Nature's Villain

by bach
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.75
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.31
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.83
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.22
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.31
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.31
Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.85
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.33
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★47%
Controls

Select Units with LMB, click on tile/enemy/base to attack/move.
Enter: Finish your turn.

Requirements

You need Java to run this. On windows simply double clicking the jar should do. On linux/mac you can run it via CLI (java -jar NaturesVillain.jar).

HTML5 port is coming tomorrow/tonight!

Goal of the game

Your goal is the beat Nature by means of killing all their units or by capturing their bases. Alternatively, you also have the option to "bleed" your enemy out by capturing bases and defending them. If you capture an enemy base (the little wells/oasis in the forests), you receive an extra unit.

The first party to reach 0, or lose all units, loses the game.

The game is turn-based. That means you move all your units, finish your turn (press Enter), wait for the enemy's move and then it's back to you.

If you get stuck, try a few different strategies. The game should be relatively easy to beat.

Theme
*
Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to fully develop the theme. But the basic idea is, that we as humans are Nature's Villain. So because of all the damage we do to our planet.. the planet is fighting back :)

I wanted to work this out a bit more, by making the player taint the map by moving around and taking over bases.

Keep earth green.

Created with

Code: Libgdx
Music: Reaper
Sfx: bfxr
Pixels: GIMP
A*: Adapted from (http://www.cokeandcode.com/index.html?page=tutorials/tilemap2)

Comments28

arkeus
arkeus17 Dec 2012, 04:48
Love the graphics.
Manuel777
Manuel77717 Dec 2012, 05:16
I have no idea how to play this.. I get stuck all the time =/
bach
bachauthor17 Dec 2012, 05:50
Hey Manuel777 - when you say you get "stuck".. Do you mean you can't beat the level or some sort of bug?

Anything in particular you are confused about? :/ Would love to help & provide better description if needed.
Manuel777
Manuel77717 Dec 2012, 06:30
Oohhh, you had to press ENTER! (it wasnt specified on the description before) :D
Thats a lot better, stage 2 gets quite difficult!
dcolgan17 Dec 2012, 13:57
Neat and an ambitious idea. Really nice tile graphics. The game did freeze on me on the second level, and there isn't much strategy yet, but an excellent 48 hour product. Good job!
headchant
headchant17 Dec 2012, 16:52
Nice graphics I really like it. Why can't the units go past other units of the same side?
bach
bachauthor17 Dec 2012, 18:37
headchant, that's an excellent point. Didn't even cross my mind to allow that. Thanks for checking it out!
Wuhao
Wuhao18 Dec 2012, 02:42
pretty good audio
otus18 Dec 2012, 19:37
Awesome game.
Great graphics, great gameplay, great everything.

Bravo!
Kickerua
Kickerua19 Dec 2012, 18:54
Thank you for web version.
CappaGames19 Dec 2012, 19:02
Amazing entry. Love the graphics and I'm amazed you were able to make an advanced war style game in such a short amount of time. Good job.
(Fyi I ran into a bit of a bug on the second level after my first turn where the cpu does nothing and the game can't progress)
Atomic20 Dec 2012, 02:15
Froze twice and gave victory to nature while I still had 3 soldiers, then I gave up.. It's got nice graphics and could become a nice game after the bugs are crushed (pun intended) ;)
bach
bachauthor20 Dec 2012, 04:11
@Atomic: I'm sorry that it didn't work well for you :( I know there's a freezing bug which I couldn't crush in time. The 3 soldiers still left.. Are you sure you just didn't run out of Victory Points? There are 2 losing conditions, no units & no Victory Points. You don't have an endless amount of time.

Cheers to everyone for checking it out! Much appreciated.
bitwise-constructs20 Dec 2012, 06:24
I really liked the game but the second levels seems to demote strategy. Also, the AI got stuck after I tried to redo the level. Great game, though! Loved the art.
vrav
vrav20 Dec 2012, 06:31
Despite the difficulty, I love it. Hard is good. Nice game overall, good work!
Cthulhu
Cthulhu20 Dec 2012, 16:47
The HTML5 version is not working on Firefox/Ubuntu. But I think it is a libgdx issue because I've never been able to make my libgdx games work on firefox/ubuntu.
Dir3kt
Dir3kt20 Dec 2012, 20:43
Wow one of the nicest entry I tried so far. Thanks :)
char68
char6821 Dec 2012, 02:11
I really liked the premise of the game, and the tactics style gameplay was great too. The only issue I had was that it took a couple tries to beat level 2 because it seems like enemies would repeatedly block the bridge until I ran out of time (although I'm sure that would be something that's easily fixable).
Falkreon24 Dec 2012, 04:02
The strict time limit and frequent choke points discourage strategy, favoring an all-out suicidal rush instead. It takes many tries to get through the later levels, making it even more likely the AI will stall. About the stalling: You know you're allowed to fix game-freezing bugs after the deadline, right?
Zathalos26 Dec 2012, 00:16
I love the simple turn based strategy.
beeglebug
beeglebug26 Dec 2012, 14:43
Nice game, couldnt work out why my points kept going down though?
krutech26 Dec 2012, 15:52
Cool game.
Houly
Houly28 Dec 2012, 00:17
Oh man, this looks really great. Very polished graphics and I love turn based games so this is really great!
impulse929 Dec 2012, 23:59
Great game, very fun! :) Easy one of my favorites.
AdventureIslands
AdventureIslands3 Jan 2013, 22:18
Really nice graphics and audio, but I couldn't get past the second level though, the points kept running out. Guess the strategy to fool enemies to come one at the time at you is out of window.
KevinWorkman
KevinWorkman5 Jan 2013, 17:50
This was a really great entry. Simple and to the point, and everything worked great. It would have been nice to have more control over how my units attacked (for example being able to choose which square I attack from instead of it choosing one for me automatically), and I apparently died for no reason on level 2 (it just said I lost, but I had all my guys and none of my bases were captured), but overall this is a great game and could definitely become something more.

By the way, if you're looking for a better host than dropbox, you might check out the free Java hosting I offer at http://StaticVoidGames.com. I'd love to see this game there! Either way, nice work!
sletari7 Jan 2013, 19:16
Nice, it remembered me of Master of Magic =)

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