hasuverse 2021-04-27 04:27
Controls feels a little bit slow, but overall feeling is very satisfying! Well done
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Rover in a Hole: The Quest for the ULTRA STONE
By zerocomms and windfall890
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1142 | 3.38 | 38 | |
| Fun | 1084 | 3.23 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 1529 | 2.74 | 37 | |
| Theme | 290 | 4.08 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 1058 | 3.55 | 38 | |
| Audio | 1048 | 2.98 | 37 | |
| Humor | 1262 | 2.22 | 31 | |
| Mood | 1406 | 3.10 | 34 |
Controls feels a little bit slow, but overall feeling is very satisfying! Well done
This game really reminds me of a mobile game I used to like playing. It has a really charming atmosphere and I like the visual style very much. It's very satisfying when you have all the upgrades and you're speeding through the level. I felt incentivized to plan out my route, and I had a big drop on one side where I could go down fast. I would have loved to play this in fullscreen, but you don't seem to have that enabled on itch.io. also, I couldn't really tell whether the 'I' shaped block or the 'H' shaped block was first available to mine, which led to me accidently breaking a block I didn't mean to. The game is well paced at the end, but the first couple speed upgrades feel inconsequential.
Tldr: This game is satisfying to play, and i'd love to see the idea expanded!
I love these kind of upgrade games, very therapeutic :) I like the designs of the blocks to show different difficulties and the design of the drill. I think I would have to disagree with the other comments, I noticed quite near the end a considerable speed push. My suggestion for an area of improvement would be to make it a tad trickier perhaps. A third of the way down I realised I could go left and right and get all the blocks to gather everything. That would be something to maybe change if you weren't in a timed competition :D Good job!
Cute and fun! very nice work!
Doh ... once you drill a hole straight down there's no way to get back to all the goodies you missed. Still managed to finish though and get the big bucks. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent game! Looks like I'm not the only one who tried the "dig straight down" technique only to be stuck at the bottom without enough money to buy the ultra drill. It was super satisfying upgrading my little robot dude and watching it move faster and break bigger and bigger stones. Great game! Dig Game.JPG
Dig straigt down technique is a bit of a trap :D
You all fell into my Ultra Trap and delved TOO DEEP just like the dwarves of Moria!
Really what it is is that the economy is overbalanced at the start. It was my first time designing an upgrade system and level generator and geometric scaling for balance. I learned a lot from this try, and I have already noted some post jam adjustments to make the economy more fun.
The puzzle mechanic of accidentally rushing past important loot is intended to be a 'doh' moment, but it comes very late. i would rather it happen in the top 15ish blocks to not feel like Im wasting the player's time for a whole doomed run!
Thanks so much for the feedback.
The lowpoly style from @zerocomms really set us on track for this jam.
Interesting game, but pretty easy once you start drilling every lines of blocks. It's working well and there is some nice work on the blocks. Features are clean and that's really awesome for a game jam to have something so well working and so much clean =)
I luckily caught on quick that digging straight down would cost me resources. This is the type of game I could spend hours playing. Great game
The completionist in me went all the way down in a zig zag pattern! I loved collecting all the blocks. I felt it was kind of therapeutic to play through. I loved the background, it was really stunning! I also loved the little rover, it felt like it had some cute little personality somehow. Great job!!! :D
The drilling noise was really satisfying to hear once you get a couple of the speed upgrades. Around the halfway mark, I ended digging everything. Not quite sure if that was the way to go but I ended up with $73,319.
After a while I had no place to go. And no upgrades :( Too bad. Nice, clean art style. good job
Overall, pretty decent game. It feels like you had an idea for what you wanted to do, but you didn't have enough time to flesh out all the details and nuances (yeah I know, 72hours is just not enough XD). It reminds me of a simpler version of Motherload. Though, I'm very thankful for the teleport and lack of fuel system.
As a completionist, I didn't fall for the trap, but because of that, there wasn't any real thinking or strategy involved. It revolved around: mine layer or two, teleport, buy drill upgrade, buy speed/cargo upgrade if extra money available, and repeat. I actually think having unlimited cargo would actually make it a bit more difficult. It would make you think about when to go back to buy upgrades and how to snake out your mining. You could make the drill more expensive to compensate.
The rover is cute. The graphics, though simplistic, were fairly easy to understand. I'm not entirely sure how the colour correlated to the value of the gem. Maybe some sort of a legend would help us decide which gems are more worthwhile going after.
The drilling and movement sounds fit perfectly and even synced up with the speed which was great. The background noise was kinda meh. It fit the theme of a barren planet, but it would have be nice to have a consistent "alien world" music track. You could just say the rover was playing it to set a mood as it worked away.
The initial speed of the rover kinda feels clunky, but once you get some of those upgrades its pretty satisfying. Even though the game uses a grid system, at higher speeds it feels almost fluid, which is so so nice.
But yeah, fantastic work. I'd love to see where you go with this or any other games you'll apply what you learned while making this.
@Cirtapk Thanks for the awesome feedback! @nounka, @chimp, @snip-man thanks for the play, hope you had a nice few minutes of peaceful digging!
The economy balance didn't get hammered down until _moments_ before launch. as a 2 man team of young dads, its pretty much impossible to predict how much polish time we were going to have, so we chipped as many small touches in as we can. Stuff like sound effects were only iterated on once! while we made several passes at rover movement (and very glad we did)
I definitely wish we had gotten in some chill alien music, more dynamic and interesting spawns, and another mechanic or two.
If there is one thing I wish had panned out better for what we did end up shipping it would be difficulty. In the final moments I threw the balance lever to "super easy" to make sure the level could be completed and resigned myself to leaving it as a chill experience for the jam.
@ZeroComms adorable rover ended up cementing the entire aesthetic, we rallied around it midway through design and he really gave the game a lot of personality.
We are actually working on a refined post jam version, and we will update the links here to include one once we get back to it! We are prioritizing difficulty and variety and looking to add a new mechanic for falling, then double down on the cute rover with animation and extra doodads.
I managed to get a pretty flexible level generator done for this, so I don't think it will be very hard to add some variety to it. I just played it very safe for the short deadline.
Also you are so right, Jam games (and working on a small team) have forced me out of my comfort zone in wonderful ways. For example this is the first 3d project where I didn't use built-in physics or colliders, and the first time I have used Unity ScriptableObjects for data _and_ for pub/sub event architecture. Also the first time I built a scaling upgrade and econ system. Most of my projects until have been simple puzzle/action physics games.
Really nice complete game. I though the mini-map at the side was particularly cool. I also dug too deep and too greedily but had fun getting there. Great job!
I really loved the sound of wind and just going at it. The minimap was also a really cool addition and it just got more fun as I upgraded my machine. Although I almost thought I couldn't make it to the end because of how I dug
Hey nice entry!! I have some feedback that my help you improve it:
- Going back to base each time was a bit anoying, not that much but a bit - Movement speed boost is not that useful becuase nothing chases you, maybe you can add something that makes it worth buying. Otherwise, slow movement speed feels more like an inconvinience - I kind of blocked the game, I dig straight down from the first tile after the base and reached really deep where there were rocks that I could'nt break :( and I didn't had any money to buy more drilling power!. Maybe you can add an ability to rebuild a block in order to make a bridge or detect this situations an trigger a game over
I really liked the idea and the execution!! You did a great job, congratulations! :D
Cool little digging game! The audio really helped sell the general vibe.
It was a bit too slow to move and dig and I think it could likely have been sped up to be twice as fast.
nice game ,but this audio system can really do better :smile: I dig stone but always is same sudio makes me fell not great, and hope I can dig deeper at one time , anyway nice job :smirk:
Interesting and complete game. Missed some animations for selling resoureces, but it's ok. I find it pretty entertaining and manage to complete it https://prnt.sc/12iv871
I just strip mined everything. That made it too boring and too easy. Also cargo space was not really a useful thing. I could just take more trips.