Dig Dog Dig

phi 2021-04-30 16:09

I'm not sure I fully understand this... Is there any hint about where the obstacles and apples are hiding? Or is it just random? When things randomly appear without any way of avoiding them, it's usually quite frustrating, because then it just feels like Russian roulette, waiting until you die and starting over. But maybe I'm missing something?

I really like the aesthetic, and interaction-wise I can see this working well on a phone! Also, I quite like the way you reveal bits of information about the game mechanics whenever it's game over -- takes much less effort to read than full instructions or a tutorial. If you can develop it further so that there is more skill involved and not just luck, I would be interested to see where this goes! :)

rolodophone 2021-05-01 13:35

Hi @phi, thanks for your feedback. The obstacles and stuff are always in the same place, so the idea is that you learn the correct path through trial and error. It's a memory game, essentially.

phi 2021-05-01 14:12

@rolodophone Aaah, I see! There's no way I would've figured that out on my own :see_no_evil: In that case, maybe some more visual cues would help, because the dirt looks the same everywhere :thinking:

room606 2021-05-03 18:57

Ha-ha, I like doggy's sly face when it digs the dirt :dog: Mechanics is simple and fun, I've maybe would added 2-3 HPs to the player to be more forgiving for the mistakes :-)

cakestorm 2021-05-03 20:02

An interesting sort of puzzle-mining game! I liked the idea of mining down and collecting bonuses along the way, to get to the end goal of the bone. The cutscene at the beginning was a nice addition too, and it gave me some idea of what the game was about, so good work on adding that. I do feel the game could be better executed though - there wasn't really much indication of obstacles, even if they were the same place every time, and it was easy to forget where they were. Maybe put a warning on them, if you've discovered them once before? Another thing is that digging felt very slow, even with the first apple, and it was a little tedious to have to restart at the beginning each time. Being able to keep your speed upgrades might've helped there.

The art was easy to read, and I did love all the little expressions the dog had - added some great personality to the game! The tiles looked a bit visually noisy, but they fit together well, and they clearly looked like dirt, so they were fine. The sound effects were a really good choice, and they added a lot of feedback to the game which helped make it a lot more fun to play.

I really liked the idea here, and it has a lot of potential to be worked on - it was a good entry! Nice work!

rolodophone 2021-05-03 20:15

@room606 Thanks for the feedback, I agree.

rolodophone 2021-05-03 20:18

@cakestorm Thank you for the perceptive feedback! I agree with everything.

tarfield 2021-05-03 20:20

Pros: - Cute dog texture and music fits to the gameplay - The gameplay fits to theme - It's fun to find new obstacles - It feels good to find the paths - Good writing

Cons: - It's a bit boring to go through the same gameplay many times to figure out the path, maybe it should be possible to go quicker in the start?

knatt 2021-05-03 20:36

I like the music! It fun and went well with pixel graphics. The game is a real test of patience tho... I stopped playing after I got down to the second screen and immediately stepped on dynamite, sending me back to the top. This game would benefit greatly if there was some check points or extra hits

Good entry, keep it up!

evn 2021-05-04 23:54

Trying to run on mac. Got error: `Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: '+[NSUndoManager(NSInternal) _endTopLevelGroupings] is only safe to invoke on the main thread.'` From the screenshots it looks nice!

rolodophone 2021-05-05 06:39

@evn Sorry, no idea. I don't have a Mac to test on. Thanks for letting me know though 🙂

rolodophone 2021-05-05 06:41

Thanks for the feedback, @tarfield and @knatt!

stmatn 2021-05-06 19:18

Nice game. In general it was fun to play, however it was extremely repetitive. I was hoping that at least the second layer would act as a checkpoint so that I would not have to dig through the first layers. Especially since the first layers took the most time on each run. after finding the bone I wanted to know if there was something hidden on the deeper levels, so I started again and discovered that the level below the bone was a dead end. I think making the goal missable is one thing but suggesting to the player to give up is on another level. I think you should not do that to players that just have put much effort and patience to reach that point. Besides that the game was fun to play and the animations were really cute. Nice work :)

francisco-lucas 2021-05-06 20:09

THE DOG IS VERY CUTE !!!! I liked the choice of music too, very cool! The concept is good! I think that when you pass the level you could have a checkpoint :)

Congratulations for the work! I invite you to play our game too :)

rolodophone 2021-05-06 20:51

Thank you @stmatn and @francisco-lucas, I will take that into account when I do an update.

cpv 2021-05-08 08:51

Congrats on a game well done! Really enjoyed the audio part, very good combination of music and sounds, I understand that they are not made for jam, but still very good selection :) The music nails it.

For the game, I find it an interesting combination of digging + memory game, since you have to remember were you got something nasty last time, and where are the apples and bones.

I like the attention to details: barks, sound of scratching, animations of digging + eyes, stuff from sewer..

I think the game is quite well made :) You managed to do a lot for a game jam.

Looked at the source code, it seems you are well with LibGDX/kotlin, good job on that as well! You should have a look at their wiki on how to bundle a standalone game (executable+jre) https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Bundling-a-JRE so you can distribute your games more easily in the future (don't worry, I launched the .jar just fine :) ).

rolodophone 2021-05-08 12:46

Thanks, @cpv!

Yeah, before the jam started I tried making a standalone game using JPackage and Badass Runtime, but I couldn't get it to work, annoyingly.

fabula-rasa 2021-05-08 16:04

The dog is very cute, the faces it makes are just adorable! The music is cool and energetic, but the loop is rather short and gets tiring after a while.

I really like this approach to the theme. I think the game wouldplay better if there would be some intermediary saves between levels. The gameplay relies on getting to know the level by trial and error to find a good path and proceed to the next level. But after you already solve the level, repeating it over and over just to get to the next one (the one that you are currently figuring) feels just like an unnecessary busywork.

I played the Android version and it played well. Controls work fine and are responsive. Well done!

rolodophone 2021-05-08 17:46

Thank you for the feedback, @fabula-rasa!

meta-link 2021-05-09 16:02

Fun game ! A bit slow, but I really like the graphics and the music, also it was fun toplay on Android.

Good job :slight_smile:

raphiell 2021-05-09 17:06

Super cool that you made it work on mobile as well. If there was some indication what spaces were what, it would feel better than just random chance.

Well done!

rolodophone 2021-05-09 19:18

Thanks, @meta-link and @raphiell, and I agree!