Beecarbonize
A downloadable game for Windows
Do you have what it takes to save the planet? Beecarbonize is an environmental card strategy game with climate change as your opponent.
Research cutting-edge technologies, enact policies, protect ecosystems, and modernize industry to cut down carbon emissions. Manage your resources well and you might survive.
Will you favor industrial reforms, nature conservation or people initiatives? There are many ways to solve climate change and reduce pollution. But saving the planet is not an easy task. The more carbon emissions you produce the more extreme events you will have to deal with.
You have to balance the power-generating industry, social reforms, ecological policies and scientific endeavors. Will you transition from fossil fuels as fast as possible? Or will you focus on carbon capture technologies first? Experiment with new strategies and don’t be afraid to start again.
Game cards represent inventions, laws, social advancements, or industries – each designed on the basis of real-world climate science. In addition, partially randomized world events occur, forcing you to adapt your strategy. Gradually unlock new cards in the game encyclopedia and chart your path towards a new future.
The world of Beecarbonize reacts to your actions. More emissions mean more floods or heatwaves, investing in nuclear power raises the risk of a nuclear incident, and so on. Learn more with each run and you might overcome environmental catastrophes, social unrest, and even avert the end of life on earth.
Beecarbonize is a strategic challenge that lets you experience phenomena shaping our everyday lives hands-on. Just how many seasons can you last?
NEW HARDCORE MODE
We are introducing Hardcore mode, the ultimate challenge in Beecarbonize for experienced players. In Hardcore mode you will face the harsh reality of climate change. Can you defy the odds and save the planet even in this extreme scenario?
Available in English & Czech & Spanish & French & Portuguese
About
The game was developed in cooperation with leading climate experts from NGO People in Need as a part of the 1Planet4All project financed by the European Union.
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the archive and run!
Also available on
Development log
- Cards Against Climate Change? Beecarbonize gets a big update!93 days ago
- Wallpaper treat!Mar 08, 2023
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
"The game was developed in cooperation with leading climate experts from NGO People in Need as a part of the 1Planet4All project financed by the European Union." I would like to see this game becoming open source and available on alternative distribution platforms like F-Droid. Otherwise I have difficulty in believing in the good intent it radiates.
how will the Steam version be different? You're ironing out bugs/balance or...? I feel like waiting for the Steam release to check out the update
Thanks for the interest! The update is live on itch as well, but Steam in addition includes achievements and leaderboards. So check it out, now hopefully releasing on wednesday - had some tech issues. If you are so in for trying it though, message me and we can work our advance access :)
Really enjoy the game. One thing I wish the game did a better job with is showing the Event impact that any card has. I realize that's pretty overwhelming initially, so maybe it's a setting to show extra details about the card, which is turned off by default? I'd like to see the +/- for various events, to avoid needing to go look in the encyclopedia each time I forget what a card's effects are.
dotaz: jsou v možnostech hry (a to kdekoliv) zohledněny možnosti a vlivy pěstování technického konopí a jeho ekologické dopady a technologické využití?? Například nahrazení ropy, těžby dřeva, spotřeby 22t CO2 / Ha a podobně? Díky za odpověď. Daniel
Pěstování konopí jsme úplně neřešili, i když to je zajímavá pointa a předám ji dál. Díky!
this game is really fun, but hardcore isn't that hard for me. please add a difficulty that is even harder than hardcore. also a custom difficulty would be fun where the price of the cards and other things could be customized by the player for a game. also on mobile, when i press the leaderboards or the achievements button, nothing happens
Hi David, if hardcore is easy for you, respect! For the mobile issue, please try to enable automatic sign-in, in the Google Play Games app and reinstalling the game. We're going to fix this in the upcoming update hopefully.
Hardcore mode seems a bit luck based because of the bombardment of events. A lot of the time, I tend to lose because I can't pay off events that cost the same resource.
yeah it is a bit luck based. just make sure that you pay off the events first that cause more events. if you don't have enough resources, restart and focus on getting more resources. after that you can either remove the industry 20th century card or buy a lot of solar subsides and/or pollution regulation from transition from fossils. after that go carbon negative and choose a victory path
hey uhh this may sound dumb but can i play this game on chrome
No, you have to download it
there is an android version. I am not accustomed to chrome, but you can find it on the Google Play :)
May I know what's the update content?
Hi, it's a big one, it contains
◦ New cards ◦ New paths to victory ◦ New hardcore mode ◦ Better UI ◦ New illustrations
and a lot of small changes and improvements. we hope we addressed some of the feedback, like better late game and replayability options.
I like the new update content, to prevent spoiling anyone, I would say it's a good run on hardcore.
Suggestion: Escalation of local conflicts,
From "Local Conflict" to "Regional War", it destroys your infrastructure by chance.
"Regional War" is a looping event, everytime when the time limit of "Regional War" expires, it spawns disaster cards like war refugee, oil leakage, accidental missile strike, dam collapse, Agent Orange and etc.
Resolving regional war is ridiculously expensive, it only can be discounted from either solving "Peace negotiation" scenario in several encounters, or solving "War aid" scenario that forces player to build a "War industry" card.
Shutting down "War industry" card will cause economic crisis and mass protests.
Or selecting "Join war" scenario, that adds "Mobilization" card in people sector, that greatly reduces the progression speed of people sector. Also reduces the cost of resolving "Regional War".
I'm suggesting this because it feels a bit weird when players can resolve "Local Conflicts" with 3 economic points and 2 people points.
Thanks for trying it out! sounds interesting, we wouldn't want the game to go too much towards a war simulation though, maybe a future update :) By the way, if you want to compare your scores to other players, you can download the mobile version which features a leaderboard.
Think I'm done messing around with graphs, so here they are. I pretty much always recommend exploring a game yourself first, but if anybody else is stuck on a missing card, this might be helpful.
Tech Tree
Event Chances
Wow that is great work! Thanks for being that much into our game,. Would you mind if we shared the link (and perhaps used a screenshot for a picture?) on our Twitter etc, linking back to you?
I love it!
- Ondrej
Please do (Twitter is @wondible, though I don't use it much)
I can second most everything Zegzdyk said. I love little game simulations like this, and this one is overall very nicely done. I'm sure the game had a tight budget and you've made great use of it to create a solid experience. In the event you do get the chance to work on it more, here are some things I'd like to see more of.
1. Better access to information about events and event chances. Not much point in repeating Zegzdyk here, except perhaps a way to view current risks would be nice - it feels like a lot of cards mainly exist to counter a certain event, but unless you are getting that event repeatedly, I don't feel the need to create the solutions.
2. Challenges and variation. When I first saw the game, it was a stream of someone failing several attempts. I was expecting a game of trial and error, gradually clawing my way back from the edge after many failures. On my own second playthough, I found an easy-mode strategy that kind of removes all tension from the game. As an educational experience, this might be what you want. Although I think that strategy may be hard to sell in real life, and I'm not sure the game simulates that difficulty, other than being a slow start.
3. It is hard to keep track of all my options. Perhaps multiple gear icons for the number of available upgrades - this would help with the level 3 renewables for instance. Maybe a way to flag/pin a card you want to create, so you can tell when you have the resources to complete it.
4. Some more keyboard actions for things like speed control would be nice.
5. Option to pause when an event appears and/or is about to expire - I've missed a few while that area of the board was out of view.
A few very minor things:
1. Safer nuclear energy sometimes has arrows in the encyclopedia, but in game it sticks in my mind as one of the only cards with no resource icons. I think it may be copying the last arrow that appeared on another card.
2. Is "desinformation"/"desinfo" a misspelling of disinformation, or some specific form of it?
3. I think Industry 22th century should be "22nd".
4. Slight inconsistency in capitalization - "Carbon capture" vs "Carbon Storage". But I doubt most people will even notice.
I knew I forgot something. "Desinformation campaign" appears twice on some card's encyclopedia entries. Maybe there are two variations of it?
Another little typo: "Deep see fishing" should be "Deep sea fishing"
I also see some card names that while not strictly wrong, do feel awkward or confusing. I won't go into that unless you'd like me to though.
Wow thank you really for this thorough feedback! I have already sent it to our devs who are just preparing a new update and this will also include challenges you talk about :) Adding replayability... and including new event cards too, hopefully making it fresh for you and also solving some of the issues you highlight.
Again, thanks, a lot of food for thought!
- Ondrej
Which card names btw you mean? We can figure out what to do with those in the update!
Lack of X - I think most of these would sound better as "X shortage"
Famine at equator - I think "Equatorial famine" would be a more typical way to put this.
Tragical harvest - "Tragical" feels a bit awkward. Not sure where this fits in the severity scale of harvest effects, "Tragic harvest" would be more typical keeping the same base words.
Coastal countries sinked - "sinked" seems awkward, "sunk" or "sunken" would be more proper. Flooded or drowned might also work, not sure what level of impact this is referring to.
Genetical utopia - I don't think I've heard Genetical before, "Genetic utopia" sounds more typical.
Environmental refusal - unsure if this means the environment is refusing to cooperate because it's so stressed, or people refusing to support environmental programs. I think based on similarity in event chances, it is the later. "Climate denial" or "Climate change denial" would be the nearest common term to what I think it means.
Clima apathy - I'm not familiar with this term, "Climate apathy" might sound more typical.
No arctic reflections - Somehow feels awkward to me, but I don't know of a better term to concisely describe the idea. Something like "Arctic reflections disappear" may sound more like an event, but it's a bit longer, and perhaps doesn't convey the severity as well.
Many of these are events, which have no accompanying description to help me understand what they mean. These two I'm especially unsure of.
- Draws and pools
- Monoculture prohibition
Thanks for being so thorough, we are preparing an update and I sent this to our devs and we will take a detailed look at it :) Thanks!
Got my first victory, here's some feedback:
1. I think the upgrade bonus info (+ to resources) should be visible when you click a card, not just in the encyclopedia. These can be quite significant. The + and - to events being just in encyclopedia is fine, as they are less impactful.
2. Disappointed that the events don't have their text descriptions, just a name. Would make a playthrough more interesting to have more details about what happens, and there's educational value not just in talking only about methods of fighting climate change, but also the dangers. I very strongly felt that was missing, it feels a bit too abstract without it. If you could also describe hypothetical methods of mitigation (i.e. what actually happens when I click the "mitigate" button) that would have been even better.
3. While at it you could put the events in encyclopedia too. And list the cards that modify their chance on their page.
4. And also might make them "cards to discover" so you could look forward to getting a new not-seen-before event... Ok that might be a bit antithetic to the game's message, as they're mostly disasters we'd like to avoid, but from the gameplay point of view it would be better... at least for me. And there are beneficial events too, like "fringe research" (actually, because they're beneficial, you could reverse colours for them in encyclopedia so '+' is in green, not red)
4. You could mention in the "help" menu that "time" value = the number of seconds until the bar fills. Wasted some time looking for that info at the beginning. And confused if higher was slower or faster.
5. I'm still not sure what precisely a "round" means, seeing as each sector has a separate timer.
Otherwise it got quite fun, once I figured it out, after witnessing absolute apocalypse the first 3 times (hopefully the message isn't that there's no way to succeed in fighting climate change at first attempt, we only have one ;) .
Had some more time on my hands today and finished all 5 victory conditions. I have some more thoughts.
1. A positive one - you seem to have solved both the issue of late-game bloat and paralysing amount of upkeep in Stacklands, as well as the issue of gameplay-stalling bottlenecks in Cultist Simulator. In other words, Beecarbonise maintains a steady pace throughout the whole playthrough and doesn't outstay its welcome. Congratulations! All three games brought something new to the table, I hope there'll be many more in this genre.
2. There's only one musical track. It's ok, but I quickly got tired of it, so I wanted to turn it off to play some of my own music but turns out there are no separate volume controls, just a global mute button! That's not ideal, I don't want to turn off sfx, all those pops and clicks are not only satisfying but provide gameplay information (like if event is about to end)!
3. So the way I understand, a "round" is a global unit of time that also governs when random events spawn... why not display this global timer just like you do for each sector (seconds left till next round)?
4. It would have been nice to see resources-per-round count for each of the three resources, not just for emissions. Would have been useful for balancing Money against People, and just in general fun to see.
Thank you for a wonderful experience.
Thanks so much for the feedback and thorough play. The thing with being able to turn off the music is really good, also i will relay the rest to our dev team :) Thanks a bunch!
Very fun game, found a pretty successful strategy, baring bad event rng
There is a minor visual bug in the cost circles, when things start costing like 25 stuff (eg: "get rng card" card) the first dash in the circle is longer than all the other dashes.
Thank you a lot I will relay this to our team!
I've been playing the game since Friday on phone, almost nonstop, I discovered all 5 strategies of handling the crisis. However, there is one thing driving me crazy - encyclopedia says, that I still have one "People" card to discover but I cannot find another path to the new card. Is there something hidden in another sectors or could it be a bug?
This should be fixed in the latest version. One card was previously unreachable.
checked it out for a few minutes, and I've run into two curious things...
first the People sector has only space for two cards horizontally even though visually it seems like 3? I can't manually place a card there in the rightmost position. It can land there if automatically generated but it gets destroyed.
Second, I had a card created by solving an event (Pollution Regulation) land under another card in the industry sector (Hydro Energy) and had to drag it out from under it to see it (if I didn't it's like I had one more space?). When I reloaded the game, the Hydro Energy card was gone...
geothermal wells description is broken, it just reads "card_enc_entry/therma_drill"
Thanks for the report! try the new version, this should be fixed
Beecarbonize is a superb strategic card game that's built on the premise of resource management and several competing technology trees. There's no clear path to solution because everything's interlinked. Challenging and addictive!
Much obliged for this comment! Thanks! The dynamic interwoven nature of all wa our goal!