It's been so great seeing this game develop. I really appreciated how you incorporated feedback from the Production sprint. This version includes many quality-of-life enhancements, including text progressing at the player's speed, and the background is visually improved. Wishing you the best of luck as we finish up the jam!
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Waste Not (IndieCade Climate Jam '24)'s itch.io pageGame Title
Waste Not
Developer Name
TAStier
Short Promo Blurb
You are a new worker with the Global Waste Management project. Sort waste from recycling as you learn about how what we throw out affects our carbon footprint.
Full Description
Those working with the Global Waste Management project are tasked with sorting trash from recycling using our revolutionary digital interfaces, allowing workers to process waste at scale remotely. Workers will drag cubes representing either trash or recycling to either side of their screen to dispose of it. Meanwhile workers will get the opportunity to learn more about what they are doing and how it helps the environment.
Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u6G5jPoXanx5OnuuVqv1OlQMK9SGcfSt/view?usp=sharing
Promo Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNhi1j7y7nM
Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
This game is about handling garbage, and how the mechanisms we have in place today for dealing with garbage are broadly ineffective at reducing carbon emissions. The way this is presented is through initially presenting an overly-simplistic take on how things like recycling help “save the environment” and then subverting that by drawing attention to the fact that our overall emissions absolutely dwarf the amount that our current systems offset. The game ends by directing players to turn their attention to the root causes of the current problems and encourages them to explore collective action as a means to fight those root causes. The overall style was broadly influenced by the style of webgames found on sites like neal.fun, games that are relatively simple but interesting and educational.
Development Summary
This was relatively narrow in scope from the beginning, as I was working as a solo developer and knew I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything too expansive. This meant that my overall plan didn’t differ very much from my final product, which is satisfying to say the least. Most of the time spent in development was spent on tweaking relatively minor things throughout the game to make it feel more polished wherever I could. The result is an understandably small game with a simple to understand gameplay loop and a generally well polished player experience. I struggled with researching and writing most, but feel quite proud of how it turned out overall. I worked almost entirely solo for this entire project, although I did get some help from a close friend of mine with editing and doing sound for the trailer.
Release Plan
If I was given another pass, I’d like to tune the writing a little more, and be more thorough with my research to better convey my ideas, and also take some time to fiddle with the visual style a bit to make it a little more interesting. Right now its workable but certainly still feels a bit like dev art. It is releasable in this state, but there is absolutely room for improvement on multiple fronts.
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