Desert Tiles

by wubbl
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.39
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.96
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.18
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.59
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.94
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.22
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.38
Reforest the barren wasteland!

Grow grass, trees and other plants to reclaim the desert and combat climate change. On the way you have to beat fires and infestations putting in danger all your effort.

You win if the Carbon Dioxide is lowered enough and your forest is big enough before the time runs out and the runaway greenhouse effect makes the area uninhabitable.



Controlls:
- Scroll and Right click to look around
- Left Click for everything else
- You have to hold down the ⏩ Button to speed up time

External Assets used:
- Title Font: https://www.dafont.com/de/arco.font
- Music generated with: Bosca ceoil

While we were a relatively big group (8 People), our experience in developing games and time planning itself was quite lacking. We noticed far too late the difficulty to create a fully working hex grid.

Special thanks to MatthiasF (Artstation) for doing the comic art.

Changelog v1.1 (10.10.2019)
- Finally found the problem for invisible vegetation in the late game
- Major Balancing Update

screenshot

Comments36

Darknesslayer7 Oct 2019, 23:07
Decent concept, however graphics could improve. Loved playing it!
Darkmax147 Oct 2019, 23:11
Can't seem to run it properly on my laptop. I get a white screen with UI in game and can't do anything excpet look at the buttons and the CO2 meter. Love the intro and the music though.
Drums
Drums7 Oct 2019, 23:14
What was with the story! I don't want to cry today!

That being said, I can tell a lot of work was put into this game. Lots of coding and design, and feels polished. Good job. I don't believe there was a way to exit though?
Wubblauthor7 Oct 2019, 23:21
We reuploaded the game a few minutes after the first release because we had an build error. That should fix the white screen problem.

The game can be exited over the pause button in the top left.
Wubblauthor7 Oct 2019, 23:32
We are still working some open issues:
- ~~The chance to drop saplings is too low for trees.~~ Fixed
- Sometimes most of the vegetation vanishes in the late game
- ~~Seed and Sapling count in the toolbar is unreadable if > 9~~ Fixed
Starblast8 Oct 2019, 00:27
I came here for the jams, not the feels.
Still, this is my kind of game, I love indirect environment manipulation
ItsNotAGoodTime8 Oct 2019, 10:18
The intro... give me more!

The contrast between the intro and the game was quite surprising but I had fun doing my part for the planet and planting trees. For a long while I was rapidly clicking the fast forward button not realizing that it's actually better to hold it, fml. My trees sorta just caught on fire and bugs rekt my stuff but before I closed the game I had to go back and watch the intro again.

10/10 would play intro again
mimusangel
mimusangel8 Oct 2019, 10:30
By dint of playing and putting plants, the game showed me more plants, some came back but it went after, it's really a shame that I a little spoil the game experience. Otherwise nice game!
RAFFE
RAFFE8 Oct 2019, 13:21
Hey! This was an epic game for sure! The story at the beginning.. it was super sad and honestly made me feel sad ;_; Very good job on that. Otherwise the graphic design was a bit lacking, but it definetely did not stop me from spamming the trees and plants hard AF, which was a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure I didn't save the world or fully get the idea behind the game, but I had fun! Which is the most important thing for me. At some point the plants just disappeared though, which I don't know if it was intentional. But other than that a really symphatic and cool game done in the 72 hours, lots of work behind this! Good job guys!
gasgiant
gasgiant8 Oct 2019, 14:05
At first I did't noticed the seeds on the plants at stared at them like an idiot. But when I figured it out, it turned out to be a cool game!
NachtWitch8 Oct 2019, 17:21
Really cool game you made, definitely a must play post jam
kessutinnu
kessutinnu8 Oct 2019, 17:41
The game idea was cool and the art style looks very pleasant.
I did notice a few things that bothered me.
* If something happens to plants that you only have one of before they give you seeds, you are pretty much doomed. It would be good to have some possibility to put out the fire or remove bugs at the start of the game at least.
* The fast forward button wasn't intuitive, I expected to click rather than hold.
* The game field was too large, I would rather have slightly faster game on a smaller field, which would make fires and bugs a bigger threat

Overall, good job!
a333
a3338 Oct 2019, 18:14
Great relaxing entry. Plants management was quite interesting. Waiting and watching them grow was surprisingly engaging thing to do.

I also encountered a problem when the plants disappeared, and maybe because of that, of maybe because my single pine tree refused to give the seeds till the end, I wasn't able to win.
Guardaro
Guardaro8 Oct 2019, 19:47
The intro, I thought, was very thoughtful.
simXple
simXple8 Oct 2019, 21:22
Great intro! The game wasn't really my type of game, but hast a chill vibe to it (also great music) :D
SaltFactory Studio
SaltFactory Studio8 Oct 2019, 21:34
Didn't expect that dark turn in the beginning, props to everyone who create the introduction. When I first got into game, I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information each plant had. However, when I got into the game more, I started to appreciate the depth of the plant management system. Maybe providing players with an interactive tutorial would help lessen the initial overload of things to take in.

Great game and especially great intro!
Euler Moises
Euler Moises9 Oct 2019, 13:47
A very interesting game. Not my kind of game, but it made me very focused. I think it's because I really want to do something for the planet.
I really liked the handmade drawings, but they contrasted with the art of the game. Leaving a uniformity in art makes it more uniform. Calm music helps in concentration. Congratulate your sound designer for me. This is one of the games that I will save here on the PC to reach the end.

Congratulations!

This is our LD game:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/soundscapes
ryzy27
ryzy279 Oct 2019, 16:25
I got into it, but after some time my trees started disappearing. I think it might me the limit of rendered items on canvas.

Almost did it, but with invisible trees :D
PashaShef9 Oct 2019, 17:02
Good one here. Even though there were a couple of bugs (faced that vanishing myself), i am myself into that kind of meditative gameplay. Also noted that it was actually taking my system's language and displayed months in it (Belarusan in my case :)).
Maybe i missed it, but didn't see any effects of lightnings and deseases. I think dding those would've improved the gameplay
Hendri9 Oct 2019, 19:27
A nice relaxing game. It needs bit of thinking, but not crazily.
Gargoyle-g9 Oct 2019, 19:51
@pashashef Thanks. The lightning and disease do have special effects, but sadly they don't always work.
Gargoyle-g9 Oct 2019, 20:07
@kessutinnu Thank you for the tips. We did notice the problem with trees dying early too.

Considering the game size, that's something we didn't even consider. Could definitely make thinking about placement more important.
Wubblauthor9 Oct 2019, 22:34

Hello Testers =)


Thanks for all the great comments about our game.
1. Finally we found the reason why the vegetation and other sprites disappeard in the middle of the game.
(The problem was the "Chunks" Rendering Mode of the Unity Tilemaps and we searched bugs in our code for nothing.)
2. Additionally we tweaked the balancing for our vegetation to make the game more enjoyable :)
ELBIDEV10 Oct 2019, 14:38
A nice chill game enjoyed playing it
Yomissmar
Yomissmar10 Oct 2019, 17:15
There are better ways to obtain water than making people cry :( omg that intro. Seriously, really nice concept, love the message and it was relaxing to play. I just have some issues with the button, wasn't sure if it was working since it made no feedback. I had to search in the comment section and found that you need to hold it, so I could play and enjoy it but it wasn't very intuitive. Cute entry!
TheOpenFlare10 Oct 2019, 23:47
This is actually a pretty neat game, it has a strategy that you have to learn and everything... even though I didn't know what I was doing. oh and one more thing, what was with that intro though? That was a big pill to swallow man. A really great job nonetheless!
Gargoyle-g11 Oct 2019, 13:25
@yomissmar Thank yo for the nice comment. Yeah, we didn't really test the game enough before releasing, but I'll write the bit amout holding down the button in the main post above.
wataru12 Oct 2019, 02:21
Love the concept and the soothing game play. Great job!
Gargoyle-g12 Oct 2019, 15:19
@euler-moises You wrote you were gonna save the game and beat it later. Maybe you want to try our updated version which is a little easier and also the trees don't vanish in the late game.
SvenErik
SvenErik13 Oct 2019, 18:50
Lovely idea and well done game, would love to see this one get worked on more~
wheybags
wheybags13 Oct 2019, 19:25
Nice game, one of the few that kept us playing for more than a few minutes, trying to beat each others scores. Pretty hard though, neither of us could win (we got to the second last segment).
Spoilers perhaps, but is there an optimal strategy? I tried 5 long lines of trees each with a cactus connected, but it didn't seem to be enough.
GrimaceOverload15 Oct 2019, 14:55
Nice game. You got a lot done for the time given!
DDRKirbyISQ
DDRKirbyISQ24 Oct 2019, 06:26
Kind of had a peaceful simcity-like feel to it, which was fun! Unfortunately it shares a similar issue to simcity in that once you get going late in the game there is a ton of busywork (I guess pretty much mirroring what it would be like to actually plant these trees in real life, phew!). Would have loved some quality of life features so it wasn't a mind-numbing experience of just constantly collecting seeds and planting trees, but nevertheless, good job.

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