brainles-etertainment 2023-10-03 06:39
Controls are slightly counter-intuitive, more specifically the rotations. But overall, this is a cool mini-game, nice time-killer.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Hot Drills
By coderaurus and Nallekari
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 667 | 3.46 | 30 | |
| Fun | 733 | 3.21 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 608 | 3.30 | 30 | |
| Theme | 755 | 3.35 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 281 | 4.08 | 30 | |
| Audio | 331 | 3.58 | 30 | |
| Humor | 827 | 2.30 | 28 | |
| Mood | 684 | 3.40 | 29 |
Controls are slightly counter-intuitive, more specifically the rotations. But overall, this is a cool mini-game, nice time-killer.
It's fun, the drill movement can be a little frustrating at times, but the atmosphere is great. Well done!
Great game! love the music and the art. Played a couple of levels and had a lot of fun. would try to complete it later :)
So cute,and I like the style
The stress of overheating against the greed and needing to avoid enemies is a fun dynamic. At it's core it is a little simplistic from what I've seen though which holds it back for me. Great aesthetics.
This was lovely, the art style was great, the mechanics felt good, although grid based worlds without grid based movement is sometimes clunky :P. The implementation of hidden ore was nice, as well as the radar + sparkles for the keen of sight. Great game! (with Hot Drills in your area :P)
I like the controls
@kultuk You can use CTRL + ALT + V to skip levels and continue where you left, if you feel like it.
@raaph Yeah, the dynamic ended up being quite interesting. Do you feel like something is clearly lacking?
I really liked the heating mechanic and the horror atmosphere. The fact that the monsters move at random, made it a bit hard to plan ahead, but also contributed to the horror of the situation.
Cool mining game. Extra points because I'm making something similar for Playdate! At first I thought that monsters cannot reach you on your base until they did. Great entry!
Cool game! The overheating mechanic was interesting and added some cool resource management strategy to the game. Good atmosphere overall!
Nice work! I was not as much a fan of the heating mechanic as other people were. The drilling pace, the enemy speed, and how many levels there were was enough to make the game not need another aspect that increased how long the game would take. Enemies were really tough to predict, where sometimes you'd get chased from like, halfway across the screen, and other times they'd just leave you even though you're right next to them. Interesting idea, good execution, pretty fun, nice game!
I think I would've spent a lot more time with this game had the movement not been so frustrating to me. I could see this as one of those games that's really satisfying and fun to play, because for the most part, it was! I could really see the vision and gameplay loop here. However, the lack of grid based movement (at least for a game that seems like it could really benefit from it) and the confusing controls made it just the tiniest bit hard to play for me.
Also, this is less your fault and more me being laid-back in my play session, but I didn't maximize the screen game screen on itch, so the text was super duper tiny! And because of that, I totally glossed over the whole overheating thing and thought that the holes that opened up in the ground were like, the doors/pathways to the next level or a lower floor of the mine? So I sat on top of it for a second before realizing nothing was happening and I moved on :laughing:
Fun game, I like the concept and the radar idea, though I wish there were some more mechanics in the later levels as it started to get a little old. The rate at which heat builds up isn't super predictable, as I didn't know how much heat to expect when mining up a gem, so maybe some indicator of how much heat each action takes would be good. Visuals are nice and the drill and radar sounds are satisfying
Pretty solid entry! the music was nice without being annoying. The graphics were great and consistent. I love how the game taught you different concepts like the radar subtly.
Loved it!
The controls feel a bit odd to me, but that might just be a personal issue! Regarding the rest of the game, all I can say is congratulations! The idea is brilliant, the art is fantastic, and the music fits perfectly into the game! To me, it's a solid game, and it's impressive how good it is given the short development time you've had! Seriously, congratulations! Great game!
Nice one! Loved the enemy design. Gameplay reminded me a bit of the very old game Gubble, which I played like 25 years ago (but which was great). Would have liked everything to be a bit more fast-paced, but otherwise really cool, great atmosphere, nice levels, a surprising depth to that relatively small amount of gameplay, I was strategizing quite a bit about how to overcome these enemies. :)
I like the risk-reward gameplay! It's definitely nerve-racking trying to avoid the enemies while finding a path that doesn't lead to overheating. It's simple, but feels like a polished experience. I did run into a very minor bug where I was able to die at the same time as completing a level, but it didn't impact my time with the game. Well done!
Hey thanks for sharing! I quite liked the dynamics of the monsters occupying the same space as the player and the risk in mining more space and connecting paths. I also liked that the resource points became heat vents, that was a cool repurposing that added some challenge.
I have to admit, I did feel like the pace of the game was particularly slow. The music and rumbling of the engine SFX added to this a little bit.
I think overall, my feeling was that the game's tension is a little bit loose, mechanically. It always seemed like the optimal way to play was slow and steady, and that I could always return to a safe state by dropping back off at the terminal. I wonder if the game's level design was a lot smaller and tighter, and the monsters a bit more aggressive, if there would have been space for a "turbo" which allows you to escape them but at the cost of adding heat to the system. And particularly if this was more of a "rogue" style mechanic where time is measured in distance moved, this would create tension in calculating "how many steps away the monsters are" vs "how fast I'm able to get away". I suppose this is all to say I think a more discrete set of properties of the game might have made it feel more tense and strategic, while also adding purpose to the level design, which did feel mostly quite same-y.
I really appreciated the option to skip levels, because I was able to then see how much content you packed in, and get a good sense of the whole game. Thanks again, and good luck!