The Reclaimers: Repair the Cycle

The Earth is healing. Your community is one of many reclaiming space for nature; reclaiming what it means to live on this planet. Each day you play as a member of the community riding your solar powered bike out to collect scrap. It’s almost always too hot to ride in full sun, so you stick to shady routes and charge up in scattered patches of sunlight. Thick vegetation has started to grow over obsolete infrastructure, like streets, and is hard to ride through. It will slow you down, but you’ll crash instantly on things like barricades. Keep riding, stay charged, avoid the hazards, reclaim scrap, and repair the cycle.

Credits 
Art - Skye Mednick
Design - Dan Kristoff
Programming - Nick Schrag

Made for Day Zero Games: Solarpunk Jam
We set out to explore the death of capitalism through something familiar. Bikes already represent a solarpunk attitude, so how might we take that further? The endless runner genre reflects capitalist thinking - linear, always moving forward, designed for a goal of endless growth. How might we challenge the genre tropes to inspire new thinking?

Further development of the game would lean into the value of repair. Only repair of the bike is represented in the prototype, but repair of the environment would play a key role as well. As scrap is removed from the levels, nature would appear more and more–better weather, more plant and animal life, less hazards, more sunlight. Scrap would also be used for more than bike improvements. There would be player choices about what scrap use would collectively benefit the community, and how the community could further thrive in harmony with nature.

Undoubtedly we have much more work to do towards our aspiration, but hopefully we have portrayed a glimpse of it in our jam submission.

Known Issues

• The pigeon upgrade may not work when colliding with a hazard in the grass.
• Playing endless mode before story mode may disrupt the intended intro flow.