Topia World Builder - (by Crescent Moon Games)

My guess from what I've read is that the first update should be quite soon, making a more practical savegame feature, fixing the (few) bugs arised and (maybe) integrating water animal(s) because the models are ready. The following updates will possibly take longer.

This is fun, and it looks great on the iPad 3. You can get into quite a nice level of detail with the landscapes. Click here for a full resolution iPad 3 screenshot. http://www.candykiller.com/temp/topia1.jpg

Suggestion/question:


What do the symbols mean when the animals interact? I got the "X" means something died, the weird symbol means something was born, but I don't get the Heart. Doesn't seem like anything happens with that. Can we have a legend in the menu describing the symbols, the animals and what they eat, and different landscape types (desert, grass, mountain, etc) and what may grow on them?

An idea for a game mode: start with X resources. Each critter and land deformation costs resources. You gain resources by creatures reproducing. See how large a herd you can manage on a preset world. Occasional predatory incursions can be fought off by spending resources on the Lightning tool (or disintegration button, whatever you wanna call it :P) or deforming land to isolate your herd (but now there is less food to go around, less room to grow, etc). Give a timeline to reach certain goals. Seems like it wouldn't be super hard to implement based off of what's already in game.

If you must keep the replay and not have a save option, we will need a massive fast foward multiplier, because if I work on a world for a couple hours, i would like to have it pretty much instantly. This game is so addicting, I am always finding things to add to my world!

those are really unique mountains!
thanks everyone for the suggestions so far. Glenn and I have been thinking about what to put in the next update, and listening to your feedback.

that actually sounds similar to one of the original 'game ideas' we were toying around with.

I'm just gonna grab this from all these positive impressions!

EDIT: Darn, iOS 5 only. Gotta get around to updating my iOS sometime soon...

Cool! Im available Monday- Friday after 5pm and I will work for Baconators and Mountain Dew :P. I don't think adding in game modes would detract from the sandboxishness of the current build. Just leave a sandbox mode as the default game "type".

There is such a huge range of directions you guys can go with what you've built. Really looking forwards to seeing what you come up with!

Another game type:

Flip the tables a bit. Have random preset worlds already populated (kinda like Solitare apps that keep score based on the "puzzle" number) and give the player something like 3 predators they can place on the world. Once placed, time how long it takes for them to devour everything! Poor placement = slow reproduction and longer time to travel between herds. Just a nifty way to watch everything get butchered and get a score for it haha!

Unfortunately this... app... only held my attention for a few minutes, and was then deleted. It's a cool idea but there's just not enough to do at the moment. It's not the lack of objectives that bothers me, it's the lack of tools/abilities/change. I can make a mountain and a beach and a valley. That's it. Ok I can throw in some animals, but they are rather poorly done - they look bad and don't seem to do anything very interesting. More interesting to me would be the ability to fast forward time (a lot) and watch as weather (and maybe other things like volcanoes and even tectonic plate movements) build, move, and erode the landscape. Perhaps that's asking too much, but as it stands there's just not enough here to do/watch.

Or you could just have fun making stuff...

I'm gonna try and make earth here in a minute.