Plays full screen, with no browser bar — and works offline.
Out today. After more years of tinkering than I'd care to admit, NEUTROPIA is finally playable—install it above to get it full screen and offline, or jump straight in through the browser.
HOW TO PLAY
THE NEUTS
The citizens of Neutropia are "empty vessels" they are all interchangeable (to an extent) and they are "filled up" with positive or negative energy when they bump into each other. When you select a neut at the beginning of a level you add +1 to its positive charge, but, in reaction, some other neuts receive a negative charge. NEUTROPIA wants balance!
CORE MECHANIC
The core of the game is that your mood rubs off on those around you. Two negatives will drive each other more negative (red), two positives will drive each other more positive, and a positive and a negative will cancel out each other's charge over successive contacts until the greater absolute charge wins the other over (so, for instance a -7 will eventually win over a +5).
- Same charged contacts are non-zero-sum
- Opposite charged contacts are zero-sum
CONTROLS
Essentially there are 3 things you do in Neutropia, select, move and perform a special ability.
On mobile:
- Tap on a neut to select it—you can select any neut with positive potential, or positive mood.
- Drag to move—best done remotely: once you've selected your neut, touch anywhere outside the play area and drag relative to that remote origin point (so that your chubby digit isn't obscuring your player)
- Tap on a selected neut (or tap on the remote origin point) to activate their ability
- Green: Bash—charge into the closest neut.
- Yellow: Escape—dash between the two closest threats.
- Orange: Group Hug—pull nearby neuts in to make contact with you.
- Purple: Jump—teleport to a random spot.
- Unseen: Personal Disco—momentarily reveal yourself to the reds around you.
- Red: Repel—a large blast pushes everyone away (this happens repetitively when your selected neut is turned red—when this happens directional controls are reversed too!).
On computer:
- Mouse or trackpad works the same as touch.
- On Keyboard you can use tab to change your selection, space to tap/select and arrow keys to navigate.
TAMING
Some elements in the game require a lighter touch. For leluans (the little drop-shaped guys) and sad (blue) neuts you need to slow down, stay close, but don't touch, in order to win them over.
LELUANS
These are the pets of neutropia (don't force yourself on them or you'll get bitten) they build trust with you at a safe distance. Once they've bonded to you, they'll follow you around and give you a little boost when you're depleted. They can essentially be a tie breaker between two neuts with equally opposite charges. But they also come with some abilities of their own depending on what colour they are.
- Green: Independence—a green leluan can be controlled by the player, meaning it can navigate around complex obstacles & mazes
- Yellow: Special Bond—because leluans and yellow neuts are both yellow, and both avoidant, they have a kinship so they bond instantly, this means that after a leluan restores, they re-bond straight away, making the yellow invincible in a one-on-one interaction.
- Orange: Multi-bond—an orange neut can bond with multiple leluans so they can take on stronger negative neuts.
- Purple: Boxer—a purple can bond with 2 neuts that act like fists, they add to the neut's charge and act as an extension of their body that automatically makes contact with nearby neuts (which is not always safe!)
- Unseen: Decoy—an unseen neut is stealthy, so their leluan enhances this ability by drawing negatives away in the opposite direction.
- Red: Slave—a red can force a leluan to bond with it by cornering it. Little does it realise though, that when it reaches 0 charge its red neut will restore it to positive!
SAD NEUTS
If left alone for too long a positive or negative neut will grow lonely and sad. Once they are sad, being touched will make them mad! But if you are willing to stay near them, and give up some of your positive energy you can win them over.
- Self-sacrifice: When you have less positive energy than the sad neut has sadness, you don't get turned sad. Instead, when you are down to +1 you continue to deplete the sad neut's sadness until it is also at 1. At this point you have the choice to stay and sacrifice your last +1 to make them happy and become neutral yourself. This often means that the previously sad neut can return and rescue you.
THE (LONG AND WINDING) HISTORY OF NEUTROPIA
NEUTROPIA has been that project I've been working on since I began teaching myself to code, it's been through many iterations, and has spawned many variations and experiments. It is, to me the essential non-zero-sum game, in that you have a positive and negative balance, but through chain reactions, one can get the upper hand
This is an early demo from 2015:
Shortly after showcasing this, Victoria Smith wrote an article about it, and that inspired me to make it more rich and complex, which may have been a mistake, because 11 years later I'm still tinkering!
The following are some of the original sketches and designs as the project developed, as you can see it has been characterised by indecision.
