Game Title
Climate GO - Final

Developer Name
Team Climate GO

Short Promo Blurb
Your real life actions impact the climate of your virtual sky island!

Full Description
Climate Go is a game where you real-life travels and fossil fuel consumptions will impact your virtual island that you will be trying to maintain. We calculate the distance of your travels that you have started in our game through a destination selection system. Then, we obtain the impacts to your miniature climate on the sky island that you are maintaining.

You will earn green tokens through green means of travel - like public transport or walking/biking. You can use these tokens to plant trees and fill up your island with decorations. Having more trees will help you to mitigate a bit of your fossil fuel consumptions passively, and small critters will come and live on your island if there are enough trees!

Be careful though! If you don't care to maintain your island, you might lose it all...

Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12SVTAHeNUFJd2tQPFqNURdrUxXfqU9eX

Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xbKRMPz_MP3v49dDhLQSUU6CzEBY-AHz

Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
We really like the idea of “change the story,” and with that theme in mind, we’ve decided to create something that connects the real world and the game world, a special game where the players can actually “change the story.”

In our game, the theme “change the story” can be interpreted in two different ways:

First, the players are changing the story in their games. The player’s real-life actions (driving, taking public transportation, biking, etc.) will have impacts on the in-game island. The environmental damages the player causes (or prevents) in real life will all be proportionally reflected in the climate change that happens in the game. For example, the average temperature, pollution level, and PM concentration/visibility on the island can rise as the player drives more and more, and the vegetation and animals on the island will then react to the changes. The players will be able to see firsthand how their actions are impacting the environment and the creatures out there. Here, the theme “change the story” is incorporated by having the players change the environment of their own virtual island.

The second way of interpreting the theme in our game is that our game can change the story of the players’ lives, and even the world. After the players see how their actions can impact the environment and, are probably, shocked by how much damage humans have caused to the Earth and the wildlife, hopefully, they will pay more attention to climate change and environmental protection in the future. If our game, after its full release, reaches more people, there’s a chance that we can change the lifestyles of a considerable amount of people so that they can start living a “greener” life. No matter how small that number is, it’s still something. Plus I’m pretty sure that our Earth can use all the help we can offer right now, no matter how tiny.

Development Summary
We started as a 3-people team at the very beginning, before the jam kickoff. And then, during the first couple of days after the kickoff, we got the chance to talk to several other people who were also interested in joining the jam, and luckily, we’ve got ourselves a nice 7-people team. The new people we talked to included a sound designer, who then became our Audio Lead, 2 engineers, who actually built the game from the ground up during the Prototyping and Production sprints, and a designer who helped us with our Ideation Documents. Later in the Production sprint, our Audio Lead got 2 composers to help with our project by making the theme music for each scene. Although they haven’t officially joined the jam, our game wouldn’t have been as nice and polished as it is right now.

Our development journey was also quite exciting. We decided on our main goal pretty early, that we wanted to make a game where the players’ real-life actions can impact the game world. We thought that, rather than making a more traditional game like a platformer or something and simply putting some environment-related stuff in there to fit the theme, connecting the real world and the game world has the potential to achieve something greater. It can be more than a game. There’s some chance that we could make a piece of art that raises awareness for environmental protection. And that’s how we started with Climate Go.

Initially, we wanted to include way more features than what we currently have. We wanted to calculate the environmental impacts of every real-life action of the players and have them reflected in the game, which was, of course, not possible. We also wanted to calculate a lot of different environmental data like CO2 emission, NOx emission, humidity, precipitation, UV levels, PM concentration, SO2 emission, ozone damage, etc., and to create a complex system of how creatures and the environment can interact with these data. And, obviously, we had to focus on a couple of the more important elements. We kept several main factors like average temperature, PM concentration, pollution level, energy reserve, etc., and focused mainly on the players’ traveling behaviors’ impact on the environment. While the game is not as complex as the original idea, it is still fun to play and still does the job of showing the players how their real-life actions can impact the world. It became even better. The system is a lot more simple and straightforward so that any new player can quickly get the point of the game.

To make the game more scientific and accurate, we did a lot of research on how cars, public transplantation, etc., emit different kinds of pollutants as they go and how these pollutants affect the environment. The hardest part was quantifying the level of environmental impact per mile driven. There was a lot of digging and a lot of math to come up with an accurate, stable, and enjoyable numbers system. Also, to make the environmental changes in the game more significant and noticeable, we scaled up the players’ impacts so that the impact of the player’s one-mile drive on the in-game island reflects the level of environmental impact on our Earth if everyone in the world drives for one mile.

In this process, we were surprised by how fragile our world actually is. Based on our calculations, if everyone in the world consistently does a round-trip between USC and the Chinese restaurants in San Gabriel every day, which is indeed something we do every day during summer and winter breaks, the world’s fossil fuel reserve will run out in less than 20 years! It’s not just a concern for future generations. It’s something that might actually affect our lives way before we’re gone. And that’s why it’s important to pay attention to climate change and do what we can to make sure things don’t go out of control before they absolutely have to.

Release Plan
We consider the current build to be good and polished enough for an actual release. If the people on the team are free and willing to continue working on it, we’ll mainly be adding more items in the Shop so that the players can have more options when decorating their islands. We might also add some new animal behaviors and interactions, together with some new animals. Last but not least, of course, we’ll be fixing all bugs we might find from now on. After everything’s ready, we’re thinking about releasing the game on Google Play and App Store.