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[AndySchatz]

From now until New Years, Venture Arctic is free for non-commercial, personal use! Merry Christmas everyone! Download the game from:

http://www.pocketwatchgames.com

Then click on Buy Now and enter this coupon code:
CPN5867042685

Somtimes it takes a little while to get to know a game before you fall in love with it. This is one of those games. I just want everyone else to be able to get to know it as well.

Merry Christmas!

[Levin]

awesome!    a nice snowy present. Merry xmas to you too.

[aznmonk]

hey much love! :D but seriously thanks, ill give it a try ^_^

[William Broom]

Never heard of this, but it looks really cool. I gotta download this tomorrow.

[Batmanifestdestiny]

hmmm.....what do I do if I closed out of the receipt before realizing that it had the serial code I needed?

[AndySchatz]

If you used a real email addr, check in there.  If not, just buy again.  Merry Christmas!

[Batmanifestdestiny]

Thanks!  Apparently, I are smart 

I at first thought that this game would be lame(no offense), but I got it because it was free, and now I realize that it's actually a pretty fun little strategy game   I like the fact that you play god(or Vishnu, or Anubis, or particle accelerator) and change the weather, and I get some laughs out of forcing 4 babies out of an elderly wolf :D

[AndySchatz]

Thanks!  Yeah, I've been struggling with breaking through to a wider audience... partly because people assume the games are for kids only.  Really my philosophy has always been along the lines of Discovery Channel programming -- animals appeal to kids but the subject and the strategy are really intended for an older audience.  I also wonder how much gamers shy away from it because it sounds like a trendy "eco" game, when in fact I designed and started working on it before the Arctic was cool, no pun intended   I was never sure what kind of effect An Inconvenient Truth would have on sales of the game.  It originally came out in May 2007 and hasn't sold well.  There's plenty of reasons why, of course, but I still think it's gotten short shrift.  So that's why I'm giving it away for now!  I'm proud of it and I want people to give it a play or two, maybe it can find a few new fans!

[medieval]

I don't really enjoy it as it is just not really my type of game. Oh, I tried. I know it is so lovely, and I tried. I insist myself on playing the strategic version even though I'm not that much of a strategic person.

[Noyb]

Interesting game. Cheers for making it free. I can definitely see you took some care in making it satisfying and challenging to balance large ecosystems.

My rabbit utopia in the southern island quickly collapsed after I introduced too many predators to meet the raven quotas. Does breeding animals specifically for the short term strategy of killing them off during the winter for their seasonal energy make me a bad person?

Anyway, I think I found a few bugs. In the first location I decided not to move on to the second level after beating challenge 9. However, in the unlock menu the second level still remains locked. Also, if you click on skip season just as the seasons change, it skips the new season even though you clicked to skip the previous one.

[William Broom]

I've only played this for a little while but I already like it quite a lot. I got a chuckle out of the error message 'Cannot impregnate juvenile'.

[AndySchatz]

Interesting game. Cheers for making it free. I can definitely see you took some care in making it satisfying and challenging to balance large ecosystems.

My rabbit utopia in the southern island quickly collapsed after I introduced too many predators to meet the raven quotas. Does breeding animals specifically for the short term strategy of killing them off during the winter for their seasonal energy make me a bad person?

Anyway, I think I found a few bugs. In the first location I decided not to move on to the second level after beating challenge 9. However, in the unlock menu the second level still remains locked. Also, if you click on skip season just as the seasons change, it skips the new season even though you clicked to skip the previous one.

Thanks Noyb!  Seems like the bug list never ends.  *sigh*

[Batmanifestdestiny]

I got a chuckle out of the error message 'Cannot impregnate juvenile'.

Yes, that is pretty humorous, along with the fact that all of the animals are asexual.  When I first played it, I was like "Did I just impregnate a man?  an ELDERLY man?!?!"

[AndySchatz]

Hahaha.  In my first game, Venture Africa, you have to have two animals *get together* to breed.  But the lions all have manes.  hmmmmm I think I need to retake biology 101.

[Batmanifestdestiny]

Hahaha.  In my first game, Venture Africa, you have to have two animals *get together* to breed.  But the lions all have manes.

<-Jack Thompson

"Venture Africa encourages bestiality, and homosexuality among children!" - Jack Thompson Vs. Andy Schatz.

[Rory]

Looks and sounds awesome! Can't wait to try it!

[agj]

Sounds like a good kind of game, and I'm downloading right now.

[tnk]

Thanks so much for this, my sister was a big fan of the demo. I've never been keen on demo's myself so I'll be checking it out post-haste!

All the best for the new year

[nihilocrat]

Played it up to Svalbard, it's a pretty fun game ! Even though there are points and unlocks and stuff like that involved, it doesn't feel too grindy because obtaining those points is usually the result of a planned series of actions: freeze ground in winter, place berries and make rabbits, wolves reproduce, unfreeze ground in summer to reveal grass, disease rabbits in autumn, and finally reap all of the Spring points from the dead rabbits in winter. A whole lot less repetitive than 'target mob, press button, kill mob, grab loot' .

It would probably be pretty cool to play this as a kid. I remember playing Sim Life and finding it too hard to keep alive, plus I had problems digesting the humongous number of variables you could play with. This game keeps things pretty simple but still gives you the feeling that you need to carefully orchestrate the ecosystem to achieve goals.

It feels like a game I wouldn't play through more than once, though. I am seeing more stuff get unlocked and accomplish goals and such, and I feel like the novelty would wear off once I achieved everything there is too achieve.

[AndySchatz]

Glad you enjoyed it!  Sounds like you "got it", not everyone does.  As for replayability, yeah, the game could use a few more meta-goals, special challeneges, stuff like that.  Hopefully the next one will have more of that stuff!  Thanks for the feedback...