This game is well polished! Love the attention to detail on the UI, being able to customize controls, audio, and the little easter egg with clicking on the Earth in the middle. The gameplay loop makes sense and is pretty intuitive. I really love the detail with the music as a fellow composer/sound designer, with the music adding additional layers as you progress.
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Restoring Harmony's itch.io pageGame Title
Restoring Harmony
Developer Name
Team 1-S
Short Promo Blurb
Use cards to reverse the harms of deforestation and restore harmony to the environment. Manage your time wisely as rising waters threaten to erase your progress and thwart your restorative efforts.
Full Description
Find harmony within the environment, right wrongs by restoring and restructuring islands facing rising sea levels, and be the necessary change needed to address the climate crisis.
By placing objects dependent on the environment (e.g. trees, greenery, houses, buildings, etc.), create the most harmonious configuration on the map before the water rises and washes everything away. Work against time and the environment to restore and reconstruct a climate conscious world.
Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18QiWJu01Pe--g2GecAPHpxpKdyInBuAA?usp=drive_link
Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18QiWJu01Pe--g2GecAPHpxpKdyInBuAA?usp=drive_link
Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
Our game focuses on the narrative that, while not all hope is lost, unless direct action is taken, irreversible consequences will occur. In our case, this means rising sea levels and losing land to the ocean. The game starts with somber music in a trash-filled and unhealthy environment. The player then plants trees and flowers, removes the trash, and creates a more sustainable environment. The music changes to a more hopeful tone. By adding procedurally generated content, we illustrate that every island faces its own challenges and there is no single fix, but we should at least try to make a difference. Finally, if the player runs out of cards and the water level hasn’t yet reached the top, they are given a “Don’t Give Up” bundle, reiterating that the fight for sustainability and restoration isn’t over until it’s truly over.
Development Summary
Our team faced many challenges throughout the jam. We originally came together with the idea of making a floating city builder. The concept evolved over time with much discussion, prototyping, and scope management. Partially inspired by games like Cloud Gardens and ODDADA, we decided to create a casual, strategy-focused game. However, due to a lack of time, we were unable to fully flesh out the card mechanics. We are a team of eight, but one member left our group, so we had to find a replacement. We had to cut additional gameplay mechanics, extra environments, adaptive music, and more to adhere to the jam timelines. We tried to combine multiple game ideas into one while maintaining coherence, which made finding the right balance challenging.
Release Plan
We are not entirely sure if we will continue adding additional content to the game but will plan to fix any major bugs, visuals, and mechanics as necessary after release. We are open to hearing people’s thoughts about our game and potential directions it could go in.
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