A friend asked: "What stuff didn't make it in?". The Answer: A LOT! Our designer spent most of the jam creating a huge set of deep mechanics and testing them out in board game form; it looked a lot like this: Click Here to See my Messy House and the Game Board
Basic Mechanics:
We originally had a mechanic where the Scion could be passed between units, but we couldn't fit it into the time constraints.
Unit Mechanics:
The Mage originally could activate buildings remotely for 1 Mana, but this proved to be too difficult to implement in a way that was easy for the user to understand. He also was originally intended to suck up all mana in a Province as he walked.
"The Tide":
Originally we had a system of "Tides" which would fuel certain events and smash up the map from a specific direction. This ran into huge time constraints and was left out.
Buildings:
A LOT of buildings were nixed due to the time constraints, they are as follows:
"Swapper": This would swap the locations of Two other Buildings.
"Fault": This was a "Bad" Building that was the focus of a huge number of events. It has a really kickin' animation cycle too.
"Reset": This building would reset a target Province to it's original state.
"Teleporter": This building would teleport a Unit to a target location. It was low priority as the Scout already fit this role and was cut due to time constraints.
"Tide Changer": This building and everything to do with the "Tide" System was scrapped due to time constraints.
"Drain": This building would drain a target province of it's flood level. It was low priority as the Druid already fit this role and was cut due to time constraints.
The Mana Generator was intended to have a number of animations and a floating icon to indicate it's count; these files are actually in the game but never implemented.
Events:
A TON of events were nixed due to time constraints.
"Cracking Foundation": This would flood all Provinces near the Fault. Cut due to the lack of Fault.
"Fissure": This would flood all provinces in a straight line from the Fault, North-South/East-West. Cut due to lack of Fault.
"Leaking Pipes": "This would hit the Fault and the Closest building to it. It would then add 2 Mana to the Province that was hit. Cut due to lack of Fault.
"Oh, Frack": Target Building becomes a Fault. Cut due to lack of fault.
"Stormfront": The Tide is Randomly Set (North, South, East, West). Flood 1 Random Province. This was cut due to the lack of Tides.
"Dash on the Rocks": Flood 3 Random Province along the "Tide Coast". Cut due to lack of Tides.
"Great Wave": Flood Every Province along the "Tide Coast". Cut due to lack of Tides.
"Mana Wind": Remove All Mana from the Board. Randomly Re-distribute it to the Board. Flood 1 Random Province. This was cut due to a bug it introduced in the Mana Spawning algorithms but exists in the code.
"Unstable World": Swap a random unlit tower with a Random non-tower, and Flood 1 Province
"Parched Earth": Flood all Provinces without Mana. This was cut due to a bug it introduced in the Events System.
"Atlantean Interference": Player Loses up to 3 Mana. Unflood 1 Province by 1 Level. Flood a different Random Province. This actually exists in the code but was cut at the last minute due to some unpredictable behaviors it introduced.