Depth Gauge

not-as-artistic 2021-04-28 15:34

Expected Minecraft after looking at the thumbnail, found just Mine. But don't take it negatively! I actually like that there is no crafting system. I don't have to stress myself over what resource to dig for and just D I G. I was pleasantly surprised at how you implemented mining "inwards". Although it's a bit difficult to see in a 2D view, it added more depth (literally) and provided more options. I do wish the sound and controls were a bit better, though. The sound of digging felt a little annoying after some time, and the sound of roping in was also jarring. Solid experience overall. With some tweaking on the visuals and sound, I think you've got a nice time sinker made.

solrun 2021-04-29 00:55

@not-as-artistic Thanks for the feedback. If only I had like a day or two more to work on it. Sorry about the sound stuff. It sounded fine on my headphones, but then I played the game on my brother's headphones and it was so bad. I added a mute button in case it's really bad for anyone else.

neverautomatic 2021-04-29 18:16

Being able to dig into the background like that added a surprising amount of DEPTH :wink: to the game. That and the rope mechanic were really well done. Great job!

(I didn't have any problems with the audio on my headset, it sounded pretty good.)

andre-sadie 2021-05-10 18:41

The layers made things suprisingly interesting but I wish it was used to implement some puzzles into the levels. I think the rope should anchor to the current tile because sometimess digging up or down was confusing with the rope going diagonal and it wasn't clear what tile you were on.

inno 2021-05-10 19:06

Cute little game. Didn't manage to find the last ore though...

solrun 2021-05-10 21:33

@neverautomatic That's pretty much all I was going for with this game. Deeper and Deeper being going down and going in. And I thought a rope zip-line to get out would be fun.

@andre-sadie I did want to make some of the deeper layers more maze-like with the indestructible rocks, but didn't get around to it. With the rope, I was trying to be clever so that I wouldn't need an anchor point at each tile, but I think the rope outsmarted me and my clever assumptions weren't so clever.

@inno Gotta go deeper and deeper.

camcam 2021-05-10 21:36

Cool game and very fun !

hunter-x 2021-05-10 21:50

A fun game! The system for moving in and out was interesting, and it's neat to see the path you took through the cave as the rope hauls you out. The text did all appear too large and overlapped with one another (I'm guessing something to do with Unity's UI Scale Mode settings) and possible areas for adding more to the game later would be increased difficulty as you go deeper or more types of upgrades, but it's still fun regardless.

superpokeunicorn 2021-05-10 22:10

The multi-layered mining is definitely a neat idea. Visually, it could get a bit cluttered when you were in one of the middle layers with multiple layers in front of and behind you. The rope was also pretty cool, especially when it pulled you back up the the surface really quickly, although it's a shame that it doesn't interact with the gameplay much. I do appreciate that that you actually added an ending to the game, as most of the mining games in this jam just kinda drag on forever. Overall, a solid game with a cool main mechanic. nice work!

joe40001 2021-05-11 05:57

I liked it! The rope mechanic is nice and the depth in the z dimension was a nice surprise. The text doesn't seem to scale right on windowed mode and you probably want it to go away while you are digging, but aside from that I enjoyed it.

fargred 2021-05-14 09:06

A fun digging game! Zooming back with the rope and spending your hard earned bubblegum felt very rewarding. The additional dimension also caught me by surprise and was fun to use (albeit sometimes visually hard to make out)! Getting more upgrades was a good motivation, too! The graphics did overlapp a bit, but that might just have been windowed mode. Great entry!

super-hadoken 2021-05-14 09:34

Really fun mining game with great pixel art. The application of depth and darkness added to the claustrophobic feeling and was right on theme. At my resolution (1600x900) the text was a bit big and cluttered the UI.

Some extra sounds and animation would be welcome to an already great game and awesome solo entry.

someone 2021-05-14 20:09

A fun mining game. The text overlaps the items on the left if you don't go full screen making it hard to read. The layering was a nice mechanic, though I almost quit before discovering you could mine in the third dimension. It could have done with an additional prompt with the controls when you first get to a place you can do that. The pulling back to the surface was a nice variation on the motherload mechanics. A nice satisfying alternative to getting lost.

solrun 2021-05-14 21:15

@hunter-x The canvas has a Canvas Scaler component that I just had to change 1 field to scale with screen size. Who knew it would be that easy? I did have an idea for a 'boss fight' where you have to dodge a giant wurm in the depths while mining the last ore.

@superpokeunicorn I agree it's a bit too cluttered. I think I just got too used to it that I kinda forgot it was there. The rope was my favourite part. I wish I could've made it so you could use the rope to rappel down deep holes; that would've been cool.

@joe40001 Ya, I should've made the messages disappear over time. The messaging system isn't as robust as I'd like so I felt keeping the last one up was safer than having it disappear before you read it.

@fargred I've been getting a bit of feedback about how it's hard to make out the layer in front of you. I'm not really sure how I could've done it differently so you can see through it easily, but can still see what's there if you want to dig some stuff towards the camera. The effect is less pronounced when you get deeper in the z direction. Then you only have 1 layer in front of you. For the first ~4 layers, you can have 2 layers in between the camera and you which looks muddier (The layers move towards the camera and the camera moves closer to the player as you dig in is why you see fewer layers deeper in). And regrettably, the first ~4 layers is where you'll be for 90% of the game. Sorry, I'm just rambling/thinking out loud. Thanks for the feedback; it lets me think about these things.

@super-hadoken I'm not an artist so I'm quite proud of how well some of the art came out. I was definitely trying to make it feel claustrophobic so it's great to see it was working.

@someone There's a speech bubble that pops up when you first are able to dig in teaching you how, but I do agree it's not super noticeable so I could have done a better job on teaching that.

The UI: I didn't realize this was such an issue. I just assumed everyone would play it in fullscreen so I just made it work for that. I've fixed it now and it was easier than I thought it would be. Wish I would have fixed that 2 weeks ago, but thanks for bringing it to my attention all the same. Maybe I'll remember how to fix this for next game.

madbarron 2021-05-15 02:02

Great submission! I can finally rate a game 5/5 humor because this game made me laugh out loud :laughing:

The third axis mechanic is cool, though it took me a few runs to really understand what the guy said and realize you can use it to get past the barrier. At first I thought it was just more stuff to mine before I upgraded my axe enough to dig through the barrier.

The G thing is way way better than crawling back up manually, and the animation is funny too :)

Thanks for the game!

vixenmink 2021-05-15 03:23

I really like what you have going here. Definitely helped a TON being in fullscreen and it made it quite a bit easier to play without everything being cramped into a smaller version of itself. Be proud of this game. :)