As you guide humanity through the *Ages of New Earth*, you'll find yourself...
Terraforming Planets
Making Choices
Keeping Things In Balance
...but if your colony loses that balance, you might struggle to keep it alive.
-------------------------------
Controls
- Interact - Mouse
Pro-Tips
- Don't let your resource numbers get too high or low. - Gather cards you want later in the early game. - Develop empty Regolith to make Towns and Cities.
Version History
Apr. 20, 2020 :: *v1.0.0-jam* - Jam release
Apr. 29, 2020 :: *v1.0.1-jam* - Added analytics capturing - Fixed bug causing card select prompt to display too high
I really want to like this game but it is a bit hard to grasp the strategy. Specifically, it seems like you have to play every card so don't really have a choice. Maybe I am missing something?
I do recognize the effort to make a strategy card game for a jam. So pretty awesome to pull this off and I like the look of the cards - pretty slick!
Hi! I loved the 3d cards, they really look great. The rest of the game looks good too, and the music was good as well. I honestly felt a little lost during it, sometimes when making decisions didn't really understand what each choice was, I felt like the game threw too much at me at once. Good work, have a nice day.
Really like the design on the cards! Nice system that itches my management side of the brain. I can't figure out if the positioning of the cards makes any difference? Should it make a difference? Would be nice imo! I think the music is a bit repetitive. Would be nice with some variation in the loop but the choice of instruments is fitting and adds to the mood. Well done! c:
The 3D cards are super cool. It seems like if you misstep only a little bit you pretty quickly get thrown in a positive feedback loop where the resource that is causing you to do poorly can only get worse. It's possible I'm just missing something. Nice job on the look of the game though. It seems like you managed to get a lot done in the short time span.
OMG! I really loved the card 3D effects. Very smooth and engaging! The balance of the game needs work, but that's to be expected in a Jam. I'm really impressed with the "concept to completion." Very nicely done.
This was great. The 3D card effect was really slick and the art & UI overall was very clean and easy to understand. It's also really cool that balance is the key to survival, rather than maximizing your resources. Creates some interesting gameplay situations you wouldn't have otherwise. Well done!
Really really cool game ! I love the 3D effect with the cards. It was really polished. I would say it lacks sound effects. It's also a really challenging game.
This game was super interesting to play! I found it super challenging how one I'm in the red for something, more detriment cards just kept piling on. One of the only game jam games that made me keep coming back to try out a new strategy. I really like how the UI was super smooth. One nit-pick is that some of the text was difficult to read. Overall a really fun game!
Thanks so much for the kind words, and glad y'all enjoyed it! We tried to make something simple-ish that players could learn with time, but still challenging and strategic. Hope we managed some of that!
The 3D effect on the cards is one I think we're all pretty proud of too; it's actually just made of a few layers of flat sprites, which scroll at different rates. Like the parallax backgrounds of 2D-era games! It's a really neat effect, and one I've always been fond of... so I'm glad we got to work it into this.
Huge props to @hitchh1k3r for implementing both that, and the stencil buffer shenanigans that gave the cards depth, during the jam. I am amazed how fast he works!
---
@lou-bagel Thanks for the feedback! To answer your question, the choice part of the game comes in a few ways:
1) What season, and what tile you play a card on, can change it's effect (this is reflected in the card text changing)
2) Events between years often let you choose a card to add to your hand. Once you know what cards do, this lets you plan ahead a bit.
3) You have 5 cards in your hand, but only play 4. You can also increase hand size as the game progresses. And though unplayed cards stick around, you can postpone playing them; hand management is another way to plan long-term!
---
@xmatos Sorry for the lack of adequate tutorialization. I've found that pretty hard to work into a game jam timeframe, with these kinds of puzzley or strategic games. It's a real bummer, and something I definitely want to get better at. Thanks for the kind words nevertheless!
---
@robert-li I do like Catan, and that style of boardgame! Though I don't think this *plays* like Catan, we're definitely guilty of having cards, hexagons, and stuff you put on em. >
@pepperkep The design behind the Crisis Cards was that they'd make your existing problems worse, but with clever play (or avoiding playing them) you could restabilize. The other thought was to make it so that, once you got into a bad state, the game wouldn't drag itself out... so it kinda pushed you harder and harder toward a game-over. That said, I do worry we might've overdone it a bit!
In the early draft of the game, the player was intended to have the Terraform, Develop, and Work cards the whole game through, which gave them more options for bumping their numbers around. We ended up spacing those out into separate Eras, to ease players into the mechanics... but a side-effect was that it limited players ability to rein in out-of-balance resources. Given more time, I think I'd want to reconsider that all, and maybe redesign the eras and card-sets too.
---
@ghast-neoh Thanks so much! Making this a game about maintaining balance, rather than about gaining and spending resources, was one of the design choices we made at the start. The game-philosophy behind Analgesic Productions' "Even the Ocean" and so on was an inspiration for this! I definitely want to play with this concept some more.
---
@matthewi Thanks for the play! I hope the challenge with the Crisis Cards was welcome, rather than frustrating. And sorry about the text; we tried to make the game work on any screen size... but some of the positioning of UI bits, messages, the card scaling, and all that could probably have used some tweaks. Lessons learned for next time!
---
@g-a-gamestudio Definitely agree that pausing is important in strategic games, to give players time to think. We did work a sneaky sort of pause into the game, by letting the player take as much time as they wanted between playing cards, or making choices. Also, I agree that more detailed popups, and an ability to look at what cards are in your deck or discard pile would've been nice, if that's what you meant by more menus. Thanks a bunch for the feedback!
The graphics on the cards was really great, gave a kind of holographic 3d depth to them and some of the best cards I've seen.
It took two games to get to grips with the basic mechanics of the game, and a lot more to realise there were more mechanics I had only just started to realise were there. By about the fifth game I really managed to do a lot better extending my gameplay to 19 years which was my best. I was unsure if there was an end-game or it was a game that kept on going until you lost so I ended up stopping after my next game (which was 14 years). Very much enjoyed it and would like to see this flesh out a lot more.
I always love this type of game. A little bit hard to understand at first but after few tries, I managed to enjoy the game. However, I think the penalty of some cards is too much. One mistake and the game is 100% lost and no way to turn that back. And at least put some description when using the work card, I couldn't tell what it does at first try. Anyway really nice entry. Congratz
Comments24
I do recognize the effort to make a strategy card game for a jam. So pretty awesome to pull this off and I like the look of the cards - pretty slick!
Thanks so much for the kind words, and glad y'all enjoyed it! We tried to make something simple-ish that players could learn with time, but still challenging and strategic. Hope we managed some of that!
The 3D effect on the cards is one I think we're all pretty proud of too; it's actually just made of a few layers of flat sprites, which scroll at different rates. Like the parallax backgrounds of 2D-era games! It's a really neat effect, and one I've always been fond of... so I'm glad we got to work it into this.
Huge props to @hitchh1k3r for implementing both that, and the stencil buffer shenanigans that gave the cards depth, during the jam. I am amazed how fast he works!
---
@lou-bagel
Thanks for the feedback! To answer your question, the choice part of the game comes in a few ways:
1) What season, and what tile you play a card on, can change it's effect (this is reflected in the card text changing)
2) Events between years often let you choose a card to add to your hand. Once you know what cards do, this lets you plan ahead a bit.
3) You have 5 cards in your hand, but only play 4. You can also increase hand size as the game progresses. And though unplayed cards stick around, you can postpone playing them; hand management is another way to plan long-term!
---
@xmatos
Sorry for the lack of adequate tutorialization. I've found that pretty hard to work into a game jam timeframe, with these kinds of puzzley or strategic games. It's a real bummer, and something I definitely want to get better at. Thanks for the kind words nevertheless!
---
@robert-li
I do like Catan, and that style of boardgame! Though I don't think this *plays* like Catan, we're definitely guilty of having cards, hexagons, and stuff you put on em. >
The design behind the Crisis Cards was that they'd make your existing problems worse, but with clever play (or avoiding playing them) you could restabilize. The other thought was to make it so that, once you got into a bad state, the game wouldn't drag itself out... so it kinda pushed you harder and harder toward a game-over. That said, I do worry we might've overdone it a bit!
In the early draft of the game, the player was intended to have the Terraform, Develop, and Work cards the whole game through, which gave them more options for bumping their numbers around. We ended up spacing those out into separate Eras, to ease players into the mechanics... but a side-effect was that it limited players ability to rein in out-of-balance resources. Given more time, I think I'd want to reconsider that all, and maybe redesign the eras and card-sets too.
---
@ghast-neoh
Thanks so much! Making this a game about maintaining balance, rather than about gaining and spending resources, was one of the design choices we made at the start. The game-philosophy behind Analgesic Productions' "Even the Ocean" and so on was an inspiration for this! I definitely want to play with this concept some more.
---
@matthewi
Thanks for the play! I hope the challenge with the Crisis Cards was welcome, rather than frustrating. And sorry about the text; we tried to make the game work on any screen size... but some of the positioning of UI bits, messages, the card scaling, and all that could probably have used some tweaks. Lessons learned for next time!
---
@g-a-gamestudio
Definitely agree that pausing is important in strategic games, to give players time to think. We did work a sneaky sort of pause into the game, by letting the player take as much time as they wanted between playing cards, or making choices. Also, I agree that more detailed popups, and an ability to look at what cards are in your deck or discard pile would've been nice, if that's what you meant by more menus. Thanks a bunch for the feedback!
It took two games to get to grips with the basic mechanics of the game, and a lot more to realise there were more mechanics I had only just started to realise were there. By about the fifth game I really managed to do a lot better extending my gameplay to 19 years which was my best. I was unsure if there was an end-game or it was a game that kept on going until you lost so I ended up stopping after my next game (which was 14 years). Very much enjoyed it and would like to see this flesh out a lot more.
Anyway really nice entry. Congratz
I am not made to be an AI. Great game anyway, I like deck building games so it was fun nevertheless!