v8 — Micro Jam 061: Islands Release

Summary

The first public release of Skyland Inc., built for Micro Jam 061: Islands - theme: Islands, prerequisite: you start with nothing.

You wake on a nine-tile scrap of floating island with a tree, a patch of reeds, a pond and a dig site, and nothing else. Everything after that is earned: chop and cut and scoop by hand, weave rope, build a Workbench, and start turning raw material into better material. Sawdust and water pack into Dorodango, and a dried dorodango buys you a new tile - the island physically grows as you play.

From there the chain opens up. The Kiln fires clay into brick and chars wood into charcoal, the Well trickles water even while the game is closed, the Grinder turns stone into sand, the Smelter melts iron, and the Mineshaft gives you a vein of iron ore right on its tile. Four tools double what you gather, and four of them get an Iron tier that doubles it again - own both and a node yields four times its base.

Your character walks the island with WASD or the arrow keys, and standing on a node auto-gathers it on cooldown, so parking on the tree while you plan your next build is a legitimate way to play. Seeds drop as you gather, and planting them is how you grow past the four nodes you started with. A 32-quest checklist walks you through the whole tech tree, everything autosaves to your browser, and buildings keep working while the tab is closed.

New

The Island

A 9-tile starter island - mostly grass, with a pond, a tree, a patch of reeds and one dig site seeded at fixed spots.
Island expansion - spend 2 Dorodango to claim any unclaimed tile touching your island. There's no limit; the island grows as far as you're willing to feed it.
Tile states - a tile can be empty, hold a resource node, a finished building, a construction site, or a batch of dorodango drying in the sun. What you can do with it depends on what's on it.
Clear mode - demolish a building or clear a plant for half its cost back, with a confirmation showing the exact refund. Nothing you place is permanent, so no tile choice is a wrong one.

Movement & Gathering

Walk the island - move your character one tile at a time with WASD or the arrow keys, at a steady step rate regardless of your keyboard's repeat settings.
Auto-gathering - stand on a tree, reeds or a dig site and your character works it the moment its cooldown is up, over and over, for as long as you stay. The pond is water, and water blocks movement, so it's the one node that always needs a click.
Click to gather - any node on the grid can be gathered by clicking it directly, from anywhere.
Four wild nodes - Tree (1 Wood, 5s), Reeds (1 Fiber, 5s), Pond (2 Water, 1.5s) and Dig Site (1 Clay every 5s, with a 25% chance of also turning up Stone).
Animated character - the player sprite animates as it walks and flips to face the direction you last moved.
Choose your look - pick your character's appearance when you start a new game.

Planting

Seeds - gathering Wood or Fiber has a 20% chance to also drop the matching Tree Seed or Fiber Seed. It's the only way to get them.
Plant on any empty tile - a seed takes 60 seconds to grow, with its own sapling sprite while it's immature, and then behaves exactly like the wild node it grew into. Clearing a plant refunds the seed.

Resources

Seventeen resources in all: Wood, Stone, Water, Fiber, Rope, Sawdust, Dorodango, Clay, Brick, Tree Seed, Fiber Seed, Sand, Iron Sand, Glass, Charcoal, Iron Ore and Iron.

Storage caps - every resource shares one cap, starting at 20 and rising with the Storage Shed and its expansion.

Buildings

Workbench (4 Wood, 2 Stone) - unlocks crafting and the tool upgrades. 5s to build.
Hut (10 Wood, 6 Stone, 3 Fiber) - a roof over your head, and the base for the Gatherer's Loft.
Storage Shed (6 Wood, 4 Stone) - raises every resource cap by 30.
Kiln (8 Dorodango) - fires bricks, chars charcoal, melts glass and fast-dries dorodango, 5 jobs at a time.
Well (2 Wood, 10 Brick, 2 Rope) - generates water passively, including while the game is closed.
Grinder (10 Brick, 20 Stone) - grinds stone into sand, one batch at a time.
Smelter (20 Brick, 20 Stone) - smelts iron sand or iron ore into Iron, up to 10 jobs at once.
Mineshaft (50 Wood, 20 Brick, 5 Iron Sand, 25 Rope) - a permanent Iron Ore node on its own tile, 1 every 60s.

Building Upgrades

Gatherer's Loft (Hut upgrade - 32 Wood, 4 Glass) - +1 to every gathering action, permanently.
Shed Expansion (Storage Shed upgrade - 15 Brick, 10 Wood, 25 Fiber) - +50 to every resource cap.

Tools

Bought once at the Workbench, kept forever - no durability, no consumables.

Axe (3 Wood, 2 Stone, 1 Rope) - doubles Wood per chop.
Bucket (2 Wood, 2 Rope) - doubles Water per scoop.
Shovel (2 Wood, 2 Stone, 1 Rope) - doubles Clay per dig, and raises a Dig Site's Stone chance from 25% to 50%.
Scyth (2 Wood, 2 Stone, 1 Rope) - doubles Fiber per cut.
Pickaxe (3 Wood, 3 Stone, 1 Rope) - doubles Iron Ore per Mineshaft dig.

Iron Tools

Each needs the Smelter and the matching base tool, and costs 2 Iron, 10 Rope, 10 Wood. They stack multiplicatively with the base tool, so owning both quadruples that node's yield. (There's deliberately no Iron Bucket.)

Iron Axe, Iron Pickaxe, Iron Shovel, Iron Scyth.

Recipes

Rope - 2 Fiber, instant. Every tool at the Workbench needs some.
Sawdust - 2 Wood, instant.
Dorodango - 2 Sawdust + 2 Water, two ways to dry it: Sun Dry takes 30s and occupies an empty tile (free, and you can run as many in parallel as you have space for), or Kiln Fire takes 10s and a Kiln slot instead.
Dig Site - 2 Wood + 2 Rope, placed on an empty tile as a permanent clay node.
Brick - 3 Clay + 1 Wood, 30s in the Kiln.
Charcoal - 2 Wood, 10s in the Kiln. A hotter fuel for the Smelter.
Glass - 10 Sand + 1 Wood, 20s in the Kiln (needs the Grinder for the sand).
Grind Sand - 5 Stone, 5s at the Grinder, with a 25% chance of also turning up Iron Sand.
Iron - smelt 2 Iron Sand + 1 Charcoal in 30s, or 1 Iron Ore + 1 Charcoal in 45s for double the yield.

Quests

32 quests in a single always-visible checklist, ticking themselves off as you play - there's nothing to hand in. They run from Stretch Your Legs and the four raw resources, through the Workbench, tools and your first dorodango, to the Kiln, Well, Grinder, Smelter and finally Mine Iron Ore.
The Next card always shows the one quest you're working toward, so the list doubles as the tutorial.

UI

Resource bar - live counts of everything you own against the current cap.
Island grid - the main play surface: gather, plant, expand, build and demolish all happen by clicking tiles. Escape cancels a pending build or placement.
Chain placement - after sun-drying a dorodango or placing a dig site, the placement stays active so you can lay down a whole run without re-selecting it.
Crafting panel - recipes appear as the buildings that unlock them go up, with live Kiln and Grinder job progress.
Build panel - buildings gated by their prerequisites, with a place-on-tile flow.
Progressive reveal - recipes, buildings and upgrades stay hidden until you've seen the materials they need, so the panels grow with you instead of listing the whole tech tree on day one.
New badge - anything that has just become available is flagged so you notice it.
Event log - a rolling feed of flavour-text messages describing what just happened.
Statistics - lifetime totals: time played, resources gathered, items crafted, island size and tiles travelled.
Start Over - wipe the save and begin again from the fixed starter island.
How to Play - a separate page explaining the controls, plus jam credits.
Pixel art throughout - hand-drawn sprites for every resource, tool, building, node and tile, including edge variants that pick themselves automatically along the island's border.

Saving

Autosave - everything is written to your browser after every action and on every tick. No account, no cloud, no server.
Offline progress - the game works out how long you were away (up to 2 hours) and catches up: the Well's water, drying batches, Kiln and Grinder jobs, and construction sites all finish as if you'd been watching.