Firstly, thank you for participating. Battle Beants is a game that takes place on the rim worlds of outer space. You do not necessarily expand your colony directly; but instead act as their steward, protecting the “beants” whose ultimate goal it is to spread light (life) through the solar system, and fight back against the “void”.
Based loosely on Conway’s game of life, the idea is to create complex, emergent systems from binary states (the beant/colony either dies, or bifurcates (reproduces)). Ideally, a loose pattern of colonies will form, spawning gatherers (gather resources for the colony), settlers (expand the colony to new horizons), and traders (trade between colonies, to connect isolated colonies to resources).
Ultimately, some branches of colonies, like a mold, should branch off and die, or become isolated. Your job is to ensure their survival.
This introduces the concept of “worlds”. The colonies exist in each world independently, but you the player can connect them and share resources between worlds. I intend to diversify the worlds randomly, so some may have different buffs/debuffs, fewer resources, etc.
However, there is a method to how the portals connect, as a 3 dimensional shape, all corners connect to adjacent corners. Each world has 3 partners, except 4, which acts as the highway bridging them all together. Some worlds may die out entirely, your goal is to reestablish colonies in them.
The player acts as the “noise” in the system, delivering replayability (hopefully).
The game also incorporates guns, rocket boots, a rail system, a portal system, and an in-depth soccer combat system, as well as the ability to play soccer against your “beants”. By simply pressing ‘;’ to trigger soccer mode, they will treat the nearest speaker as a goal and kick towards it. Creating an intuitive system for the game of soccer within a game.
Another core tenet of the game is music, certain speakers can buff your soccer ball which can be thrown at enemies, and as well, “beants” within range of speakers receive boosts to their speed, making spreading music–as well as light–vital to the colonies success.
Ideally the player should find a happy medium between interacting with the colonies and helping them survive, adventuring, fighting, and simply watching them like an ant colony
The name basically stands for “Beats, beans, bees, & ants” which incorporates all of the components of the game fairly well.