*PLEASE NOTE*: There may be some lag when starting the game or switching between layers because the world is procedurally generated. Loading bars are still in progress!
In Evergrove, you take control of the environment, shaping the fate of a colony of dwarves as they dig deeper into a vast, procedurally generated underground world. Your role is to direct the discovery of vital resources and strategically place essential hubs that keep the colony functioning and growing.
The dwarves mine, build, and expand, but it’s up to you to ensure they have the right infrastructure to survive. From food stations to rest hubs, you’ll decide where and when to spawn key facilities, ensuring the colony’s growth doesn’t outpace its resources. Every decision you make can either lead the dwarves to prosperity or plunge them into disaster.
Explore, gather, and build in a constantly shifting underground world, where careful planning and strategic hub placement are the key to success.
@arkatme and @andrewkennedy Thanks for checking it out! The game is up now, so feel free to give it a try. I'd love to hear your thoughts! 😊 Sorry about the confusion earlier, I accidentally published before it was ready!
I love the Dwarf Fortress inspiration! The world generation and worker AI feel pretty solid.
It felt a bit slow at first, until I realized you can click and drag to select multiple tiles. That really sped up the gameplay, and I was able to carve out large sections of land.
I set up a few hubs and farmed a lot of materials, but after a while it seemed like there wasn't anything else to discover. Something that might make it more interesting would be some hazards, requiring you to plan your expansion more carefully.
@andrewkennedy thank you so much for taking the time to test our game and for your thoughtful feedback! 😊 We put a lot of effort into refining the AI during the game jam, and it’s fantastic to hear that you enjoyed that aspect.
You make a good point about the game loop and gameplay feeling a bit lacking. We had some ideas for adding rarer resources in the deeper layers and enabling hub expansions with specific constraints. It’s a shame we ran out of time, but we’re excited to explore those ideas in the future!
@panicmore thank you for taking the time to test the game and for your feedback! 😊 The gameplay did indeed suffer due to the focus on the AI and world generation, but it was a great experience for future game jams. The importance of focusing on the game loop and gameplay will definitely be a priority nect time!
Wow! I love this, and it captures the early vibes of dwarf fortress with the dig designations and chaos of dwarves moving around. Great work and I was audibly surprised when the z-levels worked and my first dwarf climbed down into the abyss.
@broheartttv thank you so much! 🤗 We were definitely inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but expected it was a bit too ambitious for the jam. I still really wanted to include the AI and procedural map as a proof of concept for some other game ideas I’m working on, and it was totally worth it—so glad everything worked well during your test session!
@emmagsmith thank you!! 😊 I wrote a generator to give them all a slightly different appearance. There are two base designs, and the hair and clothing colors are randomly generated. I tried to create a spectrum of different shades of brown, blonde, and red to give it that dwarf-like aesthetic!
Cool idea, I would love to see it expended on itch! However I think for a jam I would've loved to see more things to discover rather, to better highlight the strong AI and procedural generation, rather than different appearances. Both are great and extremely well done tho
@yayagame Yeah, the resources are semi-randomly placed using a simplex algorithm. We ran out of time in the end to properly balance which values of the algorithm map to which resources.
@laywelin The idea of giving the dwarves direct 'mining' tasks was a last-minute decision. We'll definitely plan it out better next time. Thanks so much for your praise!
I love games where you have to dig, and this is an interesting one. I still haven't figure how I take my dwarfs to the lower layers, but I completed the first one :)
Really fun game! I loved the dwarf Ai and procedural generation! One problem I had was that dwarfs would be stuck and just slowly die if you started building on top of them, I suggest allowing them to move through buildings if they haven't been built and are partially transparent.
@mikeandtherest In the bottom left corner, you'll find the 'layer up' and 'layer down' buttons, which allow you to switch between the 5 different layers (theoretically, there could be unlimited layers, but we limited it to 5). Then, you just need to click on a tile, and the dwarves will automatically find their way to it using the ladders.
You did THAT in 3 days? Congratulations! This is truly amazing. It just works so well as a concept. There is so much room for improvement and I don't mean this badly. It's all working but some mechanics are missing.
I was trying to get some Wealth because I really really wanted a bunch of dwarfes. After reaching the last layer I realised that there is no Wealth :(
Also an indicator on how many dwarfes are running around would be neat.
@mrmaico Besides 'dirt,' 'stone,' 'iron,' and so on, there are other hidden resources in the earth, like 'silver,' 'gold,' and 'gems.' The chances of finding veins of these are quite low, but if you come across a large stone vein, there’s a chance that a valuable ore vein might be hidden inside. If not, well, that’s just bad luck! :( Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to adjust the ore probabilities for the lower levels. The basic idea behind the generation is based on simplex noise, and higher noise levels lead to better ores.
This is an example for silver.
Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback! It really means a lot to us, and we're thrilled that you took the time to dive into the game and share your thoughts. We truly appreciate it!
Nice entry, I love dwarf fortress and you made a great hommage to the game.
- Are the ladders randomly generated? Or just my dwarves pick the strangest path when I order them to dig on the layer below? - It would be nice to be able to cancel a dig, because when I select a tile below it sometimes very far away from the spawn point and not useful to dig there.
- Is there audio ? I can't hear anything in the embedded version
@dhim The ladders are semi-randomly placed with a minimum distance of 20 tiles between them. Paths to the target are calculated using a weighted A* algorithm, where digging through different materials is factored into the calculation. For example, digging through dirt is easier than through stone, and digging through gold is easier than through iron. We deliberately chose not to include ambient audio (like hammer or pickaxe sounds) because we didn't have a concept for spatial sound. As for background music, we simply ran out of time.
Very satisfying exploring around in this, haven't quite figured out whether there's an ultimate thing to find or if it's just for the joy of exploring (which is good fun!) Will probably have another go in future!
Wow this is really impressive for such a short jam. While it certainly stands on its own as an impressive 3 day project, it's also a great vertical slice for what could be more.
The procgen and AI is extremely well done for the time, and it's no surprise or concern that music got waylayed as a result. Thematically it's just about there. Whether dwarves are a tiny or just short-kings is a semantic digression.
Of course I don't need to talk about stuff you already know about improving the gameplay loop and such. The only thing that I wish wish was different would be to be able to cancel a dig. There were a few times when my dwarves started to dig to Narnia because of a misclick.
But really overall it's an incredibly solid entry. Artistically it's great and the systems design is top-notch for such a short jam.
this is way too addictive! really like the gameplay, did miss music though. An upgrade would be some kind of end goal, finding gold or finding a dragon hoard of something but overall solid game
@slippers Thank you so much for the kind words! And yes, the idea of being able to cancel tasks is already on our backlog, along with several other improvements, in case we decide to continue working on the game. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share them—we might just implement them, though I can't make any promises!
@mechazawa, thanks so much for the kind words! It’s actually possible to find gold in the game right now, but it’s a very rare ore. Your best bet is to look for it in large stone clusters.
And your idea with the dragon is brilliant! We’ll definitely keep it in mind, and who knows—maybe one day you’ll get to send your dwarves into the depths to face off against a dragon!
Wow, I dind't know that you could scroll to zoom, found this out accidentally, haha Nice one, I like the idea that you need to drink beer once in a while!
Ooooo yep this is the kind of game I could very easily get addicted to... and I did LOL. 20 minutes went by before I even noticed. Would have loved some sound to go with it, it would have been the cherry on top! Super impressive entry, great job!
Wow... to make this game in a jam, with procedural generation, ai and all the systems... so breathtaking! Proficiency in godot is evident here. And the game is very addicting! Thanks for the game!
What an amazing entry for the jam! Really addictive, great movement and ai, only thing i noticed was that if i selected a building before having enough resources, i could cancel the build, so i had a red building floating on my mouse until i got enough resources. After looking at the description it mentioned to press Escape button, but that didnt work on the web version ^^ Otherwise well done here :)
This game has some really interesting ideas with the generation and dwarf control, and was generally pretty interesting.
However I feel like the one thing lacking is direction for the player. Of course you can gather resources and move around, but without anything directly shown to you as a goal with the resources beyond just building more more hubs it requires a bit more of a buy in from the players to motivate themselves. But given just how much you've packed into the gameplay of this game I can see that was your primary focus. Additioanlly, since you cna always buy back your starting set of dwarves for free there's really not much consequence to just letting them die.
But those are my nitpicky comments, your ai for navigation works really well, and I enjoyed that the dwarves seem to work very well together.
And additionally, your world generation with various layers is really interesting! It led to a really cool world to play around with!
All in all, great job! This is the kind of game I'd love to see an expanded version of sometime!
Great work. It was cool to explore around and find resources. I wish there was more things to build and manage. Also it was a bit annoying occasionally that you can't cancel an order and also that even clicking on mined tile the dwarves would still go there wasting bunch of time.
There's *so* much here, I'm really impressed with the scope of the project. It took me a while to get going but once I got the hang of it it was pretty satisfying to just keep gathering up loads of resources (I wasn't being very strategic). The graphics were also great, nice work!
Comments56
It felt a bit slow at first, until I realized you can click and drag to select multiple tiles. That really sped up the gameplay, and I was able to carve out large sections of land.
I set up a few hubs and farmed a lot of materials, but after a while it seemed like there wasn't anything else to discover. Something that might make it more interesting would be some hazards, requiring you to plan your expansion more carefully.
Good work!
You make a good point about the game loop and gameplay feeling a bit lacking. We had some ideas for adding rarer resources in the deeper layers and enabling hub expansions with specific constraints. It’s a shame we ran out of time, but we’re excited to explore those ideas in the future!
Happy Gaming!🤗
Being able to cancel your mining tasks would be a good addition :)
Thanks for pointing it out!
I was trying to get some Wealth because I really really wanted a bunch of dwarfes. After reaching the last layer I realised that there is no Wealth :(
Also an indicator on how many dwarfes are running around would be neat.
This is an example for silver.
Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback! It really means a lot to us, and we're thrilled that you took the time to dive into the game and share your thoughts. We truly appreciate it!
- Are the ladders randomly generated? Or just my dwarves pick the strangest path when I order them to dig on the layer below?
- It would be nice to be able to cancel a dig, because when I select a tile below it sometimes very far away from the spawn point and not useful to dig there.
- Is there audio ? I can't hear anything in the embedded version
The procgen and AI is extremely well done for the time, and it's no surprise or concern that music got waylayed as a result. Thematically it's just about there. Whether dwarves are a tiny or just short-kings is a semantic digression.
Of course I don't need to talk about stuff you already know about improving the gameplay loop and such. The only thing that I wish wish was different would be to be able to cancel a dig. There were a few times when my dwarves started to dig to Narnia because of a misclick.
But really overall it's an incredibly solid entry. Artistically it's great and the systems design is top-notch for such a short jam.
And your idea with the dragon is brilliant! We’ll definitely keep it in mind, and who knows—maybe one day you’ll get to send your dwarves into the depths to face off against a dragon!
Nice one, I like the idea that you need to drink beer once in a while!
However I feel like the one thing lacking is direction for the player. Of course you can gather resources and move around, but without anything directly shown to you as a goal with the resources beyond just building more more hubs it requires a bit more of a buy in from the players to motivate themselves. But given just how much you've packed into the gameplay of this game I can see that was your primary focus. Additioanlly, since you cna always buy back your starting set of dwarves for free there's really not much consequence to just letting them die.
But those are my nitpicky comments, your ai for navigation works really well, and I enjoyed that the dwarves seem to work very well together.
And additionally, your world generation with various layers is really interesting! It led to a really cool world to play around with!
All in all, great job! This is the kind of game I'd love to see an expanded version of sometime!
are really good as well
I wish there was more things to build and manage. Also it was a bit annoying occasionally that you can't cancel an order and also that even clicking on mined tile the dwarves would still go there wasting bunch of time.
Props for making a beer-based dwarven economy, quite accurate.