EcoClicker is currently in active development. Any feedback or input on how to improve the game would be tremendously helpful! Use this topic or open another one, as you wish. Thank you!
Better yet: the ability to enact a reproduction limit on humans à la China's only-two legislation and the U.S.'s 1960's only-two fad. The game's meat ban and the Sanctuary option does plenty as far as manipulation of nonhuman species, which is apropos because humans are the root of global warming, not nonhuman animals. We know now that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the entire global transportation industry, and the most important thing we could do as far as immediate benefit to the amelioration of global warming would be to stop eating all animals, their breastmilk, and calcified periods. With this in mind, it would actually be more accurate (albeit complicated) to introduce methane to the game, and/or a greater decrease in CO2 levels with the enactment of the meat ban.
Okay- so I'm studying geography at university and I love the message of this game, I really do. I get exactly where you're coming from and why you've included what you have (2 years of Earth Systems has forever ingrained ppm into my head), but...
The game seems completely impossible. Nothing made any difference to the ppm, metric tonnes, + or - anomaly temperature etc. I played this non-stop for over an hour and a half (addictive and competitive personality!), planted over 1 billion trees, and the temperature kept on rising.
I get that it's meant to be representative of real life, and that temperatures are rising and there's not a huge deal we can do to stop it (arguably we've already reached the tipping point/ peak oil etc) but if you want to get your message across, it needs to be somewhat easier.
I know that there's probably not meant to be an 'end' where everything turns out fine and people stop polluting because it would be unrealistic, but if you're going to give this an informative slant people will have to see some kind of progress, surely? Otherwise what's the point? You'll click and click over 15,000 times and see no change. It won't encourage anyone to change their behaviours or attitudes, in fact, even a fairly eco-conscious student like myself ended up thinking "f*ck it, why bother campaigning or planting a billion trees if it'll just keep getting worse? Might as well do nothing".
Again; maybe the point of this isn't to educate or change attitudes, maybe it's some kind of nihilistic scream into the void, a "what's the point? We'll die anyway" type thing- but if it's not, maybe try making it so there's some visible progress, so the game doesn't last as long so people still care when you give them your message of reducing carbon foot-prints and making conscious decisions to at least try and preserve and cool our planet. Maybe like 'The McDonald's Videogame' by Molleindustria?
Sorry this is so critical, but I care about the message and I love games with meaning- I want this to do well and the message to spread!
I know this is an old comment, but I hope you see this all the same--or at least came to realize what I did.
At first I, too, thought that it was some nihilistic art piece about how we're just generally fucked. I had been in the green as far as Metric tonnage goes, and with CO2 PPM, but I was still in the red with the total anomaly temp! But I found that if I kept planting more trees, eventually I gained enough of a weighted ratio that the anomaly started to decrease in temperature, finally. The problem is, an hour and a half isn't enough time to get a real feel for the game. I had to restart after I messed up pretty badly and had hit a point of no return (so of course I ruined my chances to get to game over quickly and see what the bad ending looked like lol) and began the new game in earnest. I logged abooout three hours or so from start to "all green", and I was playing pretty quickly. It was 2071 when I started decreasing PPM and tonnage, but it wasn't until ~2130 that I started decreasing in global temp/anomaly.
Patience is a virtue. :) Hope you went on to find success!
This is such a fantastic game. I love how you really throw us in without much to go on, leading to--at least, with me--a very fitting false sense of security and inevitable failure. As you'll read from my other comments I failed in the first run-through, but after restarting with some strategies in mind I did much better. I'm an environmentalist and vegan, a far cry from the way I grew up: totally apathetic and skeptical of global warming thanks to a heavily conservative, Fox-News-obsessed- family. I really got into this game and will more than likely return to it to see how quickly I can save the world again (lol). I hope this helps to inform other people about how important it is that we help change things, and soon. But I do think it would be much more realistic (and helpful to the cause) to highlight how animal agriculture has greater impacts on anthropogenic global warming than coal and gas-fueled transportation. (The name is gimmicky, but the data is tried and true: Cowspiracy is a documentary available on Netflix and all the sources are listed on cowspiracy.com/facts. I highly recommend it!)
One thing I struggled with as far as mechanics go: I played this in-browser on my Mac and a large part of the right side of the screen is entirely cut off when in full-screen mode. If I wanted to read what different "power ups" (so to speak) would do, I'd have to exit from full screen and scroll over. I also didn't realize there was a pause button until halfway through my second game because of this lol.
Just small things. Overall, absolutely excellent game. Thanks so much for it!
Two things, both related to buying stuff:
1. There should be an option to buy 5 or 10 at once of a worker.
2. When you have bought as many of a worker as you can, it should become darker, in the same way that bought research and policies are (maybe a dark green instead of black though?) It took me a while to realize that I wasn't actually buying any new workers at one point.
The game is amazing!!! It is one of my favorite and I hope it can help pioneer a new genre of eco-centric games! I think it was well balanced and I thoroughly enjoyed the humor of the upgrades (reminded me of Oiligarchy which is probably my favorite game ever). Also was crazy addicted to the novelty of unlocking and using new policies, science and workers.
Found a small typo:
it says "and and" in the state of emergency powerup instead of "and"