Terra Warming

A game created in five days for the 2020 Unreal Spring Jam. Sun material incorporates UE4 starter content texture "Fire_Tiled_D", but adds significant functionality. Snow material for snowball Earth is taken from GameTextures.com Free Material Pack 2019 on the Unreal Engine marketplace. All other art assets and functionality are my own.

In the far future pollution and the growing effects of global warming have forced humanity to flee the Earth, but unfortunately there are no new planets to settle on. Just when all seems lost astronomers discover a few perfect, bio-compatible planets in far flung systems. The only catch is that these "snowball Earths" are so far from their stars that they are covered in ice and snow, making them completely uninhabitable. As the crew of the solar sail Icarus, your mission is to use a variety of mirrors to redirect the stars heat and thaw the frozen planets, carving a new home for humanity.

Terra Warming is a combination puzzle arcade game incorporating two major mechanics: the piloting of a solar sail and the arrangement of mirrors. For this reason, it can be played as either a single player or co-op game. In single player mode, one player handles both solar sail piloting and mirror arranging. As a multiplayer game, one player handles each of these tasks, the pilot using the keyboard and the mirror engineer using the mouse. The game can be equally fun either way but teams will likely score higher than single players.

Gameplay footage shown here is by one player and sped up to 167% speed to fit the completion of a whole level inside the 60 second limit.

Mechanics

In Terra Warming, energy from the sun is the beginning of everything. As a player you are provided with one collector dish mirror that can concentrate sunlight into a high-intensity beam of pure heat, although this will only work if the collector is pointed nearly directly at the system's star. Spawn and arrange mirrors to redirect this beam onto your solar sail, the Icarus, in order to heat up its main dish. When fully powered and in orbit facing a planet, the ship can thaw the thick layer of ice and make the planet habitable for humanity. Avoid hitting planets with the pure energy beams as they can destroy whole worlds, ending your game. 

All solar systems in Terra Warming are procedurally generated, allowing for infinite levels. This means that like classic arcade games such as Asteroids, Terra Warming has no win condition, your only goal is to get the highest score possible by thawing as many worlds as you can without destroying any planets.

Controls

Right click - right click on a mirror to select it and rotate it using the slider that appears on screen

Click and drag - move a mirror to a new location

Double click (left mouse button) - spawn a new mirror at the mouse location

Double click (right mouse button) - delete the selected mirror

WASD/arrow keys - pilot the Icarus. Use left and right to spin the ship around Z and up and down to tilt the ship's solar wings. At a full vertical position you will be carried quickly away from the star, decrease the angle to slow and stop.

Space bar - Fire the Icarus' engine to accelerate quickly but be careful to watch the fuel bar, the engine is powerful but it eats up fuel fast. You can regain fuel slowly by tilting your solar wings toward the star or more quickly using the same energy beam that power's the ship's heat dish.

Mouse wheel button - rotate the camera around world Z to see a new perspective on the solar system