The Holy Treenity

All you need to do is survive for 5 minutes.

Wait, why am I dying? Oh, I don't have enough oxygen. Let's plant some trees then.

Wait, why am I so cold? Oh god, all those trees sucked all the carbon out of the air and made this place cool down! BURN THE TREES. BURN THE TREES.

Is it just me, or has it not rained in like a minute? I need water! I need water to survive!

In "The Holy Treenity", all you need to do is survive the environment. But that's easier said than done.

20 Million Trees

This game is my submission for the 20 Million Trees Game Jam. It was made completely from scratch in two weeks, with the Godot Game Engine. (Which, in hindsight, might not have been the best idea. But it all worked out wonderfully in the end.)

The theme was "create a game with a STORY involving trees". I unfortunately didn't have time for the STORY part in the game, but the tree element is more than present, so I hope that makes up for it.

Source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/Pandaqi/The-Holy-Treenity

And if you can, please donate to the 20 Million Trees project! The link is: https://teamtrees.org/

This particular game is of course meant to be some lighthearted fun, but climate is a serious issue and I am more than happy to help raise some awareness. (Climate is also a complex issue. The systems in the game are therefore heavily simplified or simply inaccurate, so don't use this game as a credible source for your climate change information :p)

What do I do in this game?

In this game, you need to survive until the end of the stage. As you play, there's the "holy trinity" of the environment to keep in check:

• Heat: temperatures that are too low or too high will kill your player. Not to mention that high temperatures cause forest fires, and low temperatures freeze all the water.
• Water: trees need water to grow, and players need water to survive.
• Oxygen/Carbondioxide: players need oxygen to breathe, which trees can produce ... but they need carbondioxide in order to do so.

But the environment interactions go much further than this. A higher average temperature means more rain can be stored in the clouds, which means it takes longer before it starts to rain. Trees drop seeds/saplings from time to time, which are essential for replanting trees during the level. (I made a diagram while developing the game, which I'll post in a devlog.)

As you play, "enemies" will also try to tear down the environment and kill you in the process. You need to stop them.

Features

This game is for 1-4 players. With more than a single player, it becomes a co-op: you need to help each other keep the environment stable.

It supports both controllers and keyboards.

There are 5 different "weapons" to use (a gun that shoots trees, another that spits water droplets, etc.) When you pick up a new weapon, you throw out the old one. This has two implications: you need to be careful with where you "leave" weapons, and if you're playing multiplayer, multiple players can never use the same weapon.

There are 5 stages of increasing difficulty. Each stage introduces a fun new gimmick that adds to the challenge.

There's a small tutorial that explains the buttons, and an interactive tutorial in the first level that explains the core mechanics. All the environment interactions, and how you can use those to your advantage, should be figured out by you! (Also because they would be way too complex and interconnected to explain in the game. Everything influences everything.)

Anything else?

Because the game was quickly created for a jam, there will certainly be bugs, or areas that could look/feel nicer, etc. (Check the GitHub repository for a small list of improvements I've noted down.)

Still, I've been able to test the game with other players, and it's never crashed for me and has always been enjoyable, so I don't think there should be too many hiccups.

You're also free to use any footage, code or assets or from the game in any way you want.

If you want to know how I made something or how I designed the game, please let me know, as I'm thinking about writing a handful of articles about the creation of this game.

Have fun!