Hello everybody! This is the first dev log of my game Concrete Jungle. I probably should of started it earlier, but I wanted to hit the ground running with some substantial work already completed. Needless to say, from this point forward I’ll be keeping a dev blog on the project…

Concrete Jungle is a city planning game, but with management elements replaced with mechanics similar to what you may find in a tabletop game.

I’ve been working on it on and off for the last three years now, trying out many different concepts in an effort to get the ideas in my head to mold into something compelling. It’s a hybrid of different ideas from throughout the gaming landscape- from obvious influences such as SimCity, to deck-building elements of tabletop games like Dominion and Trains. I’ve been a slave to designing tiny isometric buildings for the last few months in an effort to bring you what you see here!

It’s a sequel to my 2011 game MegaCity, but has been greatly expanded upon to the extent it’s practically a whole different game now. The game is being developed for PC but I’ll also be porting to Mac. Mobile ports may be possible in the future.

So how do you play?

You have a deck of selected cards which you can use to place buildings. Each building will affect it’s surroundings in different ways. The aim of the game is to clear city blocks by gathering the required number of points from your residents, giving more room to build.

As the city grows, you choose bigger and better new buildings to add to your deck.

As you get opportunities to hone and refine your deck, residents will demand more from you, making the game harder. You’ll find yourself inadvertently creating zoning puzzles- playing against your own past planning decisions.

Also in the works is a competitive game mode where 2 rival city planners face off in a city planning dual. Is their new apartment building raking in tonnes of points? Place a landfill next to it to screw them over! It’s like building a city through playing chess- if chess was much, much meaner. More to come on this later.

I realise every indie dev and their dog are running kickstarters these days. As much as I would love to say I have all the money I need to complete this, I kind of don’t. Not to the standard that I want it to end up in anyway. I’m a one-person dev, so my expenses are minimal- I’m running a modest Kickstarter campaign here. I’ve got a preview build already completely working- so you can get access to that for even just a small pledge.

 

By backing you’ll ensure the game goes from what is now essentially a working foundation, to a fully-fleshed out game with a huge variety of buildings, a story mode, and said competitive game mode.

Check it out if this looks like it’s up your street! Oh, and there’s a greenlight too of course. Click here to open the Greenlight page in your browser, or click here to open it in steam. A yes vote would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks for reading! Updates soon to follow…