TidePools

Welcome to Tidepools from Noggin Means Brains.

In this game, you are watching carnivores, herbivores, and detritivores live out there lives in a tidepool.  The herbivores eat grass, the carnivores eat the herbivores.  When either of those die, they leave remains which the detritivores recycle into grass.

Each creature is capable of reproducing when it meets one of its own kind if it is old enough and if it has eaten since it last reproduced.  Because they lay their eggs in the current, you can't tell where their children will appear. 

If two creatures of the same kind meet but have not eaten, they will fight.  This simulates overcrowding.  They can (and do) kill each other.

Each time a creature is created or destroyed, you get an evolution point.  Using these points, you can add seeds or creatures to the map.  Your controls are:

WASD - move

Mouse Scroll - look up/down

V - Add saw grass (kills carnivores and detritivores)

B - Add grass (feeds herbivores)

N - Add herbivore

M - Add carnivore.

To win, you have to keep the herbivore and  carnivore populations balanced for 30 minutes.  Population Min/Max are:

Herbivores: 5 - 100 

Carnivores 5 - 50

It's harder than it looks.  Good luck!

Notes:  

The creatures evolve new movement patterns over time.  Early on, you'll see a lot of fast movers.  If you want them to live and reproduce, you've got to keep them fed.  They tend to die off. You don't need them though.  Most games, carnivores who don't move evolve.  They stay in one place and let herbivores come to them.  In time they get surrounded by grass as detritivores eat the remains around them.  It's a very successful pattern.

The system is slightly energy negative over time.  The longer an  herbivore lives, the more energy the system loses.  There's enough to finish the game but not much extra.

Day and night are purely cosmetic at this time. 

This was a Christmas project 2022.  It was completed with load screens/win condition etc. on 1/2/23.

In some ways it's still pretty rough, no fade transitions, player can scroll of map edge etc. but it is a working, sort of balanced game.  I don't know if I'll come back to it or not.

Hope you enjoy.  I love feedback/comments so please slag away.

TY!

Kate