(Note: These opinions are based on the World Turtles Exclusive Pre Next Fest Demo, the game can change, and full features will be available when it releases in August)
World Turtles is a wholesome strategy game, set on a giant turtle navigating through the vastness of space. This turtle is, in fact, a whole world with its ecosystems and resources, and is inhabited by a colony of people called Meeps.
An interesting aspect is that as a player, you don’t directly control the Meeps. Instead, you chose where to construct buildings, harvest resources, allocate and prioritize tasks, and they respond on their own completing these tasks.
Like any game of this kind, an important part is the farming and collection of different natural resources from the environment, from rocks and wood to construct, to vegetables and animals for food. However, this game has the concept of directly impacting the surrounding ecosystem. You can affect the state of the terrain, how much water and food is available, and the world also has a day-night cycle that affects temperature and humidity. All these elements determine the development of the Meeps and their relationship with nature.
To make the Meep community grow and evolve, you have to develop their skills, this is accomplished by constructing all the buildings that contribute to a variety of tools and improvements, then you can research each building further to give them even better capabilities.
However your main goal is not only to take care of the Meeps, the end game is to save the world turtle. The Meeps noticed that the world turtle can starve, ending their world, so when they are capable enough, Meeps can construct a catapult and throw huge lumps of compacted food to the turtle, that way they can keep it alive and maintain the world they live in.
World Turtles is developed by the South African studio Re: cOg Mission, and in reality, the whole game is made by a solo developer, Gideon Griebenow, who after having a successful career in the financial sector and consultancy business, one day he encountered a Unity tutorial, and right then he fell in love with game development.
For your first game, just make something small and get it published, they said. Hold my juice! said I… The nerdiest mid-life crisis I know of is slowly replacing my career of two decades.
It still feels ‘Unreal’ to me, although it was ‘Made with Unity’, that the passion project I started out of nerdy interest has actually become such a reality, with enough support and appeal, to warrant pursuing it full-time in exchange for my career.
I’ve had a wonderful time developing World Turtles during the last 2.5 years to it’s current state. For two years this was a nerdy hobby, but as support and interest grew, I decided this dream has got enough potential and enjoyment to warrant living off of my savings for a year to see if this game, well, could fly. A chance like this does not come around every day.
I am happy to invite you all to follow my game’s journey to the upcoming launch and help save the turtle!
Gideon Griebenow
World Turtles was the winner of the 21st Fan Favorite category at the Game Development World Championship 2021, and until this day Gideon continues working on the game and improving the player experience.
In general, the game offers a relaxing experience, it has a great selection of music, and players that like this kind of game will enjoy it, for now, there is a demo but players will have the opportunity to play the full game once World Turtles will be available on Steam in August 2022.
OverLord of the Omniverse