good game :D
you should add meddles
Author Comments
Created for the Construct 2030 game jam, Arcology is a city-building game that focuses on the importance of sustainability.
Even today population levels are at dangerous highs, and urban sprawl is impacting heavily on the environment. A proposed solution to this is the Arcology - an entire city inside a megabuilding. Instead of building ever outwards, humanity can build towards the skies, halting its encroachment on natural environments. In the year 2030 can you create a sustainable Arcology, whilst providing for all the lives dependant on you for additional housing, food, and entertainment?
CONTROLS:
Entirely mouse-based. Left-click to select, right-click to pan the camera, mouse wheel to zoom in or out.
TIPS:
Unlike most city-building games, population is constantly increasing whether you want it to or not. It's your job as Governor of the city to provide homes and food for an ever-increasing populace.
Almost every building has a bonus when constructed next to a specific other building. Hover over the building selections to see how to make use of them. Bonuses are applied for columns as well as rows.
The University unlocks access to Marketing from the Head Quarters. This allows you to convert your city's Happiness into additional Sustainability, Income, or Population growth. Very useful if you're racking up lots of Happiness bonuses from buildings!
Food buildings provide bonus food when constructed next to identical food buildings (for example, a fishery next to a fishery), but a variety of different food provides more Happiness. Constructing that second fishery to score the food bonus will provide less Happiness than constructing a new type of food building would. It's apples to oranges (sorry, I couldn't resist).
A cramped city is an unhappy and messy city. The closer your Population is to its maximum capacity, the unhappier your city will be, and your Sustainability score will also take a hit. The more space and food there is to go around, the happier and cleaner your city will be, leading to a higher Sustainability score.
Music:
"Chipper Doodle" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
"How it Begins" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
A nice fun building game! I reached the top floor on the first try almost by accident, not knowing the full mechanics of the game, while on other tries, my sustainability kept running dry quickly. I guess geothermal plants are the most effective way to go.
I like how it was entirely mouse-controlled, keeping it simple for all player levels to enjoy, and the gameplay led you to group similar building types like food and housing areas. Kind of brings to mins a Sim City style of gameplay, but on a vertical scale. I've always liked the idea of vertical city building, and a game like this that brings that mindset to play is a welcome addition to the games here on NG! Thanks!
i really want to play this but its so small i cant read it what am i doing wrong? when i click next to the original building i see a square and what seems to be options pos up around it but its microscopic. please help and thank you! i promise i will rate higher but im leaving it as a one for now sry.
Darkstorne responds:
Zoom in! The game requires a mouse wheel, so that might be why you're unable to play. If so, sorry!
Nice, but I think more levels would be nice and the price system for the levels is weird, I mean, it shouldn't increase if the space you're constructing is smaller. Also, the population never stops growing.
Darkstorne responds:
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Going to respond to all the common critique in this post. I'm holding off on updates since this was for a time-limited competition, and continuing to improve the game after the due date reeks of cheating to me. It's incredibly unfair to everyone else who entered.
1) Higher levels are more expensive, even though they provide less space to build: Yes, for two reasons. 1- building higher is always more expensive, because it adds to the cost of supporting structure. Especially in a building this size (Arcologies will easily dwarf today's tallest buildings). 2- It's a gameplay decision. Your income and available cash increases as the game goes on, so increasing levels needed to be more expensive to give you something to spend it on and prevent you rushing through the game in mere minutes =)
2) Population keeps growing until you lose: Yep, and I now wish I'd made the ending go to a different screen and actually the end game. It was a toss-up between doing that, or allowing you to continue playing around after you'd won the game. I went for the latter option. Population keeps growing because... that's life. In reality we don't build houses to increase population, we build houses to give the increasing population somewhere to live. So yes, when population caps out and you've built everything you can, we'd need a second Arcology! Or planet =P
3) Destroying Structures: Absolutely something I wanted to do, but had to cut the feature due to lack of time. Would love to add this after the competition is over! Again, I don't want to continue working on the game after the deadline - that's cheating. I also want to add people walking around between shops and houses etc, as well as different Arcology designs, with their own unique layouts for different playstyles =)
4) "I don't have a mousewheel! I can't play!" That's right. Arcology also won't run in DOS. Sorry, but the game definitely needs scrolling. I could work in a different solution using +/- keys or something, but it would be pretty janky... I'll look into this after the competition is over, but destroying/rebuilding and new Arcologies is a higher priority. Think of a mouse wheel as a "minimum requirement", at least for now =P
5) Mute Button: I can put this in easily, so yep, I'll definitely add it. Until then, just turn off your speakers =P
Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback! Looking forward to building this into something more polished. It was a rush putting it all together in just over a month for the game jam =)
Nice little game, but the fact that it is impossible to win is kind of a downer. Even if you have max levels the population just keeps growing until you lose.
