Force of Nature by RedZ0ner
We completely misjudged the amount of time making this game was gonna take. We used an engine we never used before (Phaser 3) and didn't think out the features at the start. So with only a few hours to go the project looked more like a simulation instead of a game. In the last few hours, we hastily tried to put as many “Gameplay features” into it as possible. So a little sad about the fact that we haven't had any time to playtest, balance and polish, but still proud of the effort! We present you Force of nature. Time to wipe out humanity, like humanity wiped you out!
Controls
- Use the arrow keys to scroll the viewed area
- Drag cards onto overgrown tiles to build special plants
- Click on the loudspeaker to turn of music
Mechanics
You wipe out the humans by overgrowing sector by sector. The more a sector is overgrown the fewer humans it can support. To help you do this you have three plants that cost different amounts of "Growth Power", displayed top left, that you earn by taking over tiles.
- Cross Block Plant (free): Allows plant growth to spread to neighbouring sectors
- Slowdown Plant (1O GP): Slows down the movement of all humans in this sector. This effect stacks.
- Nature Fort (20 GP): A very sturdy tree that's not easily felled. Ideal to keep humans busy or protect your Slowdown's.
Once your spread reaches the threshold in the panic bar on the right the remaining humans will panic and start crossing sector boundaries. There are multiple ways to deal with this wave, either build large defences, or try to quickly expand in the now quieter territories to starve the humans.
| Youtube | https://redz-games.itch.io/force-of-nature |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/force-of-nature |
Ratings
| Overall | 784th | 3.211⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 662th | 3.139⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 318th | 3.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 662th | 3.184⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 819th | 3.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 560th | 2.912⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 728th | 3.132⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
Some sort of plant that earned you additional growth power, either with a large initial investment, or with an accompanying penalty such as weakening the other plants in the same sector (or making humans faster, or whatever) would be helpful.
Edit: Also, I read on here about how spamming cross plants was an effective strategy, tried it, and was completely unable to proceed beyond the first tile; any cross plants I put down outsite the start tile were destroyed in far less time than it took me to drag-and-drop them. Really it seems like you need to establish a foothold with fortress trees and slowdowns before you have a chance of your cross plants suriving the way of 10 angry humans that immediately descend.
Also also, I sometimes found my tiles to be under attack even in blocks that had no humans left (and before the panic meter recached a point where the humans can migrate).
This was a really neat idea, I'm sad you guys didn't get further than the base engine. It has some interesting things going on, I wasn't able to get past about 25% of the city, at which point they started chewing away at me faster than I could do anything about.
Really neat idea, great to see other city-builder style games!