Blueprints
The player primarily interacts with their plot by selecting, purchasing and placing blueprints of structures and plants into the plot. A volunteer (one workforce unit) can then be assigned to work on these blueprints.The number of volunteers and the task they are assigned to affect the time it will take for that blueprint to be completed. The volunteers assigned to a completed task will then go idle until assigned to a new task to incentivise the player to open the game again.
Volunteers
Volunteers is the resource used to perform the task outlined by purchased blueprints such as building a structure or planting a crop. Volunteers are assigned to a blueprint by dragging or selecting and then clicking a placed blueprint. New volunteers are a scarce resource and can only be acquired by upgrading the plot through leveling up (slow), other players volunteering their characters to your plot and through in-game boost purchases.
In the future personal specialities, stats and equipment may be implemented to give the volunteers a personal feel as well as an opportunity for the player to micromanage the volunteers to achieve maximum efficiency.
Credits
Credits is the currency used to construct and plant blueprints. The player gains these credits by harvesting resource producing plants, winning mini games and staving off destructive events.
Reaping rewards
To gain carbon credits, the player must harvest resource producing plants. Whenever a resource producing plant finishes its real-time growth cycle the player will be able to harvest resulting carbon credits with a simple click. The player is incentivised to login and harvest as soon as possible as the growth cycle won’t start again until harvested.
Minigames
When having the game open, random minigame opportunities will present themself to the player at a steady pace as a way to earn extra coin. An example of such an event is a “where’s Waldo” type game where the player is tasked with looking around to find a character hiding somewhere on their plot. If the player finds the character in time they are rewarded with carbon credits that can be used to further improve their plot.
The goal of these minigames is to keep the player playing for longer and reward longer play sessions.
Mitigating risks from events
Planning the layout of the plot to mitigate the risk of setbacks from events is something the player always needs to keep in mind. Building things like fire lines in case of wildfire events and backup dams for floods will help the player overcome such destructive events with minimum losses. These events only occur when the player is online and if the player does a good job overcoming them they may be rewarded with extra carbon credits, equipment, or level progress.
Technology advancements
The player can unlock and use new technologies that aid in making strategic decisions by revealing hidden information or unlock new types of blueprints. These technological advancements are achieved by building and upgrading certain structures.
Examples of these technologies are: a Hydrometer to aid in placing Continuous contour trenches perfectly horizontal, a tool for measuring the carbon level in a tile or area, a new type of water harvesting structure such as Kundi wells.
Teamwork
Players can assist each other by volunteering their avatars time at other players’ plots, giving them a larger workforce. Each player can volunteer their avatar to a certain number of other players at a time, this number can be increased by leveling up and by investing in technology upgrades geared towards teamwork.
Generation
The plot is generated by using real world data gathered from an external source. The data is passed through a wave function collapse algorithm in conjunction with a set of rules that determine what tiles are allowed to be next to each other to generate the terrain geometry and textures.