sugarsugarsugar 2021-04-27 09:31
Neat game! Love the art atmosphere and music.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → You Know The Drill
By maksime, Youhou and metalfox-dioxymore
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 510 | 3.76 | 81 | |
| Fun | 339 | 3.76 | 81 | |
| Innovation | 1269 | 2.95 | 81 | |
| Theme | 477 | 3.95 | 81 | |
| Graphics | 1 | |||
| Audio | 462 | 3.67 | 81 | |
| Humor | 891 | 2.69 | 75 | |
| Mood | 900 | 3.50 | 79 |
Neat game! Love the art atmosphere and music.
I played this for half an hour and won the game I didnt even realize it was half an hour!! and yoo!! is the music adaptive?! whenever I go deeper into the planet I can see that instead of the piano the space type synth plays. One of the best Games I have played so far in the jam btw upload some screenshots of the game on itch.io people need to see this masterpiece in it's full glory!
@theawesomeshaz Wow, thank you, we are so glad you enjoyed the game ! And yes, the music adapts with your depth ^^ ! There is also a little musical tweak when you don't have any energy left and your oxygen starts dropping :)
@sugarsugarsugar Thank you for your feeback =) !
An ordinary man would've been content finding the heart of a planet and living a good life... I had the same plans, once. But when I held that heart in my hands, a new vision formed inside my head. A much, much larger vision. I used the funds I got selling the heart to get the best equipment out there. I continued. I gathered dozens of hearts. Quickly gaining in wealth, I used the funds to create a business. First just a few, but soon hundreds of miners at my command, mining the hearts of any planet we came across. These mining operations were illegal, at first. But no more. With a monopoly on planet hearts, and protection money coming in from any inhabited planets wishing to keep their planet intact, there is no one left in this Galaxy who could stand against me.
allready done!! Безымянный.png
Takes a little bit of time to figure out how deep can you dig before all the energy runs out and you'll need to rush back. Fun game :) Once equipment is upgraded it becomes much faster, which is good :) I like how the music changes once you start running out of oxygen. Also the people look cute. Well done :)
Woooow was this a nice game!! I was hooked and couldn't stop playing it until i beat it! It was very satisfying and it is such a polished and relaxing game! 10/10 would play again
for such a simple and short game i had a lot of fun playing it, the gameplay loop is enjoyable. the music is great too. also not sure if it was intended, but running out of oxygen was... terrifying to say the least.
Very good game . A bit grindy , but I love the concept , and it was well done . I expected that the "planet heart" was unique , very deep , and with a nice cinematic to go with it , and was a little disapointed when i've seen that it is only a mineral like any other . The music was nice , really intense . Continue like that !
@iak Wow, thank you very much for your nice story ! I take it you liked our game then, thank you for playing !
@brutor GG and thank you for playing !
@labete thank you for your feedback ! It does take a bit of time to get used to how much you can dig before going back to sell your minerals but as soon as you start upgrading your equipment it gets easier
@giordas thank you very much for your kind words, it means a lot to us ! Glad you had a good time and thank you for playing our game !
@duckman Thank you for your review ! The "stressfulness" of running out of oxygen is definitely intended, glad you could feel it, haha ! Thank you for playing
@deedose thank you for your feedback ! You know, there can't only be one planet out there that has a heart, each one has to have one :) With a bit more time we could have achieved a proper ending but better than nothing ! Thank you for playing our game !
Very, very cool! I absolutly like your approach to implement a vertikal mix. The SFX need some love..
I really like the concept of the game, well done, high rating given of course
@deedose You have a little dialog when you sell it, and it gives you money, but we didn't have time to implement a proper ending with a cinematic, unfortunally ^^'. But thank you for your feedback, we will manage our time better next time to create a real ending !
This game is just awesome. The music made me want to beat the challenge to get as deep as I can and to find the planet heart. Great job!
Well done.
@mighty-mufflon-games thank you !
Hope you managed to get a planet heart ! :smile:
Maybe I'm dumb, but I couldn't figure out how to start the game. After the intro cutscene, the character is standing next to the teleporter and the text box says move to the teleporter and press E, but A/D doesnt work, and E does nothing. All I can do is jump up and down next to the teleporter.
I like this game! The style of art, music make this game super cool. I still dont know how you got that smooth animations and i thought that planet heart will be much deeper, GJ!
@skleembof Mmmmmh, that strange. Did you close the text box (by clicking) ? You cannot move while there is an open textbox ^^'.
@kudneus Thank you ! We didn't want the planet heart to be too deep so you guys can test the whole game without spending hours on it :)
@skleembof We added a webGL version of the game, maybe give this version a shot ?
Interesting digging game. Liked the upgrade mechanic and gameplay :)
Interesting gameplay loop! The oxigen diminishing gets very thriling with the sound effect that matches the music perfectly. Simple game but very fun
Nice Game! It miss a bit of preservens between digs.
This is a very interesting incremental game ! I really liked playing it, I kept getting more and more curious on what an upgrade would do. Very well made. I've played this on stream, if you want you could have a look at the VOD at twitch.tv/DrJavaSaurus.
Cool!
Screenshot 2021-04-28 at 17.59.46.png
Really liked the intro. Line by line fed story (especially when accompanied with some visuals) is always a superior to walls of text even though they make the player read just the same. Could have made the message box a tiny bit better still though. The color choices seemed like programmer choices (eww yucky pure red and green) in comparison to the artist made pleasant graphics. :sweat_smile: Also I would have opted for a line break before the gray help text here...
Screenshot 2021-04-28 at 17.41.58.png
Also might be a good idea to scale the UI. Unless you're aware, there is a "canvas scaler" component by default attached to canvas element on Unity where you can toggle UI to scale with either screen height or width (or both). That way the UI will remain the same proportion instead of getting ridiculously small on bigger resolutions.
Screenshot 2021-04-28 at 17.42.56.png
Another weird thing was the magenta NPC. Yet again a pure bright color! Why the hell was it purple. I mean it even had a unique idling animation yet to differentiate it from the player you just tinted it. Would have been better even if it looked identical to player in my opinion. Oh right, I checked the credits and looks like it was some ready made art kit.
The base game loop was fine and had the legs to carry my interest till the end even though it did get pretty repetitive fast. The upgrades were kinda boring and didn't feel like they impacted the game that much by offering player any choices. It could have just as easily been triple priced "level" upgrade. And I'm pretty sure your power and speed were flipped. My first purchases were energy and then speed but after then purchasing the power upgrade as my third one, I noticed a pretty significant speed boost.
Some more interesting upgrade additions could be a drill range extension or something that would make sideways digging less tedious. Having to dig two blocks to proceed made it not really worth it and it was best to just dig straight down and grab whatever was near enough.
Would have been better if the values of different ores were shown somewhere. Especially in the case of diamond/emerald since they both appeared at the same height and wanted to know which one I should prioritize. Kinda had to figure out the values based on mining speeds.
The prompt for each time you used the teleporter was pointless and annoying. Just a complete waste of time. Even if the player by some chance didn't want to do with there would be zero repercussions to just immediately teleport back.
Something weird going on in the corner here btw...
Apr-28-2021 18-35-32.gif
The teleporter "glass" isn't high enough. Also would have really preferred if the top portion didn't have collisions at all. It just made it annoying to get inside there at times. Especially with the bit too speedy controls. A lower acceleration for the movements would have really made it more pleasant.
Screenshot 2021-04-28 at 18.38.15.png
Music was nice and the sounds that were there were ok too. But the missing effects for drilling at least (not sure if there were others missing too) made it less cohesive experience. Digging was the only thing that had a nice particle effect accompanied with some screen shake too so that being the only silent thing was weird.
Anyways, I think that's all I've got, good job! :thumbsup:
@javasaurus Thank you a lot ! It is really interesting to watch somebody play our game, we learned a lot about a player's perception :) !
@antti-haavikko That was an awesome comment, I am speechless. Thank you a lot for taking the time to write such a detailed review. As wannabe-game-devs, this kind of feedback is really important for us, and I agree with pretty much everything you said (and yeah, I am the developer responsible for the pure red/green in the text... Sorry ^^'). We will take a look at the canvas scaler because it bothered us for pretty much all our games (we used the "UI Toolkit" this time thinking that is was the solution, but it wasn't) ! Thank you again for all your tips, it will help us a lot to make even better games :) !
Good execution, great game ! Nothing much to say. This is good. Maybe a sound effect for the drilling ? And we can't go to caves of 1 square high, it's just asking for moar digging ;)
I managed to play the game with the webgl version. I redownloaded the windows version to see if I just forgot to click the textbox, but it still wouldn't work. The text box was dismissed but the character was still stuck.
The game itself is really fun though. You guys managed to create an extremely addictive gameplay loop that had me hooked from the start. I don't think I've ever played a single LD jam game for so long
This is quite additive!
There's this nice gameplay loop of mining selling buying repeat that is quite addictive (although it can get a little bit repetitive) The art is nice, even though the background sky could use some more texture The music is good
There's also this nice sense of progression that goes on when you buy more upgrades, it feels really nice!
@eps Thank you a lot =) ! Yeah, fun little fact : the one in charge of the "drilling sound" recorded a real drill, then manipulated the sound to give it more "futuristic" vibes. After that, it sounded like an amazing "button clicked", so we implemented as it, and totally forgot to create another "drilling sound" xD. @skleembof Thank you for coming back and trying again! We will investigate that strange glitch by downloading the game on different PCs... We are glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for your review :) !
@sheinxy Thank you ! We had some ideas to try to add some unique elements to each planet and reduce that repetitive aspect, but unfortunally, we didn't have time to implement them ^^. But we will definitively focus on that on the next jams :)
You hooked me long enough for me to beat the game, so I would say this is a good game! The loop is very satisfying.
I'm not clear on the difference between "drill speed" and "drill level". The latter seemed to make my drill faster...
The music is nice, the art is cute, and I'm really impressed that you found time to implement an opening cutscene.
The game itself is pretty good, with simple mecanics, it's interesting. however, the earning curve can be tweaked, the early game is very long
This was quite fun! Reminded me of the game Motherload by Xgenstudios back in the day. Such a fun flash game that was! I think this game was fun, i'd like to see the holes being preserved being runs so you don't have to start from the beginning everytime. But good idea, and good execution all in all!
Hey guys. Despite being not standing out on originality or artstyle imo, it was my most addictive experience so far, well thought and well executed. Very nice game loop. +1 for dynamic music with depth.
@divford "drill level" makes each "drill tick" deals more damage, while "drill speed" reduces the time between each tick =). Thank you for your feedback, we are glad you enjoyed our game !
@diringer-leo Thank you for your feedback ! Adujsting the game scaling was a bit tough since each planet is randomized, and good/bad RNG impacts a lot the speed of the early game. We will take that in consideration for our next games, thank you =)
@hansj A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is an extract from our Discord brainstorming, 34 minutes after the theme reveal:
ludum.PNG
Motherload was totally our starting point, and it was a true pleasure to be able to make a little tribute to that masterpiece, more than a decade later =). We still wanted to do something a bit different, so we opted for that "rogue-like" aspect where you start from the top each time ^^.
@thomas-olsson Yeah, unfortunally, we don't have any graphic designer in the team, so we can't really go deeper and deeper (;D) in the artstyle ^^. We wanted to add some distinct features to stand out from the classical "digger games", but 72 hours flies so fast ! We are glad you still enjoyed our little game =)
Nice game ! Fun & short, i like it !
@zazab thank you for the kind words !
It's a well made game! Nice job! :D My only problem with it, that I could finish it with a third of the improvements. You should put the heart a little deeper
Really interesting game! Mechanics in the form of an oxygen and energy sensor, as well as a jetpack add some charm to the game! Cool!
Pretty cool game! I got the planet heart :)
The progression curve seemed pretty solid to me, the graphics were cute, and the music was solid! But the lack of almost any other sounds was quite jarring.
The random generation was cool but I also felt a cool aspect could have been keeping the same terrain every time the player returned, so that they could continue going down tunnels they've burrowed with their new upgrades, further into the theme of deeper and deeper.
Nonetheless, well done!
Things i like: - Progression curve designed well, and graphics are very cool - Great sound design and music at all
Things may be improved: - It's a bit easy, but if you will balance it, it will be awesome
Great job!
It was a very nice game, in the beginning a bit frustrating since I didn't understand how the jetpack worked and died due to that (I might have missed the explanation of that). After I figured it out that it had to do with the energy it was a very fun game and a nice finish to it. It would've been nice to see what ore selled for what price (after you sell the first one). Also the oxygen didn't really play a role since I needed to get back up with my jetpack, it could've been implemented as an extra meter that ticks down over time. Also it would've been nice to see a number of energy instead of a percentage, since I did know before the upgrade I needed about 15%, but since I could go deeper do I still need 15% or is it less or more? That made it harder to make good decisions. Personally I found it unfotunate that you had to make a 2x height space to get left and right, on the other hand it gave it a bit more of a challenge to make the decision go down or go left/right. Overall a great job, nice visuals and good sound in the background.
The art and music were good, the gameplay mechanics were fine. The game could use some feedback from sound effects while you are digging. I felt the movement of your character was a bit fast and it made it hard to control especially trying to go through small openings.
A cute approach on the theme!
oh my god I'm so stuck I wish the game was over so quickly)
wow really cool game!! when i found the planet earth, i didn't take it because I wanted to have all the upgrades.I loved it! it would be better if the top of the teleporter didn't have a collider, also it was quite annoying to dig forward. A cool addition to the game would be more upgrades so the player must choose a gameplay style and not taking all the upgrades :smile:
I got the heart! Very addicting game, I just wanted the next upgrade, then the next, and so on until I finished the game. Digging is so satisfying once you get a few drill upgrades. It's just missing a sound effect.
I liked how you used the story to introduce all the main mechanics (collecting the minerals, the randomized layouts).
Maybe the pacing could be a bit faster, but that's just my personal preference.
Just a solid, enjoyable entry. Good job!
Managed to find and sell the heart. Thoughts: The 2 block height for moving horizontally was really annoying. I found myself never willing to go horizontally more than 3 blocks. I would just dig straight down and collect anything near me. Whenever my energy would run low I'd jetpack up. Going horizontally in the stone was almost especially never worth it.
Nice!
Very cool game. Graphics and music are nice. I enjoyed playing it :) Great work guys!
It started off a bit slowly before I had a level 2 drill, but after that it has a nice flow to it. The difference between drill level and drill speed was unclear. Otherwise, it's a really smooth game with quite a bit of polish - the art is good, excellent sound design, good platforming controls.
The character designs are super cute, especially the idle animation. The opening cutscene with the planets also did a great job setting up the mood of the game. I found the walking to be surprisingly fast, though I got used to it rather quickly. I do wish the energy/oxygen would deplete more slowly and was not tied to jumping, though I do appreciate the risk/reward of digging too deep and not being able to get back in time. I also wish there were sound effects for drilling. But otherwise this was a great game with lots of potential!
Awesome game! Art, music and gameplay on point! Got me hooked until the end! Congrats
@lelek-hunor-kadosa Thank you ! We wanted the game to not be too long so that testers for the jam could finish the game without spending an hour or two.
@egercreator Thank you, glad you liked the game !
@chiyeon Congrats on getting the planet heart ! I KNOW about the sounds, I'm the one usually in charge of sound design and after recording a drill to make the sound and modifying it so much I thought "hey, this is a nice button click sound, let's use this !" and totally forgot to make the drilling sound for real...
@adil Thanks for the feedback ! We kept the game relatively easy so that you could play through it pretty fast to get to the end.
@retro-banana-man-nl Thank you for your feedback and suggestions ! The display of ore price was definitely on our todo list but we didn't manage to have enough time to do it unfortunately.
@tengusheath Thanks for the kind words ! As stated above, I know too much about the lack of drlling sound, it haunts me since then, haha.
@marcionix Glad you liked it !
@maybeagoose Thank you for that, we appreciate it !
@edouardlapoire Thank you very much for your kind words ! Hope you could get your hands on a planet heart after buying all the upgrades ! Thenk you for your suggestions !
@asdehielo Congrats for your heart, you're rich my friend ! See above for the missing of sound effect for the drilling, haha. Thank you for your review !
@divagated Well done for your planet heart, hope you enjoyed getting it !
@markositta Thanks !
@quoc thank you for your review !
@googlefrog it's a bit slow at first yes, definitely something to tweak if we had enough time. The drill level increase the damage your drill does per tick and the drill speed allows your damage to tick faster, if you wanted to know :)
@nice-gear-games The movement is definitely a bit too fast for sure, we tweaked it but the change never made it to the final build, haha ! Jumping does not consume energy, only using the jetpack does. For the lack of sound effect, see several answers above, haha, thank you for your feedback !
@amigopadilha Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed our little game !
That's a nice game! I played it to the end. The music was especially nice. It'd need a bit more work to be balanced though. Through a large part of the game there's nothing preventing you from just cutting straight down, mining a lot on the way, and getting back up when you're almost out of energy. Players are lazy so if they have a boring but easy way to win, a lot of them will use it even though they're not having fun. The tutorial at the beginning was nice. Several times I tried to exit the shop menu with esc and the pause menu poped up, it felt quite weird. Cool entry overall :thumbsup:
Quite a bit of depth to this game, with the shop etc.., good work, was fun!
Quite a decent game with nice art and straight forward controls. Wish it progressed a bit faster since it's a jam game and it felt like I was going back and forth a lot. Overall a nice entry
Nice game! Loved the character and it was fun to mine. For me the loop or needing to go back and recharge felt a bit cumbersome, I wish recharging would have been easier. At first I expected my capsule would fall with me if I remove the dirt below :)
Мы - черные землекопатели. Мы копаем там, где никто бы не осмелился копать. И наша цель проста - контрабанда. Контрабанда золота, орихалка, алмазов. А также - сердец. Сердец планет.
Очень увлекательная игра, я рад, что продал сердце и стал богат! ^_^
Nice work guys. Great jam. Music is nice, as well as the visuals. Nice effect when dying. Would be nice to have different animations (sprites) for different digging (Down and up).
Nice job! The gameplay is very simple, but there's just something about each upgrade allowing you to get further and faster, that just kept me wanting to keep going. The jump physics were a bit crazy, but all in all I had fun with this. Oh, also - I really liked how the music changed and became almost muffled as you got deeper into the planet. Really nice touch.
@paulloz Thank you for your feedback, we'll keep these advices in mind for our next game !
@dom-de-re Glad you enjoyed our game !
@goldenevolution Thanks for the review !
@finntastico Thank you for the kind words, interesting idea for the teleporter to follow you, we'll keep this in mind ! :)
@xpoho Спасибо, что играете в нашу игру, рада, что она вам понравилась!
@doctortm Thank you ! The lack of up/down mining is totally explained in the lore :angel:
@garys Thank you very much for your nice review ! Glad you liked the adaptive music !
I always like these kinds of upgrade systems in LD games, they certainly keep me playing for a bit longer ;) The sound design is also well done, with the changes in the music when you dig deeper or lose oxygen.
Since according to the story you visit a new planet each time, it would have been nice to have a better sky background that maybe changes its color scheme each time you warp down, for variety.
@zathnic Thank you for your review and the suggestions ! Adding variety to the planets was definitely on our todo list, we also had slightly different dirt to complement that but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for that. Glad you liked our game !
Well polished little game, great loop that kept me engaged. I really liked how you let the player continue ripping hearts out after winning.
Had a nice solid well paced loop that pulled me through the whole game. It's easy for this kind of thing to become grindy and repetitive, but every time you buy and upgrade here there's a genuine sense that mining is slightly easier and that you're making noticeably more money.
Very chill game :). Upgrade system is nicely balanced - as you can buy a new thing practically every trip, you have a feeling of natural and genuine progression that keeps you going and is satisfying. Controls fees nice and jetpacking around is fuuuun :). It would be nice to have a hotkey to activate emergency evacuation. It's easy to get stuck in a deep, deep hole if you get to greedy, and then there's nothing to do but sadly wait for your oxygen to run out. I guess that's the price of greed ;)!
I feel like the intro graphics don't really go well with the graphics of the rest of the game. Both are nice (I love the character sprites and the planets in the intro are just so juicy!) but the styles don't mix together all that well.
Music is nice and adds to the chill atmosphere. And it changing with the circumstances is great - such attention to detail in a jam game!
I'm still split on the fact that the character does not fit into one grid square. I speculate that this is done for balancing reasons, but it doesn't feel all that good in gameplay. You get used to it, but something just feels off.
Also, I'm rich now!
Screenshot_17.jpg
jerky controls and boring
Thank you @handsomeshan 😘
Nice game! It's a simple enough loop, but I like it! The digging and jetpack energy being the same resource is an interesting touch. I do wish there was a couple more sound effects in there, given that it's THE core mechanic, I could use more audio feedback from the drilling for example. Nice work overall, cute character art too!
Yes i know the drill, and i love it. Grind is real! I think it is nearly perfect for a 3 days jam. A bigger pool of animations and sound effects could have made the game even more better. Mini lore was good as well. Very nice job overall!