You are the king of the glorious island of Sinktopia. Unfortunately for you, your kingdom is sinking. Every day, you have to order your citizens to shore up parts of the island and build villages in order to slow down your inevitable demise. You'll have to think fast though, seeing as every day on Sinktopia only lasts for 10 seconds.
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How to play:
The game is controlled with the mouse only.
You left-click on a tile to start a construction project. You can only start a certain amount of construction projects each day. If you click on a FOREST or FIELD tile it will be turned into a VILLAGE the next day. If you click on a SWAMP tile it will be turned into a FIELD the next day.
The island consists of different kinds of terrain, each with their own properties:
-WATER and OCEAN tiles are bad. They can cause neighboring tiles to flood.
-VILLAGES give you more actions. They can be built on FIELDS and FORESTS only. However, villages will destroy the surrounding environment. A VILLAGE will starve and turn into SAND if there are less than 5 FIELDS and/or FORESTS within 2 squares of it.
-FIELD tiles will flood and turn into SWAMPS if there are three or more WATER or OCEAN tiles adjacent to it, they will also dry out and turn into SAND if there are more than two VILLAGES within 2 sqares of it. If there are three or more FORESTS next to a FIELD tile it will turn into a FOREST.
-FOREST tiles are more resistent against flooding and will only flood if there are four or more WATER or OCEAN tiles adjacent to it. FOREST tiles will be chopped down and turned into FIELDS if they are adjacent to a VILLAGE or if they have 2 or more VILLAGES within 2 squares of it.
-SWAMP tiles can be shored up and turned into FIELDS. They will flood and turn into WATER tiles if there are three or more WATER or OCEAN tiles adjacent to it.
-SAND tiles will flood and turn into WATER tiles if there are three or more WATER or OCEAN tiles adjacent to it. If there are three or more FIELDS and/or FORESTS next to a SAND tile it will turn into a FIELD.
Every day, you will earn 1 point for each unflooded tile and 5 point for each VILLAGE that you have.
The game is over when every tile has flooded and turned into a WATER or OCEAN tile.
TL;DR: Yeah, the instructions are a bit long, sorry about that. The gist of it is this: Your island will flood, click on swamps to shore them up and slow the flooding or click on fields and forests to build villages. Villages give you more actions and points each turn. Build too many villages too close together and they will starve. The game is over when everything's flooded.
By the way, my own personal high score is 3477 points over 42 days. See if you can beat it.
Awesome little game! Makes me want to play Fire Emblem. :) Interesting cellular automata mechanics, and a strong ecological message in there too. Thumbs up all-round!
I got a score of 1415 over 14 days. I used as many actions as I received, so I ended up going into explosive growth and turning the whole island into sand. I like the idea of a turn-based building game that has time pressure.
This is pretty complex for such a short development time, it's fun to try to keep track of everything on the island with the time quickly running out. I think my problem was that I built villages too close to the forests but I made it to day 18 and had 1458 points.
Really cool concept. It was fun to play, but I never felt like I had any control over gameplay. It didn't really seem to matter what I did, and instead, felt more important to use my actions before the ten seconds were up. With a little balancing, this game has a lot of potential.
Will comment here so i can can find it later, if i get my hands on a computer with windows! Looks and sounds really neat. Also saw your blog post (a screenshot) about it on the front page during the jam, and i've kinda been looking for it :)
21 days - 1904 points is the best I could do. I found it a bit short (because I was no good) though ; offering different sizes of island or slightly-altered game mechanics would enable everyone to enjoy it a bit longer. That being said, I loved every second of it (yes, even the unstoppable flood of the last squares of sand I got was kinda fun to watch). Also, great use of cellular automata! The closer I got to a game with them was cave generation ; it is nice to see them used in a different and interesting way.
The game crashes whenever I try to play it unfortunately. It's a shame because this sounds like a really innovative game which looks good as well. All I could think looking at the description and screenshots was Wetrix for the N64.
Really, really cool game. I like what you made of the game of life. The only that irritated me while playing was the camera movement, it's annoying. And some sound and music would be great.
I love this one. Very clever mechanics, well thought out. Only when you run out of villages, you just sit there and wait till it's over. The graphics are amazing. Thanks for making it!
I love this one. Very clever mechanics, well thought out. Only when you run out of villages, you just sit there and wait till it's over. The graphics are amazing. Thanks for making it!
It was cool. I very like games with onnovative rules. I know that the theme was "10 seconds" but you must make game into turn-based. It have some Life mechanics but it's only positive. May be it need some improvements because always my island turn into sand island and few last turns I just wait until the island in sink. Good game! PS: I have x64 Win7 but it's run perfect.
very impressive engine, but the 10 sec thing only hurts it. also it would be nice to have control over camera. never expected to see this level of terraforming in an LD game.
X
X-0r1 Sep 2013, 18:55
Just... wow! This game is one of the best I've ever seen in a LD! Cellular automata for the win. My best was 30 days, 2219 score.
I actually "precalculated" a strategy in order to actually beat the game and continue playing it as long as I wanted. Still, I never managed to actually use that strategy, since I don't have enough moves to apply the needed changes...
V... Village S... Swamp F... Forest f... Field 0... any supply (Forest/Field) ?... any non-village (Forest/Field/Swamp/Sand/Water) ~... Water
That way, you have 4 actions (4 villages), and each turn, you can fill up 4 swamps, and 4 new swamps will be created, which can be filled next turn until infinity =)
X-0r: Yep, that looks like it should work. It'll be very tricky to pull off, but it should work. Also: you just put more thought into this game than I ever did, so congratulations with that.
This is really hard, but fun. I just wish there was a way to plant forests, as they would be the only thing to stop the flood. But this inevitability of defeat just gives it a much more intense atmosphere. Also was this supposed to tech us something about environmental protection? ^^
Klianc09: Nope, I didn't actually realize that the game had environmentalist undertones until way after I'd submitted it. I just needed some way to balance out the power of building villages. Destroying the environment seemed like the way to do it.
I really love the idea! I don't think I understood very well how make optimize my score but I think you could go further on this game and get an awesome little god game!
Thanks for your comment on my game! To answer your implicit question: The game considers you to be in a dark area when you touch a dark area with any blue part. If you are in a dark area, your shield (the white circle around you) will start to be used up, and if you continue to touch the dark area, once the shield is used up the game is over. Now on to your game!
It's quite cool, I like it - although the feedback could be a bit clearer. It's probably quite easy for you to figure out what will happen, but for those reading the rules it isn't, so maybe mouse-over help and arrows where the ocean will move would've helped a lot.
Apart from that though I enjoyed playing it. I really like the colorful graphics.
I'm wondering a bit why there's no music and sound? Being a jam entry, you have plenty of resources for those, like Open Game Art, Incompetech, Freesound.org and the Newgrounds Audio Portal - it's fairly easy to find, and makes any game feel MUCH better.
Comments33
I enjoyed playing this little game a lot! :)
Looks and sounds really neat. Also saw your blog post (a screenshot) about it on the front page during the jam, and i've kinda been looking for it :)
That being said, I loved every second of it (yes, even the unstoppable flood of the last squares of sand I got was kinda fun to watch).
Also, great use of cellular automata! The closer I got to a game with them was cave generation ; it is nice to see them used in a different and interesting way.
The only that irritated me while playing was the camera movement, it's annoying. And some sound and music would be great.
My score was 1900 over 23 days.
PS: I have x64 Win7 but it's run perfect.
This game is one of the best I've ever seen in a LD!
Cellular automata for the win. My best was 30 days, 2219 score.
I actually "precalculated" a strategy in order to actually beat the game and continue playing it as long as I wanted. Still, I never managed to actually use that strategy, since I don't have enough moves to apply the needed changes...
V... Village
S... Swamp
F... Forest
f... Field
0... any supply (Forest/Field)
?... any non-village (Forest/Field/Swamp/Sand/Water)
~... Water
~~~~~~~~
~VfFFSV~
~S0000f~
~F0??0F~
~F0??0F~
~f0000S~
~VSFFfV~
~~~~~~~~
That way, you have 4 actions (4 villages), and each turn, you can fill up 4 swamps, and 4 new swamps will be created, which can be filled next turn until infinity =)
That should work... right?
Also was this supposed to tech us something about environmental protection? ^^
It's quite cool, I like it - although the feedback could be a bit clearer. It's probably quite easy for you to figure out what will happen, but for those reading the rules it isn't, so maybe mouse-over help and arrows where the ocean will move would've helped a lot.
Apart from that though I enjoyed playing it. I really like the colorful graphics.
I'm wondering a bit why there's no music and sound? Being a jam entry, you have plenty of resources for those, like Open Game Art, Incompetech, Freesound.org and the Newgrounds Audio Portal - it's fairly easy to find, and makes any game feel MUCH better.