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A jam submission

Natural ConnectionView game page

Submitted by Zelders56, Nyctophobic-Dev — 14 minutes, 15 seconds before the deadline
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Natural Connection's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Aesthetics#1383.7393.739
Mechanics#2323.2173.217
Overall#2403.3043.304
Music#2513.0873.087
Theme#2753.4353.435
Fun#3122.9572.957
Story#3822.0872.087
Sound#5551.9131.913

Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How many people worked on this game in total?
2

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
https://opengameart.org/content/lunar-rock Space Shooter Remastered · Kenney

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Comments

Submitted

Pretty cool project. I like how it’s a 3D planet with 2D critters running around. Though, I wish I could zoom in a bit. Also if an animal’s pop reaches 0 I can’t get them back in the shop?

Developer

Thanks for playing the game! :) Yeah after the initial purchase you can't get any more of that animal, that was intentional as once a species dies in nature they become extinct and we were looking at trying to give the player that control over natures connections and as that's something that can happen in nature, thought it could be part of the challenge. I also thought it would be difficult for buying more to help, as usually when an animal dies that means there's a lot of predators eating them at the time, so buying more could often end up the same way :) If you think that or something else would improve the way I made the shop, please let me know :)

Submitted

The planet and the surrounding space are so cool! You were right to warn us in your game description, balancing the ecosystem can get out of hand pretty fast haha really liked the general idea, I’m sure parts of this must have been a nightmare! Well done for completing the jam!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing the game :) Yeah Nycto had to work hard to get the navigation right and balancing everything was not easy :(

Submitted

Really cool idea and execution! Great take on the jam theme too. I think this game is the first time my computer really struggled during the jam, guess all those little critters really add up. Very fun and nice little population management/God simulator here.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving the game a go! :) We both really liked the idea of using the connections in nature!! Yeah the critters do cause some lag issues :( I made the balancing as low as I could to try minimize its impact best I could but at 100ish animals I was getting lag myself but the fix was too big for Nycto to implement in time :/

Submitted

Very cool game...It went from rocky beginnings to something full of life. :)

Submitted

Cool game! Watching the planet come to life is cool to watch.

Developer

Thanks for coming and playing the game! :)

Submitted

It was really cool seeing the planet go from something barren to something thriving. It was also really soothing, the music was a good choice, and then attention to detail with the water was really cool.

Developer

Thanks for playing the game :) The planet was amazing! Nycto did such a great job!

Submitted

Cool! I really like the concept of managing a planet and the ecosystem within it, all the plant life and animals are connected in that way. There was definitely a lot of thought put into the placement system, as you can't put animals into water and it will find land near them to safely place in. I had about 100 rabbits on a small patch of land so I started moving them out into the flower fields and then the game got super laggy! I kept on playing and had tons of animals and flowers on the planet and was vibing to the music. For some reason the game didn't want to zoom or go fullscreen for me so I played it in the corner of my browser but it was all good. Also, I wasn't sure what gave me the blue gems was it just a time thing or did the ecosystem give me blue gems? Either way I was spending them and getting lots of animals with them all on 2x birth rate.

Developer(+1)

Yeah there was a lot of lag in development but the fix was for Nycto to spend a couple of weeks refactoring some big systems, so I tried to make it so that it didn't get in the way too much :( Zoom we forgot sadly, which was definitely the biggest mistake! lots of people have said it was missing. The gems are gathered by the animals eating and the bigger the food that gets eaten the more gems :)

Submitted

Really cool concept! Very relaxing

Developer

Thanks for giving the game a go! :)

Submitted

Hey! Really liked the concept! The music is cool, the only downside, but maybe it's me only, is that the control with right click to rotate the planet was not really precise, maybe reduce the sensitivity, other than that it's a really pretty and chill game :)

Developer

Thanks for playing the game :)

Submitted

Great art style and music. I particularly like the planet design and water textures!

Gameplay worked well, and it was interesting to see how the animals were interacting on the map, but they are quite small. I would have liked to see a bit more feedback on how the populations are affecting each other (getting eaten versus starving without food).

Also at one point I had -10 rabbits, not sure if that is intentional or not, but I liked being in rabbit debt.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing the game! :) I did get negative rabbits too but I wasn't sure where the bug came from and it was all hard coded last minute to make sure the UI was more accurate :( yeah adding in what each animal could eat and an aura when they're starving could have been helpful ways to show the player what's going on! I didn't think of that

Submitted

Pretty cool idea, i love the look of the globe. 
The music is nice but could be louder - I had to turn my speakers up to hear it.
A zoom feature would be helpful - from a distance I thought it was kind of hard to tell which animal was which.

This game wasn't working for me in Chrome but then I tried firefox and it works ok there. 👍

Submitted

I love seeing a simulation game in a jam! It was nice and slow to start so i could figure things out a bit. Then everything went REAL fast aha.  Music set a nice vibe. 
Great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing the game!! Balancing this was a nightmare to make sure it wasn't too slow to begin but didn't get out of hand so fast you can't react to it :) and Nycto did a great job with the music!

Submitted

Very good idea. I would like to see you keep developing this idea further and see what comes out. Liked the little planet style. Good job on the game!

Developer

Thanks you for playing the game :) yeah there's been a few conversations on how the planet style can be used in other ways, we really thought it came out well!

Submitted

nice idea maybe you can add rate with count later on, graphics are cool but I think satellite is a little larger than it needs to be. For a jam it's a good foundation. Can you rate my game too Taking the route - my game

Developer

Thanks for playing the game :)

Submitted

Fun little concept. As others have said I really wish I could have zoomed in a bit. I think that would have made dragging animals around a lot easier. 

Developer

Thanks for playing! :) Yeah that could have helped make moving animals about more easy :)

Submitted

I'm always a fan of an eco-simulation. It would be nice to be able to zoom in the planet to get a closer look at the population dynamics in action. I could see this evolving (no pun intended) into an interesting incremental game.

Developer

Thanks for playing! :) I totally forgot to put in zoom!!!! I realized it would be a good addition and the thought completely vanished -_- It would have been so cool :(

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

this is really cool and I love seeing simulation game entries! almost reminds me of anno a bit with the population management. and spinning the 3d world is neat though it took me a minute to understand why you'd want to be grabbing and moving the animals around (put them near their food?). the game progression is a bit slow, but also this seems like a relaxing game so maybe that's the idea?
cool original entry!

Developer

Thanks for checking out the game. Really glad you like it!

Developer

Thanks for giving the game a play! :) Yeah grabbing the animals is to move them to the food and away when there's too many eating in the area. I made the progression slow at the start as when I was balancing, if things went wrong they went wrong really fast!! So I slowed things down to make it easier to react to as the game progressed :)