Terra Nova

Terra Nova

Terra Nova ("New Land" in Portuguese) is a small strategy game about New World colonies and their European metropolis, linked by continuous trade routes set in the Atlantic Ocean.

Your task is to reach $1000 gold coins before the end of the Age of Discovery (1800). The game ends by this date (20 minutes game time) or when all you colonists starve to death.

Quick info on controls

- Mouse only, left button.

- Click to point camera to a location, mouse scroll to zoom in / out.

- Entire game is played dragging colonists and products to/from locations.

Longer and proper instructions (if you got the time)

The game

You have 300 years (20 minutes game time) to reach $1000 in gold coins. You get money from selling goods in metropolis markets. Colonists work in New World fields to create these products.

Pieces movement and The Trade Route (aka Stuck in a Loop 😎)

Pieces (colonists and products) are moved by mouse drag and drop. Moving to/from New World land has a distance limitation from the previous landing (or creation) spot.

Ships continuously travel the Atlantic trade route covering New World <-> Old World path. Up to 3 pieces can be transported to / from the Old World markets. All ships travels the same direction from North America to South America to Africa to Europe.

Old World (Europe / Africa) Markets

Here products and colonists services can be sold and bought in open market. Each product has it own market trend that will affect prices over the years, as to sell or to buy too much of a product, albeit in a shorter term.

Some money can be made from these market movements (building up a stock in low prices and selling later at high prices). The Journal, also sold in market, can bring some help in that matter.

Finally, new ships can be brought from Europe shipyards into your trade fleet.

Products

Corn, Cotton, Sugar, Iron, Gold and Wood are harvested directly from New World fields. Rum, Clothes and Tools are manufactured in buildings.

Colonists and Buildings

Farmers, Sugar and Cotton planters harvest their respective plants directly from soil from time to time. They work 2x faster if inside a Farm. Multiple colonists can work on the same building.

- Sugar Planters can work on Distilleries to transform Sugar Canes (placed inside the building) into Rum.

- In the same fashion, Cotton Planters can work inside Weaver Shop to transform Cotton in Clothes.

- Miners extract iron and (rarely) gold from soil.

- Lumberjack works trees into wood. Trees regrow with time but only in open spaces. Too much usage of the land will gradually make wood rarer.

- Carpenters are able to construct new buildings, using tools, placed inside the construction site.

At first you will need to buy tools from Europe market. Later, Carpenters can convert one Wood and one Iron into Tools inside the Blacksmith building.

Colonists needs

Aside from initial contract price, each colonist will cost 1 gold coin for each 10 years of service.

They require food (Corn) from time to time. If not feed after a while (by drag n drop a near corn into the colonist space) they will starve to death 😥 costing you additional $100 coins in expenses.

More rarely, they can also require some Rum or Clothes.

A colonist under any kind of need will work 2x slower.

Post-compo version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSp0Pu_n-Q4

- User interface overhauled: better item click detection, visual 3d cursor on land, camera movement changed to drag. Added button to increase game velocity. Added visual brighter area to show possible pieces movement, paint dragged pieces in black to show invalid movement.

- Complete tutorial at game start with skip button.

- Changed movement rules: in competition version it was a circle from piece origin, now it's a box meaning unrestricted movement in X axis in Americas map.

- Added automation "quality of life" features: Ships automatically sell boarded products when near markets, colonists will try to feed themselves when food (or rum/clothes) near.

- Added music, fixed weird volume sounds change.

- Final score overhauled: No longer considering less than $1000 gold coins by the year 1800 a "defeat" - it's now a factor in the final score. Other factors: average living colonists, quantity and variety of products sold in Europe, year (in case of achieving $1000 before 1800) and gold coins.

(near) Future of Terra Nova

- Upload in some game portal (Kongregate, maybe)

- Final score to be integrated in leaderboard in host portal

- Bug fix (maintenance mode). This is as far as I see this project going and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Closing words

LD47 was a very special one for me. I have lots of fun building this game and I'm finally finished an entry again after many years.

Thank you all for those who played and rated Terra Nova.

It was a very good time also rating yours (I'm targeting to reach 100 reviews with written feedback).

See you in LD48! 😁