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DirtBorn Demo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay & Mechanics | #16 | 3.231 | 3.231 |
| Polish & Release | #17 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Writing | #17 | 3.077 | 3.077 |
| Use of Themes | #18 | 3.462 | 3.462 |
| Overall | #21 | 3.123 | 3.123 |
| Aesthetics | #28 | 2.846 | 2.846 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Artistic Statement / Use of Theme
The theme of the game is how littering and plastic pollution affects the environment. Littering and plastic pollution is a man made disaster to the environment. The effects of plastic pollution is negative effects to hygiene, soil pollution, harmful effect to aquatic marine life and many more. The microplastic in ocean, soil and environment is toxic to all living beings and is harming living being in the planet. Our game is kind of an antithesis resistance and message with action driven approaches to that with playful and fun elements added.
Development Summary
1st we wanted to develop two parts of the game. One is a game where trash collection and disposal was the main part of the game. It's a dystopian world where the world/country is taken over by pollutina millitant forces. Waste disposal and management is banned/outlawed. DirtBorn kind of is born from the filth of the world and decides to fix it. Clean up the world in secret. We wanted to teach waste disposal and promote anti littering practices in the main game. The main game is in 2D top down view and a stealth kind of genre. We also added a world where the people have lost the memory of planting trees. Like a fractured world. This concept was supposed to be a platformer. The latter concept is being pushed to maybe another game but discarded from this game. Initially 4 of us were involved. Me Zarif, Serena, Arefin & Ibtasam. Later Zareen joined the game.
Initially we made the design like a butterfly like a magical fairy child design. But, the game became more grounded we made changes to the character design. It's more like a poverty driven child. And we made changes to the enemy designs to the game as well. Also we became a registered company in July Mind Bend Games LLC. The hard part was to let go some of the magical gameplay and implement more of a grounded approach. And as we didn't want to show blood like violence letting go of a gun idea was also really difficult among the team mates. And also making a game that is fun in terms of how we can add more complexity in terms of collecting trash and disposing them has been challenging. Because even the current demo contains the game to be just not interactive enough. So, we are hard at work to add buttons to collect and timers would functions differently and disposing would have animations instead of changing levels directly. The complexity is increasing.
Release Plan
Before release I want talk about marketing plan a bit. As it's crucial. We want to update the itch.io Page a bit. And also we want to make short videos to showcase our work on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. And we want share that update to bring in potential fundraisers for IndieGogo Campaign.
1. Intial Demo is released
2. Polished Demo will be released in the Middle of August along with Crowdfunding Campaign
3. Full Game Version 1 with Ads will be on Hopefully Crazy Games, November/December
PlayGama like web platforms and the next we will release on Android and iOS - December/January
And the next release will be on Steam for Desktop with even more levels. Expected in the first quarter of 2026.
Topic Tags
DirtBorn, Plastic Pollution, Littering
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Comments
With some more time to cook, this game could certainly be something special! It's not bad at all in its current state, but definitely needs polishing in both menus and gameplay. As another comment suggested. You've still done well for the time period given. Keep up the great work!
Like the format the game is presented in. As others have said, easy to learn and quite fun to play. Small suggestion is that some of the enemy movement is hard to beat but others are super easy, making difficulty more linear maybe an an area to make the game more polished.
This game is great. Ending did bit confuse me little bit but overall I enjoyed it. If this internship had more time, then the game could be polished even better for sure :) Nice work!
This game was very easy to learn. I was motivated to finish the levels in time as well. My one critique would be that if the assets matched each other better it would give your game more of a polished look as well as more overall coherence.
This game is awesome! I like the mechanics and the overall gameplay. I like how when you collect an item you get more time, I thought that was very helpful and reliving haha!
The two levels were engaging to play, but I feel this can be improved if the assets matched more with one another. The ending also confused me because the style of that is completley different from the earlier levels. The scope of this game is admirable but may be a tad too wide for the jam (try sticking with the levels made or the platformer, both is a ton of work). While I think focusing on plastic pollution to be a noble cause, I think more call to action other than "pick up litter" may be needed (How do we clean up microplastics? Who can be write/call to?). There are some wonderful seeds of a story here. With more time and editing, this game can sprout into something revolutionary.