Climating Design

Game ref:

Landnama+beecarbonize

An hex grid based exploration+build game. Resource Management Game. Background is a beach town.

you start from a center hexagon, you can see hex around you. you can explore a hex. after that you would know the detail type of the hex. then you can pick an action to work on the hex. each action would change that hex into another one, and consume/provide resources. resource type can be: money, species diversity, polution, people happiness, reputation etc. detail type can be : Estuary, Coral Reef, Lagoon, Salt Marsh, Seagrass Beds, Ocean Platform, Sea Cliffs, Mudflats, Tide Pools etc. Actions can be exploit, protection, research and travel industry. each would be different based on the detailed type. The main problem I have now is hard to imagine how to make those actions different and how to make player's choice be strategic. Maybe like beecarbon, we need to detailed adjust numbers so player need to pick carefully so they would not run out of money or get too much polution immediately, while get luck and unlock better actions they can do to a tile. the game target would be to survive and get reputation to 100. if you get no money or out of species or too much polution, you lose.

To fit the theme: 

You can learn more actions you can do to each tile during the game. So the first time you play the game, it would probably end with you exploit all the resources and get banished because you don’t know many actions to do. And the second time(imagine you time travel back to the start but you have all the knowledge you learned before) with the knowledge you have, you can earn enough money AND protect the environment.

Minimal demo:

1. Create hex based map explore, you start with only one tile explored as your center, you can explore any tile that adjacent to an explored tile.
   1. Auto tile map generation. We can start with some simple pure randomness way to generate.
2. When explore a tile, show the detail of the tile.
   1. Explore a tile cost time and resources.
3. After you know a detail of a tile, you can select which action to do on the tile. The actions is based on what is the tile and (maybe) what’s around the tile.
4. Resource system 
   1. Game over and game win  based on resources

Resource type:

Money: most actions need money to build

Pollution: when biodiversity lower to 0, lose the game

Biodiversity: when biodiversity lower to 0, lose the game. Maybe combine this with polution as they are stictly related to each other.

Reputation: get to 100 reputation to win the game

Technology: some better action requires technology

Human resource?

Tile type:（bold ones are the first batch to implement as people are most familiar with them)

Shallow Sea:(these stuff should only show near the land)

• Coral Reef 珊瑚礁
  • Fishing：add little money, any nearby shallow sea tile increase the money
  • Blast Fishing:  add lots money, decrease biodiversity, increase pollution
  • Diving: add money, increase pollution, add reputation. Any different kind of tiles around it would increase the money
  • Scientific research: cost money, add technology，increase scient increase for each coral around it
  • Protection: can not do any action around this tile
  • All the above can shared for all shallow sea tiles, special for coral:
  • Coral Harvesting: increase money, decrease biodiversity, illegal risk
  • Coral Transplantation: cost technology, money, biodiversity increase
  • Coral Reef Tourism
• Seagrass Bed 海草床
  • Main difference is seagrass is edible. Maybe this harvest would effect restaurant on land
• Oyster Reef 牡蛎礁
  • Same as above. Oyster might increase reputation
  • Can do Oyster Farming in tiles like Estuary ,lagoon, bay, shallow water
• Red Mangroves 红树林 
  • Mangrove Honey Production
  • Mangrove Eco-filtration
  • Mangrove Crab Farming
  • Mangrove Deforestation
• Estuary 河口 
  • Brackish Water Aquaculture
  • Salt Marsh Farming
  • Massive Dredging to let ships pass,polution++
  • Industrial Wastewater Discharge
  • Wetland Reclamation
• Lagoon 潟湖
  • Lagoon Pearl Farming
  • Lagoon Freshwater Aquaculture
  • Floating Farms
  • Massive Aquaculture
• Tide Pools潮汐池
• Coastal Shallow Waters
  • Seaweed Farming
  • Coastal Wind Farms
  • Coastal Oil Drilling
  • Coastal Land Reclamation
• Bays

Deep Sea(these stuff should only show far away from the land)

Hydrothermal Vent 深海热泉

Abyssal Plain 深海平原

Trench 海沟

Ocean Platform（basically some island)

Land （these tiles should be around the center tile)

• Salt Marsh 盐沼
• Coastal Wetlands
• Mudflats 泥滩
• Sea Cliffs
• Rocky Shore
• Sandy Beach
• Pebble Beach
• Saline-Alkali Soil
• Land
  • You can build restaurant and tourist shop etc

Special event:

Neighbour city ask to discharge pollution to the ocean

there might not all be realist stuff, like it can contains technology that is not possible now.

Question unsettled in design:

1. with the current design, I don't see why would player choose to do really bad things like blast fishing or massive aquaculture. I'm thinking either:

1. those bad things really give player lots of money so they would take the risk.But then player might do lots of those stuff, so maybe we need a limitation other wise player might over do them.
2. those are more like events that if you have several fishing tile, you get higher chance to trigger the blast fishing event, and you need to spend money/tech etc to deal with the event.
3. you can actually "win" the game with polution as long as you get enough reputation. there are more than one way to "win", but after the win, you would be notified another ending for your island - bad polution cause people get sick and no one eat fish here and the town finally not popular anymore, like a bad win.

2. I'm considering, instead of having a "resource" as polution or creature diversity as a whole, maybe each tile has a polution and creature diversity value. if it goes bad, then this tile is dead and you can't save it later. the polution can spread to neighbour tiles. the diversity would not, but would affect how much you can farm on the tile.

hex map explore example:

MoodBoard:

prototype for art