Artistic Statement / Use of Theme
The game incorporates the themes of the jam by means of the central event (a climate apocalypse), and the disasters (natural and unnatural) that accompany it. There are natural disasters like wildfires and tsunamis mentioned in the narrative, but the time-traveling spacefaring corporation Geovive is the embodiment of an unnatural disaster, as they spread environmental devastation everywhere they touch. Our artistic intentions were to create a narrative about an isolated cog in the machine whose job is to be complicit to environmental destruction, aiming to address the idea that you (at an individual level) cannot accomplish anything, and how easy it is to fall into that detached sense of “it isn’t directly affecting me so it doesn’t matter.” This is because we believe that one of the most important parts of getting people to care about the climate is telling a compelling story that is strengthened by its connection to the climate. We took inspiration from a wide variety of things, namely Studio Ghibli movies like Pom Poko or Princess Mononoke that have a strong focus on environmentalism, and are engaging because of that environmentalism. As for the actual narrative inspirations, time travel stories and dystopian settings go hand in hand, and in stories like “A Sound of Thunder” there’s an element of “ruining” something. So, why not allow people to project forward in time and ruin a world?

Development Summary
The core narrative idea has not shifted significantly since its inception, but the scope of the game and the main focus / themes of the game did shift. Originally, the game would not have primarily taken place in the Earthmover, instead having the player exit it to work on the exterior, seeing the dying world (killed indirectly by their own hand). There would also be brief FPS segments in earlier days, so that the player would feel a “shift” in going from passive to active destruction (where they then have to kill the wildlife). For art scope and gameplay scope, these elements were cut, and the game was restricted to the inside of the Earthmover. However, this was actually a beneficial change, as it brought out the themes of isolation and loneliness even more, and we decided to lean further into that as a result. A pitfall that we had to navigate was, as strange as it sounds, making the game interesting. The game is supposed to be somewhat monotonous (reflecting the in-universe emotions of the player character), but it also shouldn’t literally be so boring that the IRL player just gets bored and turns it off. I think another pitfall was making things for the sake of the game versus making things for the sake of change, because they didn’t always align. We could have added a lot of mechanics, but those mechanics wouldn’t necessarily further our goals (like the aforementioned FPS segment idea). The hardest thing to cut was the experiment system - originally there would be an experiment (a unique task, essentially) to perform each day. This was cut for scope reasons, and if we had the time I would love to include it. Five people were directly involved as team members, but we also had two external voice actors.

Release Plan
The project is currently completely releasable, although missing some QoL/Accessibility features that we would like to implement (namely subtitles). Currently we don’t have any plans to continue working on it, although I (Siva Ridley) may personally continue working on something inspired by the game (and would be more than willing to work with my team again). In the future, I think I’d want to allow players to actually do some interaction with wherever they decide to time travel in the ending, add subtitles as mentioned, add the experiments back into the game, fix the minor bugs that still exist, and simply have more days and tasks to complete (alongside a bigger ship).

Topic Tags
Climate Apocalypse, Recovery, Rising Sea Levels, Wildfires, Doing Your Part