This dev blog, the big news is that our revised Kickstarter campaign will be going live on the 26th September 2017.
This is just over two weeks away, and we’ll be revealing more and more of our plans as we get closer to the start date.
As we revealed on Facebook earlier this week, we’re aiming to raise a minimum of £60,000. This will be sufficient to create the first playable version of the game, which is the first step on our journey to make the best game ever made about climate change.
Once the campaign goes live, we’ll only have four weeks to hit our funding target…. so your support during that time will be critical to our success.
Backing the Kickstarter personally is the obvious way to help us – whatever size donation you can make is greatly appreciated, and we have a host of different rewards to show you our gratitude.
Beyond that, anything you can do to make people aware of our campaign is extremely helpful. Retweeting or sharing links to the Kickstarter page, or mentioning the campaign to someone you think might be interested, will all greatly assist us reaching our funding goal, and continuing development.
It’s a really exciting time for everyone at Soothsayer, the culmination of over two years’ hard work, and hopefully the start of a completely new phase for the Fate of the World project.
Also this dev blog, we’re revealing the first full screenshot from Fate of the World.
As we’ve said before, this is all work-in-progress, there are lots of placeholders, and the worst it’s ever going to look…. but with that said, here’s what the game’s main display is currently looking like:
The goal of this screen is bring all the most important information about your nation into one place, so you can quickly assess and compare its economic, environmental, industrial, technological, and political situations.
Let’s take a closer look at the Main Dashboard’s component parts. First of all, there’s the element we call the Arch:
The Arch is intended to be a near-constant element, always reminding you of the global atmospheric situation.
The two vertical bars are the “thermometers”, showing atmospheric parts per million of CO2E on the left, and average global temperature on the right. They’re much like the ones seen in the End of Turn screen
The marks you can see on each bar are the goals you’ve pledged to observe, with their numerical value displayed on the horizontal bar above. Here, we see that the USA has joined a pledge to achieve no greater than a 2 degree temperature increase, which requires global emissions not exceed 510 gigatons.
Below the arch, there are six panels, each summarising a specific topic of national interest:
Each of these panels is buttonised, meaning that you can tap/click on them to reveal a sub-screen where the summarised information is broken out into full detail.
The top panel shows your core game stats: what nation you’re playing; how polically stable it is (your game ends if your nation ceases to function as such); whether your populace are more politically motivated by the economy or the environment; how much money you’ve got to spend on your initiatives; the maximum emissions level you’ve pledged to observe; and a score reflecting how well you’re playing.
Below that is the Economic panel, while to the right is the Demographic. Both of those we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, and on the dev blog here and here.
Bottom left is the Environmental panel, showing you the most important ecological metrics. How abundant and healthy wildlife is in your country and its surrounding waters; how stressed your fresh water cycle is; how much viable land there is for farming or reforestation; and how many waste products your economy is releasing into it.
On the right of the screen, we’ve already talked about the Fuel Use panel here. Beside it is the Technology panel, which shows your nation’s relative sophistication in five areas of science.
Finally, at the bottom of the screen are the game controls:
The “Back” button is used to bring you out of the various sub-screens, while End Turn commits your current policies for play, advancing the game one year.
Between those controls are the Policy buttons. Each one brings up a specific menu of policy cards to address a particular area of government.
The colour scheme is very similar to the original FOTW deck colours: yellow is energy/industry, green is environmental, red is public welfare. There’s also a completely new deck: gold cards will focus specifically on policies affecting wealth and finance.
That’s about all we have for you right now, but we’ll be back with another newsletter next week. Meanwhile, if you want to keep tabs on what we’re at, come find us on Twitter at @fateoftheworld, or join the discussion in our FOTW Online Facebook Group.
Hope to see you there!
Klaude & Matt,
Soothsayer Games.