Gatherers

Gatherers was made for

GJL Game Parade Spring 2021

Controls:

WASD moves the camera

Left Mouse Button for the rest

Description

You arrive in a new slice of paradise. Time to settle and make yourself at home. There is food enough to survive and thrive. Soon others join you and bring with them skills that improve your capabilities. Working together you can shape the land around you. Protect your flock of sheep and help them to thrive too. Strength lies in differences and together you can make this slice of land a real nice place to exist.

Important information

I had to strip out lots of stuff in an attempt to get it finished. Some of it was quite important. Having had a chance to look at it, post jam, the prompts I had planned would have been really helpful, especially the first one. You need to make a home before the rest of the jobs your people can do become available to you.

The first thing you need to do is find a block of grass which has no rocks or trees surrounding it. Level that and then build a house on it. Everything else then falls into place after that.

Inspiration

I loved playing The Settlers on the Amiga with my mate Tom as a kid. It's impact on me has never deminished. It's influence is here for sure. Also Minecraft and not just permission to use blocks. It's the crap water behaviour. The water is so bad! I attempted to fix that and now I know why they left it as it was. It was really hard to get it to behave. But behave it does. Take that Mojang!

The World

The world is made of a 64x64 grid of blocks. Each block has a type: Sand, Grass and Rock. Depending on the type of block and its current state different jobs become available to you in the task menu. Sand and Rock can have a pile of Rocks to collect. Grass has Rocks and Trees.

Each world is procedurally generated. Sometimes that creates a very under sea level world that is not worth playing, just quit them and build a new one.

The Weather

It can be sunny or raining. When it rains all of the blocks get saturated. When the blocks run out of capacity to absorb the water then it over flows and creates rivers and pools. The running water erodes the land and it starts to shift the landscape. All blocks can have water on them. You can collect water from any block that has it. The Sheep hate getting wet, but the people don't mind it.

The sunshine dries the world out. It also promotes growth. The grass and trees will grow in the day if it is sunny. Standing water kills the trees and grass slowly over time, control where the water flows to optimise the worlds productivity. A block with no saturation at all also stops and growth so water is need, just not too much.

This is the element that took the most time to perfect and I am most proud of. Introducing the people took the attention away from this process but as the development was happening I really enjoyed learning how the water flowed on any given seed. Have a watch if the bugs start to ruin the experience, its probably the best bit of what I managed to complete.

The Sheep

The Sheep eat the grass and get nice and plump. Fat sheep when they find each other produce Lambs. You can eat them if you can catch them. They will avoid water if possible but sometimes they get lost to the flood. Rescue stranded sheep and put them somewhere save and abundant. Oh by the way catching the sheep is not as straight forward as it sounds they like people even less than they like water and will actively avoid you.

Trees

Harvest Sticks, Apples and Wood from Trees. Apples only appear on established Trees, which you can eat or use to plant new Trees. Harvest from the Trees that get waterlogged as they will have a harder time being productive. Place them on higher ground.

New Arrivals

New People bring with them new knowledge. I had to cut lots of this to get it done which has made the impact of a new arrival a bit too subtle. They bring with them the knowledge of new tools which extent the range of jobs you can undertake. An Axe allows you to fell Trees, Picks allow you to cut Stone etc. I intended to make these tools craft-able but ran out of time so the game just acts like the people have done that already. It has made this change a bit invisible. Work together to shape the land. They don't die and the hunger and thirst sytems have broken in the final push so there really is nothing to worry about with them. Also they wont go out at night unless you give them a specific job to do.

The Houses

Upgrade your Home to make it more durable and resistant to flooding, well that was the plan. It does not work like that yet, but you do need a Home to go to and keep your stuff.

Bugs

I have 99 problems and they are all called bugs. Some stuff does not work properly and this game really shows how little time I was able to do tests after implementing new elements of the game loop. You will have to be gentle with me, but hopefully you can see the potential. I will do a post jam fix. Mostly because I am looking forward to playing it once its done. Enjoy it for what it is. I had fun making it. This is a solo entry and probably represents 100 hours work over 7 days. It was brutal.

Peace TheSoulSelector