itch.io

Hi, Adam here, your cohort mentor. If there's anything extra you'd like me to review, or anything you want to talk about regarding the project, just let me know on Discord.

• Playability

You’ve produced a playable demo with key elements included. The colliders for walls and jellyfish work; the oxygen timer ticks down correctly and is refilled by the collectibles; the end level zone works. I didn’t encounter any bugs while playing, though it could be hard to tell if I could fit through certain gaps without smushing the sea lion against them. I quite like how the sea lion can spin around underwater, which looks cute, but one of the side effects of this is that you’re stuck upside down when you move leftwards, which can look odd.

I can see the character sprite juddering a bit. This might be because you’ve set it to update the position of the sprite, as opposed to create a physics simulation. If it’s already a physics simulation, it might have too much drag. Character controls aren’t a particularly easy thing to make, so don’t worry if you decide to just leave it as is and focus on other parts of the design, but if you find time it could be useful finding a guide (such as this one, which is about platforming but the movement part should still apply).

• Promising Idea

Cute short game that’s a good vessel to learn lessons about game design. The sea lion sprite is cute and well drawn, and other assets like the jellyfish and starfish have personality. The background art is more roughly implemented but adequate to convey setting.

• Use of themes

Currently the game doesn’t seem to have environmentalist themes or messaging, nor specific themes regarding this year’s topic (Natural and unNatural Disasters). Maybe you could use the production period to add some simple narrative or extra difficulty around this, such as nets which can accidentally catch or injure the player, or running out of fish because of how climate change is affecting ocean currents and temperatures. There could also be a second type of collectable that has a furthers the story, or NPC sea lions/other aquatic animals to interact with that could help develop any chosen themes.

• Call to Action

No provided CTA.

• Reasonable Scope

I’m not sure what your intended scope is, because there’s no design document, but based on this prototype I’m sure you can create some other simple levels and basic dialogue to expand the game during the production week. It’d be great to also see a menu, and some small art updates (perhaps turning the green pill into fish and giving the white barriers a new look to match the underwater setting). Good luck, and if you want any specific support with any aspects just let me know!

• Well Planned Production

No provided production plan.

Hi, Adam here, your cohort mentor. If there's anything extra you'd like me to review, or anything you want to talk about regarding the project, just let me know on Discord.

• Playability

The prototype features working movement and an interact control, as well as dialogue that includes the ability to pick options. Visual assets are already implemented and look coherent, although colliders haven’t been fully set up and the overworld is too big, making it feel bare. There’s a slight bit of awkwardness with interact being on the “e” key but “enter” being the continue; it’ll feel more fluid if it’s just one button. Overall this is a good place to be in at this stage.

• Promising Idea

Simple idea (short pokemon-style story game centred around an investigation), where the writing will have to help it stand out. The setting could be fleshed out more, but the plot hook of a data centre is novel and your research seems a good start to do this justice, although the current dialogue is overly simple. Proposed mechanics (simple quests, hidden areas, bookshelves, locks, three different collectibles, branching dialogue) have a good amount of range for a project of this scope, adding simple interactivity to keep the player interested through story beats. Make sure though that these mechanics are woven into that narrative rather than tacked on.

• Use of themes

I think the choice to highlight the damages of data centres is both highly pertinent and interesting. It allows for a small-scale, local story that still has huge implications for accelerating climate-related disasters and could help players reframe their understanding of the hidden costs of technologies that are becoming worryingly common. Through the proposed investigation and the book mechanics, the game will be able to give depth to this topic and tackle misinformation. I think the choice to have the centre hit by a wind storm is a good way to tie more specifically back to this years theme, showing an interplay between your object (data centres), how it worsens crises, and how it’s then in turn affected by them.

Currently, the writing isn’t quite there to really push this theme though, and will need to be expanded a lot during production to feel deeper and involve the player more. Both more characters and more nuance will be needed.

• , Call to Action

I don’t doubt that, as it’s the object the story revolves around, the player will leave with a greater understanding of data centres and their harms and risks, and you also begin to explore what a player might go on and do with that information through the leafleting/town meeting (though your design document doesn’t iron out a specific stance to take on the AI that the centre powers, which could lead some to leave with an attitude of data centres being a necessary evil for now).

I think to improve the quality of the CTA, your quests to collect opinions could model collaborative approaches to climate justice (and mutual aid); speaking, listening, and addressing concerns without condescension is also a key part of union organising. Another idea, that I think you're already hinting towards, is that you have to organise another local group meeting to successfully apply pressure to the mayor/data centre. This could involve a bigger focus on discussion and persuasion and take the onus away from the player acting as single saviour prompting others to action. Here is the points of a successful meeting which professor David Spade (Mutual Aid, p. 97) provides, which might help you think about the dialogue for such a scene:

“Giving new people a chance to share why they care about the issues and came to the group—many people are seeking to break their own isolation and find a space where they can be heard and be part of a shared understanding of the root causes of injustice

• Making meeting discussions as accessible as possible to the new people by providing a background of the problems the group is addressing and the group’s activities so far; avoiding jargon, acronyms, and overly technical theoretical language.
• Giving new people a chance to share ideas, even if the group has thought about those ideas before.
• Making the group’s facilitation process transparent to new people so they don’t feel lost about what is going on or being discussed.
• Making sure someone follows up with each new person after their first meeting to find out if they have questions, how they want to plug into the work, and if there is anything that would make the group more welcoming to them.
• Making careful decisions about agenda items and activities at meetings focused on orienting new people, since some detailed group discussions that need to happen about ongoing work might not be the most accessible to newbies.
• Helping new people plug into a clear role or task as soon as possible so they feel a part of things”

• , Reasonable Scope

The visual style chosen (2D, pixel, top down) is a reasonable choice for the scope, and the decision to use pre-made/bought assets has removed a main delay risk so you can focus on the narrative development during the production sprint. Overall, I think you will be able to complete this project to roughly the size and scope laid out in your plans, though certain elements like the hidden areas are not fleshed out here.

• Well Planned Production

The provided timeline is just a list of tasks. While this doesn’t provide an indication of organisation, priorities, or expected timeframes, as said above I think it’s achievable. 

Hi there. This is Dragos, your Cohort Mentor. I've written out some feedback for you, split into the categories that the sprint was being judged on. Feel free to reach out if you think i've misunderstood anything, or want to chat further through some of these points.

Playability

- Current Prototype is playable, and I think I enjoyed it, but the uncertainty and very short loop does not work yet. I understand this is a prototype, but I  think the speed of the entire simulation needs to be slowed down, so that players can see what is happening. I ended up clicking the factory a few times, and before I could realise what was happening, it disappeared. I infer from context and previous idea submissions, that this was a result of the emissions of the factories upsetting the people, but that is very much not clear, and out of context I would argue almost impossible to deduce. 

Promising Idea

- The game has definitely found its style, and the collage aesthetic works well for it. The plan to have this interactable simulation is well thought out, and I think with a couple more layers, this has the opportunity to blossom into a larger, self-sustaining, environmental simulation. You also have the opportunity to let the players experiment with what global, community impact looks like from a detached lens. Very cool.

Use of themes

- So far I'm seeing a strong focus on the industrial impact on the wider population. This is definitely a strong pillar, and well within the theme. I think an additional environmental element would be interesting to explore, such as the water cycle, or weather, or anything else you think you could implement to balance out what feels like a one way system at the moment - inducing therefore a linear narrative.

Call to Action

- Depending on the ways that your simulation can end up with enough playtime from the player, you have the opportunity to offer multiple calls to action and situations to consider, depending on player's actions. At the moment, the call to action was to me simply "Angry people destroy factories, making world happy". While still valid, this was heavily implied, and I would love to see more steps or granularity in the simulation

Reasonable Scope 

The game mechanics are almost entirely present here, and some simple iteration on existing elements is required. Scope is quite reasonable.

Well Planned Production

- Not much information regarding the plans for future development was provided. Feel free to reach out to discuss this if you want.

Hi there. This is Dragos, your Cohort Mentor. I've written out some feedback for you, split into the categories that the sprint was being judged on. Feel free to reach out if you think I've misunderstood anything, or want to chat further through some of these points.

Playability

- Currently there is no playable prototype. Especially considering the very large and impressive scale of the project, I am concerned that due to the varied mechanics listed in the design document, the majority of the prototype submission is composed of other elements. These includes: a section of an even larger proposed map, a lot of concept art, and some demos of the gliding and wind tunnel mechanic. This does not address the optional rhythm game mechanics intended, nor some of the other platforming, flying and diving.

Promising Idea

- At face value, the concept of storm chasers tied into a platformer where you embody the wind is promising. Moving further into that idea, the execution of it is the primary purpose and concern. The inspiration from Sky is obvious, and valuable, but the theming of that game is more subtle and fits the floating/flying more than an active disaster/storm chaser. I am open to how you would pair these together, but the current prototype does not serve to demonstrate this. 

Use of themes

- The game is founded on a good link to "Natural and Unnatural Disasters". I am not seeing much of the unnatural part yet, but I think there is good material to work with. An important aspect is to discuss more of the dynamic impact that a storm has, rather than simply the voyeuristic act of flying after/into a storm. This can be done through the memory fragments, though this has to be carefully and skilfully written out to avoid trivialising the victims of the storm. This ties into the Call to Action section, namely the lack of action

Call to Action

- I understand the philosophical angle of the game, serving the powerlessness of the victims to change the future. The game (currently) seems to propose that the goal is to reach the eye of the storm, where it all ends. This does not give any actionable call to any real individual or community, therefore not fulfilling this category. There are plenty of ways to remediate this, though again, these have to be carefully considered in weighing with the rest of the scope. An example would be to engage survivors of the storm, which are the people giving energy/power/progress the fight against the storm.

Reasonable Scope 

- In my personal opinion, for this game jam, the game is scoped too far out. I understand you have a large team, and this can feel like a lot of progress can be made in a short amount of time, however, as you get closer to the deadline, a lot of critical choices have to be made to maintain the theming and purpose of the game, which can be difficult to coordinate across a wide team. Additionally, any one of you, especially the programmers in this early stage with no prototype, serve as a bottleneck to the rest of the game, which can significantly slow down your process. This isn't to say that the game isn't achievable on a timeline outside of this event. Please consider what is critical to the delivery of your game, and what could be a future expansion on the concept.

Well Planned Production

- You did not mention any planners or production pipelines in the way that you work. If you use these, you can ignore this part of the feedback. If not, I think it is again quite dangerous for a large team, since production timelines can vary from person to person. The lack of a bug-tracking and even task-management system can hinder the process considerably, and could be incredibly helpful to you in managing the large and impressive scope. Highly recommend sitting down and producing a plan for the remaining time of the game jam.

Hi there. This is Dragos, your Cohort Mentor. I've written out some feedback for you, split into the categories that the sprint was being judged on. Feel free to reach out if you think i've misunderstood anything, or want to chat further through some of these points.

Playability

- While the game is not currently playable, the outline of it has been well illustrated in the submitted document. I believe that sticking to this structure, especially in building a VN can successfully lead to a final playable version. Commendable and very appreciated is the accessibility consideration for the font and colour choices.`

Promising Idea

- The idea of conversation of a species and environmental change is well illustrated. The game has a mystical atmosphere to it, while keeping everything grounded, and realistic. The boon concept plays well into the story design here, and avoids the common problem of "The miracle solution" to environmental concerns. All around, the writing sample, while quite verbose at times, does paint a promising picture of the entire game and creates a fitting tone and setting

Use of themes

- The mythological/mystical angle of the story, tied with the small scale narrative of Olepi and Willow individually, is a good pairing, and embodies the chosen themes (in bold as part of some of the chapters). I appreciate the thought put into linking each of these themes, and their relevance to the chosen environment. Using stock photos in the illustrations however I personally feel takes away from the carefully craffted nature of it all. If you are fortunate enough to be able to take your own pictures, or otherwise draw them in any congruent style, they would enhance the theming a lot better than stock image which feel impersonal. An interesting visual style used by another in our cohort was a cute collage in What World - highly recommend. 

Call to Action

- While all the theming is well thought out, at the moment the game does not include a particularly strong call to action. This is mainly due to the characters having a more mystical nature, and then the onus on the ability to influence falling almost entirely to scientists, and even then, only on a small scale. While this is relevant in the wider conversation of powerlessness in the face of grand environmental change, I think it would be recommended to include some messaging or plotline/choice where the player gets a sense that even common, individual and personal implication into wider community has positive impacts. This is most glaring in the ending, where regardless of player actions (unless i've misunderstood) the rain returns, which releases a lot of the tension, as well as consequences, of player actions. 

Reasonable Scope / Well Planned Production

- Game is very well thought out already and the design document outlining the structure is comprehensive. If the main task for the production period is writing the finalised text to replace placeholder, I believe this will be very achievable within context

Hi there. This is Dragos, your Cohort Mentor. I've written out some feedback for you, split into the categories that the sprint was being judged on. Feel free to reach out if you think i've misunderstood anything, or want to chat further through some of these points.

Playability

- The provided video is a good showcase of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) mechanics you will need for your game. That being said, there is a slight lack of a proof of conceptual mechanics, such as what the balance of each type of card is/ how the interact and how the cost of each card could affect runtime of the game. Worth keeping in mind, that a lot of development time will have to be spent on figuring out how to structure each deck you have.

Promising Idea

- A card game is certainly a viable and good idea for a game, with some long lasting resources in the genres to inspire you. You already jumped the hurdle of programming the grid and placement, as well as the sound design and theming. That's great. I would recommend you find your unique angle on "the card game" to stand out even more in the future

Use of themes

- At the moment, the themes are almost entirely represented by the disaster deck. This is still quite abstract, so I would recommend you guys spend some time to ideate more than the veneer of the disaster deck removing some of your cards. For instance, the "civilian count" sounds to me, so far, like it is just a health pool for when the game ends. This isn't particularly well linked to an environmental aware theme, since if civilian counts are declining, the world is beyond saving. You could investigate such mechanics as an allocation of civilian count towards different types of building - renewable or fossil fuel energy plants for example. This would then give your game more of a sense of resource allocation towards a varied and salient choice about environmental dynamics, rather than simply using the population count as another healthbar.  

Call to Action

- Related to previous point, at the moment the game does not seem to have any reason to not constantly avoid disasters. Pointing back at last year's card game, (https://itch.io/jam/climate-jam-2024/rate/2838792) the call to action was in referencing and balancing one's own environmental impact when playing against AI, who could attempt to burn the world to the ground. At the moment, I can only see a binary choice for your players at every turn in the game, which is "Will this wipe me out? No, - get more victory points." Consider what message you want people to walk away with, and try to represent that in a playstyle or mechanic.

Reasonable Scope /  Well Planned Production

- Prototyping a card game requires a fair bit of iteration to get the balance right. Disasters could wipe you out too soon, or they might not feel impactful enough. The only way to find out is to quickly shuffle through drafts of the game. The best method I know for this is to try and make a paper version of it, or in something like TableTop Sim/ (any other free online card simulator). This would allow you to test mechanics and deck balances before committing large amounts of time into the engine, only to find out that the game doesn't play how you expected it. 

Hi, Adam here, your cohort mentor. If there's anything extra you'd like me to review, or anything you want to talk about regarding the project, just let me know on Discord.

• Playability

You’ve succeeded in producing a short playable demo with a narrow slice of gameplay, demonstrating a single background asset, a character asset, a branching dialogue point, and a reaction minigame to steady the boat. There’s also a fully functional menu. This is roughly what I suggested aiming for during my ideation feedback, and for the scale of the project this is a reasonable point for the prototype to be at, and a good starting point for the production week. Great work!

• Promising Idea

A short visual novel about protecting something precious while travelling is a good formula, here situated in the middle of climate catastrophe with clear stakes and dangers. As I said in my ideation feedback, I think your game has a clear identity that shined through in your design document, and has interesting things to say within the narrative (“natural systems adapt… if we let them”, “it takes a village to combat [climate change]”). I think the framing of travelling through Florida should help give the location character, and will let you highlight the diverse ways climate change will affect areas and ecosystems, as well as the diverse ways communities might respond.

For branching dialogue options, remember that players will have multiple reasons to make decisions beyond the one you specify, and that specifying can feel constraining sometimes. It might be better just having options more akin to “Okay [follow him]”/”No [leave]”. This is especially good if you properly pre-empt the decision by saying a few of the ideas the character might have (“can I trust him? Can I help the community by helping him?” etc), so the player can mull over the questions but not feel like picking an option is forcing them to have a single simple answer.

• Use of themes

As suggested above, I think your design document shows a game rooted firmly in the themes of the jam, and that the narrative framing will allow you to focus at once on the specific issue of bees but also more broadly on flooding and the man-made changes to global climate which endanger the bees and everything beyond.

In this prototype, we don’t see much of this. The mention of mangroves and egrets are nice nods to how the natural world is responding to the events, but they’re set pieces not plot. It’s not immediately clear, perhaps because the prototype ends before we learn more of his character, how Florida Man enriches the subject and links back to the theme. He’s a potentially promising character for how communities interact with issues they may not understand (perhaps because of far-right propaganda/conspiracy theories which are inextricably tied to the fossil fuel giants that fund their mouthpieces), but this has yet to be realised.

I think you’ve got some good ideas, but need to make sure to keep the aims and CTA in mind as you write to keep the plot tightly on the environmental themes.

• , Call to Action

Your previously stated CTA was in two parts. I think the first (“raise awareness of the impact of human development”) will be easily achievable, though is not present in this prototype. Thought will need to be put into how you articulate and emphasise the second (“take personal responsibility”), since “personal responsibility” is very vague, and not actionable for the player unless specified. Is ‘personal responsibility’ small individualistic behavioural shifts which will only have negligible impacts in preventing the type of disaster your game features, or is ‘personal responsibility’ actively building solidarity and fighting against the industries that will make that future come about, focusing on climate justice and trying to get involved in initiatives to protect our world? The former is admirable but near meaningless at this stage of climate destruction, even in countries like the US where individuals are the most wasteful, while the latter is a very hard sell to those unengaged, and will require you to be very explicit in demonstrating what climate justice does/doesn’t look like as well as modelling behaviours of engaging with it.

• , Reasonable Scope

The reasonable-ness of the scope will now depend largely on the confidence and speed of your writing. The minimum art assets required are small and achievable, with room to expand at the end of the sprint if you have time, but the entire story will need to be written and implemented within the next two weeks, which will contain multiple locations, multiple new characters, and potential branching paths (though many such branches can feed back into other branches to look large to the player but still be manageable). If you want any feedback on progress or any specific elements/writing at any point just message me.

• Well Planned Production

There’s no production plan in the documents submitted for ideation or prototype. 

Strengths:

1. I think your concept is interesting, with a proposed mechanic that's simple but still feels engaging and interesting. I agree that it sounds like it'd be replayable, and I like that inaction would still count as action in terms of progressing events.
2. Your chosen art style is full of character and I think would draw a lot of players in. The choice of 2/2.5D makes sense given the scope of the project.
3. I think you've considered the theme well, especially the reflection that many things sold as solutions have large costs and actually most benefit the companies doing the most harm (EVs, as you said, but many energy solutions follow the same logic and cause great harm to local communities. Our entry last year focused on the hidden damage of wind farms, for example).
4. I think your timeline is well thought out. Having that design document and a vertical slice for the prototype submission would make the most out of this early opportunity for feedback before the design stage, and also make it clearer if your scope is achievable.

Things to think about:

1. I think the big question for your team will be which things to include in the first disaster chain, since there is a risk that there'll be only one, possibly two, implemented by the end. Brainstorming which set of dominos you'll be lining up, and what takeaways you want the player to have from each one falling with, without, or despite their intervention will therefore be really important. This brainstorming will, I assume, be a key part of putting your design document together, and will hopefully benefit from the wider reading you've done during ideation. Since much of your storytelling is done through NPC interactions, it might be worth thinking about the sociological impacts of climate change as well as the ecological (something you're already starting to do by looking at misinformation, particularly if you want to make any statements about who benefits from it); for example, climate destructions causes refugees that are then targeted by anti-immigration rhetoric, police crackdowns target environmentalist protesters, and companies pay for adverts to spread greenwashing rhetoric. 

Strengths:

1. Deck builders are always popular, and I think your proposal has plenty of potential for wide appeal. There's plenty of directions this can go, and Currency, Lives, and Disasters seems a good starting point to build on in terms of the resources and conditions to manage.
2. I love the artstyle you've focused in on, I think your game will have a really distinct and appealing identity a it develops.
3. Incorporating misinformation into your game is, I think, a good idea, and would give the player options to do things that might feel right but have repercussions and knock-on effects that are themselves educational.

Things to consider:

1.  A card game is ambitious, but definitely doable; one particularly polished one won last year. Still, you'll have to be organised, and you'd benefit a lot from getting some core mechanics ready for the prototype to have early feedback and playtesting. Try to work towards a minimum viable product, that you can then polish and expand in the production phase.
2. Thematically, I think you'd benefit from ironing out what is you want your game to say, and how you're approaching the theme. For example, in a game where you're tacking disasters, using currency as a resource would presumably incentivise relief measures that also create more of that currency resource, which is a focus that, in real life, causes govs to invest huge resources into precisely the companies causing the most harm (eg, lots of renewable energy megaprojects involve funneling money into petro-chemical companies), while also spurring consumption which is itself harmful. But maybe I'm misunderstanding scope; your call to action is "Raise awareness of the effects of everyday actions most people can have", so perhaps having the POV of,  say, a community relief effort rather than a government would allow you to best serve this CTA without the risk above. Zeroing in a POV like this could also give you more interesting things to say, and dynamics, for cards (eg, beyond expecting messaging like litter picking, at a local level like this, protecting the environment and recovering might actually involve fighting *against* companies wanting to invest in infrastructure, even green infrastructure, which might harm struggling wildlife). Either way, I think further brainstorming about how you stick closely to the theme as you develop will be really rewarding in terms of both having a clear message and having a more unique viewpoint.

Strengths:

1. I think "poetic narrative exploration game in which players control a wind-bound spirit composed of souls lost to climate disasters...expressing the emotional duality of reverence and resistance" is a really interesting pitch that'll stand out. Within that duality is the potential for interesting reflections.
2. I think sound design will be something that really heightens the experience here, and your proposed soundscape sounds simple but effective.
3. The proposed mechanics match the theme, and sound like they'll be enjoyable; I particularly like the speed=risk/lack of control element, and how that'll effect the difficulty. The mechanics also sound like they'll be doable within the timeframe of the jam.

Things to consider:

1. You'll need a clear idea of what you want to submit at the end of the prototype sprint, since the feedback you get for that will be the main things you'll have to consider in the longer design sprint. Try to focus on implementing the things that'll be most useful to have feedback on, and don't worry about it being unpolished for now. 
2. So far you've not detailed what the memory fragments will entail, do you have a plan to connect these into a larger narrative? There's so much you could do with these, highlighting a variety of ecological and sociological impacts of climate change (or specifically cyclones), so it'd be worth really brainstorming what you'd want to focus on and say, and thrash out something to map the various story beats. For example, cyclones effect different socio-economic statuses differently (not everyone can flee, not everyone wants to, etc), and deaths caused by the storm can happen long after the winds stop—people left unhoused, food and energy infrastructure destroyed, etc.

Strengths:

1. I think a visual novel is a good idea considering you're a one person team, especially since you say you've done them before. I think scope-wise you'll be able to create something interesting within the time of the jam, though you'll need to decide (a) how long the game will be, (b) what the extent of the branching narration will be, since it sounds like your pitch is setting up a minimum of binary choices at periodic points, but potentially more. 
2. Your art direction sounds simple but effective, as Khaprani highlighted. Careful, considered choices like that which convey ideas and themes with very little workload is perfect thinking for a solo dev. 
3. It sounds like your background is a great strength here. For a small narrative experience, especially one about a theme like this, attention to detail, granular focuses bringing out bigger themes, and a grounded setting are all important ways to drive home the emotions and the central messaging. I therefore think it's a great idea to pick a specific draught and how it affected a specific species within an ecosystem, and Olepi's pov sounds like an interesting one. 

Things to think about:

1. Pick the key things you'd like early feedback on and make sure they're included in your prototype submission. Your scope is small enough that early playtesting is less important for this project than one with multiple mechanics, but since you're working solo the key touchpoints of the jam are your main ways of getting outside opinions and advice.
2. I like the themes about interconnectivity of nature and the morality of involvement (and, after-all, we're all so much more than bystanders, ourselves deeply enmeshed within the webs of exploitation and environmental destruction that our economies depend on, which itself fosters certain mindsets about the futility of change). I'd be really interested in how these are fleshed out, and it'd great if some sort of design plan or flowchart could be included in the next entry to allow feedback on how you'll flesh these out as the story progresses. 

Strengths:

1.  I can see that you've had some productive brainstorming, and your chosen idea sounds interesting.
2. Your early concept art is promising, already suggesting a confident visual style that'll be able to reach a high level of polish within the jam's timeframe.
3. Resource management and a timer sound like good elements to add pressure in a way that fits the theme of the game, and also introduce a level of replayability.
4. I like your bullet points for "thought provocation"; I think you could weave an interesting storyline through these in both the narrative and in how the player uses the mechanics. As you say, wildfires are themselves a natural part of the ecosystems life-cycle, creating areas of new growth that are vital to lots of animals, plant, and fungal species (interestingly, in previous decades it was an issue that rangers actually worked too hard to prevent forest fires in order to protect the assets of silviculture plantations, to the detriment of this cycle—could be worth emphasising that a no-fire solution would still be artificial and anthropocentric). The hugely increasing number and scale of fires, however, is catastrophic and directly connected to human activity, so fits the theme. Your level of research seems adequate to pull it off, and any granularity you can add will add character (such as how I can see you've focused in on the Black-backed woodpecker; that level of detail in your setting is great).

Things to think about:

1. The scale of this project seems quite large, and could quickly become too much to finish within the scope of the jam if there's any creep. Your team is quite big, so it's certainly not impossible, but you'll have to be well organised and managed. I think you really need to decide on your minimum viable product (mvp) you want to have ready for prototpying, including which mechanics it'd be most important to have in place ready for this. Last year, a common issue was not finishing some/all of the key mechanics for this stage, which causes extra development stress next stage and means you lose a vital chance at playtesting and feedback that'd help the final product.
2.  Make sure the mechanics of your game directly support the story and message; if, for example, the paint god can adequately clean up human mess, what is the moral of the story for how responsible humans have to be? Already fossil fuel companies invest heavily in greenwashing adverts to sell people the idea that we can keep consuming and producing at unsustainable levels because some miracle technology will soon magic away the consequences of our actions. You've already partly addressed this by saying there's a timer and a limited supply of water, so presumably the game won't feel easy, but I'd love to also have some story beats addressing this; perhaps Smokestack actually benefitting from your efforts when you're successful and mocking you for helping make people complacent, or the paint god being increasingly unable to save huge swathes and having to pick ever fewer species or areas to protect. Your final provocation bullet point is a good idea for how defeating Smokestack could be played; whatever his defeat represents, the forest has already been changed. There's great tragedy in this, but always things capable of growing atop destruction. 

Strengths:

1. I think grounding it in near-future Florida, with a setting that's realistic and a signposted map to navigate to Tallahassee, is a good idea narrative wise. The real-world location will allow for a greater level of specificity in the ecologies and hazards you'll show, which will feel more impactful; the current depth of your wider reading gives me confidence here. I think your chosen topic will give you interesting opportunities to reflect not just on the ecological impact, but also on how ecological impacts then have sociological ramifications that aren't always visible to those not looking (something my studio is exploring in our game, where something as seemingly positive as a wind farm site causes knock on effect including mass fish death from beach drilling and increases in murder rates due to companies' use of private police connected to drug gangs to keep farmers off the building sites). 
2. As implied above, I think your game very clearly takes the theme of the jam to heart, addressing it directly and with consideration, and will do well on the narrative category at the end. Another thing to consider is that ecologies collapsing create new ecologies; I read a book recently about a rare type of mushroom that grew surprisingly well in what the author called "post-capitalist" environs—specifically, ecosystems destroyed by plantations that are abandoned when plantation farming destroys the nutrients in the soil. 
   
3. The description you provide in your overview is great; it really sets the tone for the game, and already wouldn't need much tweaking to be the short description on Steam, etc. Equally, your "what it provokes" statement is a good tagline. Along with the small logo on this submission, I think you've done well already giving your game an identity.

Things to think about:

1. Your project timeline seems generally well considered. I agree that writing isn't a time-concern (though you'll have to decide how many decision branches there are), and actually think adding one voice acted scene wouldn't take long either (do you know who you'd want to VA? I can pass your script onto some actors if not). The main potential risks I see are (a) if art assets take longer than expected to create - the knock on effect of this will vary depending on what your team structure is; (b) if you can't decide upon minigames or struggle to create them. I think (b) is the greater risk, and since the only glimpse into what these minigames might be is the kayak tipping bar in the image, it'd be worth ironing out exactly what minigames you want asap. 
2. Do you have an idea of what you want as a minimum viable product (mvp) by the prototype submission? It's good to focus on this idea of mvp in order to prioritise your task and make sure you're resisting the urge to increase scope. I'd say you'll be in a great place if we see a single well-considered minigame that fits the theme, implemented alongside an example or two of a branching dialogue (whether this dialogue is good or just placeholder, or  if the art is quite finished/polished yet, or how long the protoype is are all things that matter a lot less for now than whether the core mechanics are on track)

Shame it's only a veeeery short demo, but it looks so good! Even getting this short snippet done within the timeframe of the jam is something you should be proud of. The art design is really cool, the snippet of plot is intriguing, and I'm a sucker for the death game narrative novel so I'd happily buy/play a full version! Best of luck in developing it in the future

I got to the third level, after an initial struggle of figuring out the controls and that you need to pick up the rock to go through a door, but then got soft-locked when I fell down a gap without my rock that I then couldn't jump high enough to escape from. Premise is nice and simple, would be great to see it polished with sound and more puzzles.