Gameplay Guide

Objective

Score as many points as possible in 90 seconds without collapsing the island’s ecosystem. The game ends early if environmental degradation reaches 100 % — a permanent ecological collapse.

Game States

State

Description

Main Menu

Language selection → instructions → username and difficulty

Playing

Active gameplay; all systems running

Paused

All timers and AI frozen

Game Over

Win (survived 90 s) or loss (ecosystem collapsed); high-score entry

Difficulty Levels

Difficulty

Effect

Easy

Slower pig birth rate, faster natural recovery

Medium

Balanced default settings

Hard

Faster pig birth rate, slower recovery, higher degradation

Controls

Key / Input

Action

E

Pause / unpause the game

S

Send one pig to another island (+50 points)

D

Emergency feast — slaughter half the pigs (+25 pts each, 20 s cooldown)

Mouse click

UI buttons (same actions as keyboard shortcuts)

Scoring

Event

Points

Each second survived

+10

Pig sent away

+50

Pig slaughtered in feast

+25 each

Ecosystem health bonus

Multiplier applied at game end

Game Systems

Degradation

Every tile on the island has a degradation level between 0 (pristine) and 1 (fully degraded). Three forces drive degradation:

Natural recovery partially counteracts degradation at game.utils.constants.NATURAL_RECOVERY_RATE when a tile is not actively being damaged.

The game.environment.degradation.DegradationSystem aggregates these effects and exposes an overall degradation metric used for win/loss detection.

Villager Happiness

game.environment.villager_happiness.VillagerHappinessSystem tracks satisfaction along two axes:

  • Food happiness — rises with more pigs (food source) up to an ideal population, then plateaus.

  • Environment happiness — falls as island degradation increases.

Calling an emergency feast grants a temporary happiness bonus.

Pig Population

Pigs spawn automatically at game.utils.constants.PIG_BIRTH_RATE seconds per new pig. Each pig has a random size variation (0.8 – 1.2) affecting its sprite scale. Pigs prefer to move towards healthier (less degraded) tiles.

Tips

  • Watch the real-time graph for early warning signs — happiness and health both falling together is the danger signal.

  • Use the feast action in bursts when the pig count spikes; the 20-second cooldown means timing matters.

  • Forest tiles recover faster than bare land, so preserve them where possible.

  • Sending individual pigs away scores more points per pig than a feast but removes fewer pigs overall.