Mandible Games

Windows (.zip version available)
Mac OSX
Linux (32-bit only)

"Wait, Nieuwe Aarde? What's going on? Didn't we already see this game?"

Well, yeah. You did. And you'll be seeing more of it, too!

I've decided to turn Nieuwe Aarde, along with one other game yet to be announced, into a longer-term project. I've got ideas on how to improve it considerably. This isn't really an improved version – this is just a re-release of the version you've played before – but it does have a few improvements.

First off, and most noticably, it has music! I've been collaborating with Robert Seaton with music for a few of my games (and I'll be posting them with music as well, though they won't be getting a long-term treatment.) We did a really neat thing with the music in this game. I'm not going to spoil it, but you should go play it to find out. Seriously it's pretty dang cool.

Second, a common complaint was that increasing your metal and magic in the lategame took far too long. I've added +1000/-1000 buttons as a small hack fix for that.

Third, the rendering engine is far more efficient – the original renderer was quite shockingly bad. Sometimes that's just what happens when you have 48 hours to write a game in. I regret nothing.

Overall, this is the same game . . . but keep an eye on this journal, because I'm going to be making some major changes to it.

So. Nieuwe Aarde, that game I made for Ludum Dare in 48 hours.

This is going to be one of the toughest postmortems I've written.

What Worked

Well, first of all, it's fun. I'm getting a lot of commentary saying that they enjoyed figuring it out and that they think it's an enjoyable game overall. That's cool. I seem to have done a good job with the base game mechanics and the interface, I'm having very few people tell me that they simply couldn't figure it out.

The art, while not spectacular, is servicable and nonconfusing. The game feel is consistent. The tooltips work absolutely great for explaining the concepts.

I also appear to have nailed the difficulty. I've had a few complaints that it's way too easy, and a few complaints that it's way too hard, but the bulk seems to fall into the categories of "it's tough, but I beat it" and "it's tough, and I didn't beat it, but I think I could have if I'd put more time into it."

For doing it within 48 hours, it turned out great. Compare it to my earlier games – I spent a third as much time on this one, and I think it turned out better. My tools are maturing like you wouldn't believe and I'm just getting faster and more skilled at this whole thing.

So, in summary, I made a good game.

What Didn't Work

The problem is that I didn't make the game I wanted to.

The original goal was Desktop Dungeons meets Seafarers of Catan. Desktop Dungeons is a clever small-scale dungeon crawler which is designed so that almost every single move is critically important. Sure, you can get a nice lead, but that lead can be whittled down rapidly by bad luck. Doing "as well as you can" is critical, every step of the way, and each time you click it had better be the right click.

Nieuwe Aarde doesn't succeed in that. You'll spend a large part of the game clicking "Work" over and over, for example. Clicking a few too many times? Totally okay! Building the wrong thing entirely? You can probably recover! There's very little that has to be timed exactly, and the game design itself isn't conducive to the sort of miniature puzzle where you're trying to scrape out the last little possible iota of advantage.

I still think it may be possible, but if I want to do it, I'm going to have to start from basics again.

The Bottom Line

I made a fun game, but I made the wrong game. I'm not really sure whether I want to call this a success or not.

On the other hand, I made a fun game. If this is failure, I wouldn't mind failing more often.

The planet is dying.

Monsters raise themselves out of the ocean monthly. The skies themselves blacken.

You, and your civilization, have but one choice: amass enough magical power to leap across the starless void, to another, safer planet. But you're racing against time – every day the attacks get stronger.

The planet is dying, and it's taking you with it.

Ludum Dare competition page and voting

Windows (.zip version available)
Mac OSX (10.6 or higher)

Nieuwe Aarde was made for Ludum Dare 17, a 48-hour game development competition. Yeah, that's right, my normal week-long development process was compressed into two days.

Ouch.

The theme for this event was Islands, and so Islands is what I did! Nieuwe Aarde was inspired by Desktop Dungeons and Seafarers of Catan, and I feel like I've made a reasonably coherent little single-player strategy game with a whole pile of tooltips.

Postmortem up in a few days. Time to start on the next project!