Astroecologist Roguelike
Made in 7 Days for 7DRL 2022
Explore randomly generated islands, observe new wildlife and try to bring some creatures back with you to space to research in this causal Sandbox Roguelike! Each creature has unique behaviors, interactions and routines that change throughout the day that you'll need to figure out if you want to be successful in getting them safely on board your ship. Some may hide during the day, or only be active at night. You can go for the straightforward method of tranq-ing and sokoban-ing unconscious animals around. Maybe you want to outwit or corral them in by chasin' them around (or being chased?). Once you got them onboard use your ships computer to open an close containment units to secure them in place before traveling back to the Orbital Research Station above the planet. Each time you return to the surface you'll land on a new island.
This is a low stakes / low violence game about discovery and interaction. You don't even deal damage by bumping, but you might push things around. There's no win state, and 11 different creatures to study.
Throw Rocks with R, Shoot your Tranq Gun with F, X to cancel, Close Doors with C. Bump your ship computer or the researcher at the station to get a list of operations it can perform too. The only place to heal or restock ammo is at the space station.
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You said there were 11 species to catch, but I got twelve. Or possibly I'm missing one if the three kinds of bison are all one species. Just to check I tried the nurse but although you can sedate them you can't thereafter push them and the dialogue doesn't change. This is probably a good thing. For the record, I caught frog, octo, mosquito, clawfly, beetle, snake, raptor, sail lizard, butterfly, bison, bison bull, bison calf. If there's another one I don't have any idea what it might be. I tried pushing melons just in case, but I can't seem to do it even with them fully sedated and rocks just kill them like anything else.
It's neat how much of the ecosystem is present in the game. I saw that octos like to mirror your movement and can hide (poorly) in water, frogs can hide well in water and are nocturnal, raptors live in trees, Bison form family groups with one bull and protect their calves, Butterflies like flowers, Beetles eat melons, Sail lizards eat Beetles but are scared of pretty much everything else, Clawflies are friendly and non-aggressive and only mosquitoes eat them, Mosquitoes attack anything that moves, which usually gets them squashed, and snakes hide in grass and ambush prey but leave it alone if the initial attack fails.
You are indeed correct, the Bison adults are both the same species. (Technically the calves should have been too but not enough time to make it proper lol).
Thats amazing how much of behavior you studied and how thorough you were, that really makes me happy cause it was sort of my goal with the project :D. Originally I had wanted even more ecosystem, so you would have been able to bait animals with their foods, or follow prey to locate what predates them, but way too little time/way too big of ideas lol. Thank you for taking the time to play my little game!
When I was trying to capture a family of bison, I ended up closing the door of one of the large cells on an adult bison (it was halfway in and halfway out of the cell), and the game crashed.
hmm i thought i had made it check if the doors were blocked D: its been a year since ive touched this tho
Fun game! It had a fair bit more to do than I thought it was going to, which was a nice surprise c: I like that its turn based, it lets you really think about your next move trying to corral difficult animals :P Also, I tranquillised a plant and also the nurse, 10/10
lol wait did it actually damage/knock out the scientist?
It may have been 4 months but all it does is say they've been sedated instead of anything else.
thats still pretty funny
Input in console does not work for me. I have opened it and cannot close.
Is it at the top of the screen? If so try hitting tab or enter to close it. Otherwise Im not sure what you are referring to
it's okay now.
Pretty fun, considering how minimalistic it is. Might be a good game to flesh out a bit.
thanks, yea I really didnt get as much done as I had planned but maybe one day :)
Gotta Catch 'em all.
This game is cool! but I want more animals plz.
thank you, me too lol, I actually had 1 more drawn up but didnt have time to make any more after my first batch in the jam
Was really cool! I did manage to get a raptor stranded on my ship not in a containment field and launch into orbit. This also took two more raptors that were outside of the ship but in the small indents in the ships footprint. Chaos ensued!
lol i was wondering if anyone would find that bug
This is pretty awesome. I really like it. I had some red damage numbers that were stuck permanently on the map and they moved with the ship into orbit and back. I understand it's still an early concept, but I think if you could unlock knowledge entries about the different animals when you capture them, that would be super cool. Also, does it do anything to get multiples of the same type of animal?
Thanks! knowledge entries were originally planned, with info like what they eat and descriptions and even a prompt to get to name the species but just didn't have time. You don't get anything for bringing back multiples of the same species.