Starve
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Play as Mother Nature !
In this reverse-survival game, you play as Mother Nature. Your goal is to get rid of the human nuisance as fast as possible.
Use different environment powers to harm the human : starve him by burning plants, draining lakes or spawning predators that will in turn attack the human's hunting preys !
This project is a GameJam project, it was created in 13 days. There are many bugs and it might be unbalanced.
Check out the devlogs on my Youtube Channel if you are interested in how it was developed !
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I've seen your videos and I wanted to try the game out and turns out its fantastic! I think the only thing that must be added is rain to fill up the lakes, because without that, one can just simply dry out all the lakes and wait until the player dies of thirst, but anyway it is a super cool concept!
Thanks for your comment, I'm glad you enjoyed the experience :)
great game! I saw both videos of you making it, and i am very impressed! I am french and american, so it was fun to see your remarks in both languages :) j'espère que tu vas continuer d'ajouter des nouvelles updates pour améliorer l'expérience encore plus!
Merci d'avoir testé le jeu ! Je suis sur plein d'autres projets en ce moment, mais peut-être qu'un jour je le recommencerai du début !
There appears to be an exploit where if you have the game at max speed, all living things (especially the human) move at a much more jittery and ineffective pattern, which gives you more time to deplete resources such as water and plant life while they are desperately racing towards it.
Really good game, deserves front page
Hmm... Are the animals supposed to ignore the tasty, tasty human, or is that a bug?
Also, I did not find any way to see the three bars for the human. Think I unlocked all the options.
They are supposed to ignore him for the first 90 seconds I think ! Then they should attack him if he gets too close (and I didn't get the opportunity to add an avoid behavor to the human ^^)
To unlock the three bars you must unlock the corresponding power in the intelligence category, then click the button that appears on the human panel ! I hope this one does show up for you :)
Okay. The 90 seconds might explain the animals. You already have to put them so far from the human, and then they just seemed interested in deer or rabbits.
I'll take another look for the option for the bars sometime this week. Will let you know if I still have problems. Thanks for the reply. :)
I complete forgot to report back. Sorry about that.
The next game I was able to find the bars.
The human also died very quickly with zero actions from me. They decided to wander directly to a bear. XD
How much would I have to pay for you to make this, but the opposite? like everything is the same, but you are the environment trying to keep your human alive and thriving as he/she builds the necessary tools for survival.
I was trying to see how the A.I. would function if I left him alone, and it was surprisingly entertaining, until he attacked a bear and died.
MacOS build doesn't work on M1 Macbook Pro Silicon.
If I run the .app it says 'Can't be opened'.
If I run the .app inside the folder 'Starve_MacOS_BurstDebugInformation_DoNotShip' It says it appears to be damaged.
I enjoyed watching the development videos, so I decided to give it a try on my own. Gotta say it's really neat, sure there are bugs here and there, but I enjoyed playing and I love the simple and cute art style.
Truly the best feeling when my human so desperately clawed his way over to a pool of water only for it to be so cruelly taken away from him.
a couple of qol suggestions i had:
make space instantly pause
make number keys 1-4 instantly set the gamespeed
add a faster gamespeed
allow camera movement while paused
shift to make camera move faster
how do you run it please help can you make on video it's my first time doing this. thank you
Hi ! If you are using Windows, open starve.exe file. Let me know if works for you!
Just wanted to point out a bug- when the human sleeps he no longer has an Icon showing his location when zoomed out.
Hello,
Maybe I'm doing something wrong but, I can't download the macOs version… I'm using the itch.io app. When I tried to launch the game, the folder open in my finder and I see some .exe files. Is it already compatible?
By the way, I see your youtube video and it was really interesting. Best for the futur. Hope to play you game soon!
Hi !
Are you sure you have downloaded the right .zip file ? There are 3 files in the download section in itch, one for each platform. I double-checked, the MacOS files have the right format ...
Let me know and thanks for the support :)
No, but I can't change the file I download in the Itch app. I tried on the browser. I can download it but can't run it…
Mmmh I'll to make a new MacOS build in a second. Let me know if it works ?
It work very well, thanks a lot!
I've had a similar issue to Electro, but it's also for the animals tab. I could have thought to spawn an otter but when I change my mind to instead dry up a waterbed, it will spend the EP and, from what I can tell, not even spawn anything.
I also had an issue where I got stuck following the human and couldn't stop. I had to close out of the game.
There's a bug where if trying to close the plants tab with the burn area ability activated, it spends your EP to burn, even though you're trying to deselect it
Awesome! I loved the devlogs and can't wait to try it out!
Congrats on entering your first jam! You did a great job. The game is a unique concept. Makes me think of the god sim games like Black & White but your sole purpose is to destroy the civilization.
If you polish this game past the jam stage, my biggest points of critical feedback would be:
- The current energy / use ability system feels punishing. I found myself waiting around to regain energy quite often. I kept wanting the unlock to cost points gained from successful actions and the ability to use your skills to be on cooldown instead of costing more resource points.
- Predators definitely feel a bit too powerful right now. A wolf almost killed the human a few minutes in for me, without me having to intervene at all.
- Readability could be higher. The up-res'd 8x8 art makes it difficult to tell what the icons are, especially. While you did a great job with the info window--and while it absolutely should still exist--I think relying on that alone prevents the player from getting into a flow state. My recommendation, especially if you make this a full Steam release, would be to make it a fairly small fixed resolution in terms of window size with the option to fullscreen. That way you're presenting the optimal experience visually, but players can change it if they really want to.
Thanks for sharing this journey with us! You did a great job, so I hope you don't mind the critical feedback. I always find it helpful on my own games.
Thanks Callum !
The points you mentioned are so relevant. I'm glad to have you onboard, as this kind of feedback really helps you step back and think twice about your systems, especially when the deadline for a project is close and you as a dev are in a tunnel, not thinking much further than how a given change will affect other systems.
To this day this project is not planned to be further developed, but maybe one day I'll go back to it and start it from scratch with a much greater scope in mind.
See you soon on Youtube for my next project !
Amazing game! Conguratulations
I'd recommend building the game to linux too, it's pretty easy and it will make it easier to not have to use wine. Also you should make it as a zip and not a .rar file
Thanks for the tip ! I just built it for both linux + changed the file to a .zip :)
Oh cool thanks!