Ecoclicker 0.5.3, final update - and the future

Hi! 

It's been some time, so here are some news about Ecoclicker and its future.

During the last 40ish days since my last update, I've been spending time doing various things:

1. Made a tiny runner game called "Mad Parallax: Jumpy Road" available here: https://alastor-games.itch.io/mad-parallax-jumpy-road
2. Spent some time diving in Ecoclicker code and gameplay, to see what we got there (it's been 3 years I wrote the code so I kinda forgot about it)
3. Started planning the future

Mad Parallax

This is not about Ecoclicker, but as it took me quite some time, I want to talk a bit about it. I'll write a longer post about why I made it, but to sum it up, I wanted to prove myself I could ship a finished project, even if not perfect. I don't know yet if people will like it, but I released it. I will improve it a bit in the coming weeks given some feedback I already had and will have, but it's mostly done. 

Ecoclicker status

First I updated today Ecoclicker to the 0.5.3 version, with the following changelog:

- set the game start date in 2019
- set the start CO2 concentration at 408PPM (2019 value)

Other than that, in the last month I looked at the code of Ecoclicker, and I wish I could do something better at the time. There is not much to do with it, the only way to improve the game is to add new kind of workers, policies and researches. The code doesn't look sufficiently flexible to change the game mechanisms. Adding new workers, policies and such would be interesting, but I feel the core gameplay is wrong.

In order to have a more realistic pace of changes, the game should contain some kind of constraints. Available space for tree planting, type of terrains, kind of trees (which change the CO2 absorption rates) and more subtleties should constrain the player to more strategy. This is where I realised that the incremental mechanism - the core gameplay, that requires to gather more and more without limits - is not a fit for the topic of global warming, which is about being constrained in a closed ecosystem.

For all these reasons, it doesn't make sense to build something on top of Ecoclicker. I must find a better suited kind of gameplay. This is why I embark on a new journey.

The future

Dusk of Civilisation (temporary name) will be the direct successor of Ecoclicker. Same goal: save earth from global warming. Turn-by-turn gameplay, map-based, limited actions at each turn, actions being tile change (deforesting, reforesting and so on), policies... Something between Ecoclicker and Civilization II (very humbly).

I hope I can deliver a prototype in about ten weeks. Starting work tomorrow! You can follow me at https://twitter.com/Alastor_Games to be up to date with the latest news. 

Thank you for playing Ecoclicker, and talk to you soon.