most fitting theme was chosen. For those who don't know, the Mariana Trench contains the deepest known point in the ocean—Challenger Deep—located 11 km underwater. This point was popularized when film director James Cameron completed the first solo dive to it in the Deepsea Challenger submarine.

Many years ago, I saw a picture that visualized the trench’s depth. It was more effective back then, since computer resolutions were much lower, so it took some time to scroll down. My goal was to capture some of that feeling in the game.

I wanted the game to be somewhat realistic, so I started by determining the pixel-to-meter ratio. I used 640x360 resolution, and the Deepsea Challenger submarine is 7.3 meters long, so I chose 8 pixels per meter because I liked the resulting length of 58 pixels for the submarine. This also defined the play area, as I knew the ocean would be 11,000 * 8 pixels deep.

The speed of the submarine was derived from this scale. The Deepsea Challenger took 2 hours and 37 minutes to reach the seafloor, so I adjusted the in-game speed to make the descent take about 2 minutes and 37 seconds. Other things were also determined by this scale—like the pelagic zones (how much light penetrates at different depths) and the oceanic basin (the slope of the ocean floor).

The UI and the color of the submarine were also inspired by the Deepsea Challenger. I did choose to forgo realism for the sake of gameplay. The fauna you encounter appear at the correct depths, and the whales are to scale, but the other fish are much larger so you can actually see them.

I was blown away by the positivity here. I received a lot of feedback—both positive and constructive. I was really concerned when I saw the post about Ludum Dare possibly not happening when I first wanted to join, and I’m happy to support Mike on Patreon because this has been such a great experience for me. I hope it keeps going.

You're welcome to try The Trench

Finding sperm whales (one of the deepest diving mammals) in the midnight zone

For the longest time, I wanted to develop a supply-chain city builder, similar to the Settlers or Anno game. I was pretty excited when I saw the theme suggestions, as several of them seemed to fit nicely (connections, combine, etc.).

With the Collector theme, rather than going with the obvious path of collecting resources, I actually had the idea for a game where you don’t build the city directly, but instead influence it through various taxes. Tariffs encourage more producers of imported goods to come to the city, while property tax discourages land-intensive buildings such as farms.

At the end of the first day, I let my partner play it:

“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.”

The game used to let you set tariffs and income tax with sliders and then click Go — at that point, the village does its thing: producing and importing goods, converting resources, and satisfying the people’s needs for food, drink, and clothing.

“It doesn’t really feel like a game.”

There was a ton of information on screen — the price of goods including taxes both internally and on the market, the money each person has, and the market demand for various goods, etc.

“It’s not fun.”

I had created a game you needed to play with a spreadsheet. I needed to pivot.

Instead of doubling down on the simulation aspect, I focused on the immediate tax-collection — you run around collecting taxes generated by trade. I like the end result — it accidentally became a satire as you siphon money from other people’s hard work, and you do need to make some considerations about how to tax and upgrade to reach the 2,500 goal.

You can try it here.