Hey guys and gals!


After a quite staggering almost 200 submissions were offered on our forums, then reduced to 12 finalists, we finally have a winner for our Game Design!  The winning entry is the Unfallen, a society of sentient trees. Read on below to learn more about them!


The Unfallen, by DevilDogFF (click to see original submission)

Bio:
Soft spoken, giant beings with a shared consciousness, The Unfallen's oldest are thousands of years old. The oldest of which are selected to live on as sentient battleships when duty calls. Saplings, Unfallen that are less than 500 years old, are generally the work force as they are much smaller and use their tree limbs to manipulate basic machinery and work to establish infrastructure. They are the natural enemies of aggressive species and after losing many planets to their destructiveness, have developed specific defenses to them. Their long history as slaves have led them to raze themselves rather than have one of their planets occupied.

In a time of crisis, The Unfallen use a mixture of seeds and sporelings to...convince a friendly faction to come to arms on their behalf.

Once chosen for the task, the elder trees are molded in to monstrous defensive battleships that are surprisingly more heavily armored than even the most advanced of other's battleships. They exist simply to defend their planets from invasion, however, and don't fare well on the offensive (though enough of them can overcome that weakness).


Gameplay:
War and Peace from the Senate: The Unfallen cannot declare war while the Pacifists are in control of the senate. As they're peaceful by nature, they also receive a 20% malus to happiness when they declare war with anyone else in control of the senate, except Militarists. With Militarists in control of the senate, they can declare war freely and receive no malus to their happiness.

Smoking the Trees: The Unfallen can force peace by sacrificing a population unit, as their smoke is intoxicating and has an extreme pacification effect. This truce lasts twice as long as a normal truce as the effect of the smoke is addictive, too. This sacrifice is highly regarded as one of the most noble things an Unfallen can do.

Living Dwellings: The Unfallen use food as their production, as they use their own to construct their infrastructure. Therefore, Industry is not utilized.

From One, Cosmic Power: They use their own to build monstrous  ships, which require populations points to build. As such, some of the larger hulls are available a bit earlier, too. They also regenerate over time, without the need for technology.

They're In The Trees!: As The Unfallen share an affinity with all plant life, plant life on other faction's planets give The Unfallen some non-detailed information once they've become aware of The Unfallen's existence. Build queue, population and stationed ships are known to The Unfallen.

Peace Provides Sentience: Being at peace with the Unfallen provides you with one Unfallen population point at every planet you have with a temperate environment, once each planet has room. As a race achieves peace with the Unfallen, the Unfallen enlighten the native tree population. Each Unfallen population unit receives a bonus to food production. 

Miscellaneous:
The Unfallen's ships are a mix of organic material and machinery, so The Unfallen's ships are basically cyborgs. (Thanks to Bluecreeper101 for the help in clarifying this)

They prefer arboreal planets, namely jungle planets, and don't do well on dry, arid planets. 


Congratulations to DevilDogFF, and thanks to all who participated and voted!



We're now moving on to the Second Phase of this contest, the Visual Design! After some concerns were brought up regarding submissions format (among others), we've decided to be a bit more straightforward in what we're expecting from a submission.


It'll look a lot like the picture below, except, of course, with more sentient trees.




The rules for Phase 2 are the following: 

  • The submission will consist in only one image file, in jpg, gif or png format, 10Mb max size, 1920*1080 max size (16:9 formatting preferred if smaller).
  • The submission will feature two characters inspired from the winner of Phase 1, the Unfallen. 
    • One will be a military type, the other a civilian. Whether there are background details is up to you. 
    • Only two characters from the Unfallen. You can put them next to one another to show size difference or in separate scenes, but no other characters can be in the scene.
  • The submission will feature three ships.
    • A Large ship, of max length 1000m.
    • A Medium ship, of max length 300m.
    • A Small ship, of max length 100m. The small ship may be replaced with either a Fighter or a Bomber, of max length 10m.
    • All ships must have a ruler underneath the model to give a sense of scale.
    • All ships must have the hull type (Large, Medium, Small/Fighter/Bomber) displayed next to them.
    • All ships may have a hull name displayed underneath the hull type (eg: Annihilator or whatever you feel conveys the spirit of the ship).
    • Ships must have visible weapon systems (if you make a sleek hull and then we have to stick a bunch of turrets on them it'll be problematic).
  • The submission may be accompanied by a brief description showing intent. The description should be no longer than 50 words per character or ship model.
  • The submission should be sent by e-mail to this address: click here. Submissions not sent through this channel will not be considered.
  • If changes are made to your submission but not sent via e-mail, they will not be taken into account.
  • Please note that in case of massive participation, we may not be able to provide feedback on individual submissions if certain rules aren't respected. If your submission does not comply with the rules, it may be disqualified from entering the poll.



Rules regarding self-promotion, advertising etc.: As this is a private submission, all postings of individual submissions should be in this specific thread, and not elsewhere on the forums or Steam forums. We can't and won't police submissions posted on external forums, and won't prevent you from asking your friends or strangers to support your submission. However, abuses will be treated with extreme prejudice, leading to possible disqualification and ban from participating in upcoming contests. In short, don't be that person.


The deadline for submitting Friday 16th, 4pm CEST. If you didn't see where and how to submit your ideas, please read the rules!




If you have any questions on the contest or the submission, feel free to ask. 


Now get your drawing caps on, and have fun!