Conquest Of The West Indies

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  Placeholder Americas Map (Animated In Game)

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  Placeholder Caravel Conifer Forest, Grassland, Ocean Graphics

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  Placeholder Unskilled Colonist Sprite

Inspiration

I've always adored Sid Meier's Colonization (1994), which is a game that is based on the Colonial period of the Americas from 1492 to 1850. Colonization was the game Sid Meier and Microprose published after Civilization 1, and it actually departs significantly from Civ 1 in that Col is very much a game about economics. Instead of having goods produced in each city stay in that city, and instead of being relegated to simply food/production/commerce, Colonization expanded on that formula to have things like food, lumber, hammers, sugar, rum, tobacco, cigars, etc. And these goods have to be shipped around by transport units such as wagon trains or ships.

Unfortunately, Colonization can quickly become a logistical headache, which is why I've always wanted to work towards developing a game that automated more of the logistics while allowing the player to implement player-defined trade routes between colonies and Europe, lowering the micromanagement headache, and allowing the player to focus on grander decisions than moving a load of coats from Jamestown to Europe.

What it does

Currently, the game renders a tile map of placeholder animated tiles, and has a little ship unit that I'm hoping the player will be able to sail around. Currently you click to move the ship around to a valid neighboring tile, then hit enter to end turn and reset the ship's movement points. I was close to getting the colonist to be able to get off the ship, but didn't manage it in time unfortunately.

How we built it

At first I thought about and tried using Unity 6 since I have some prior experience, but I ended up deciding to give Godot a shot instead. As a result, my progress has been slower than expected since I have some past experience with starting a 4X game in Unity, but I'm glad to have spent time learning how to use Godot, since Godot is far more lightweight than Unity and well suited to 2D games.

Challenges we ran into

Starting my journey of learning how to use Godot has definitely been the usual headache of searching the internet and documentation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The placeholder animated tilemap is actually quite cute in my opinion. I can see the game potentially being gorgeous if the pixel art is well made one day.

What's next for Conquest Of The West Indies

Since this is one of my dream games, I think I'll continue to develop it as a major cornerstone of my portfolio to show employers what I can accomplish. And, honestly, if I'm lucky and work hard enough, maybe one day Conquest Of The West Indies will allow me to launch my own game studio.

Built With

• c#
• godot