olddog 2025-04-07 01:18
Love this game so much!!!! the mood is amazing,wish for more content or some upgrades to unlock,I wish for a big boss under the ground to fight~~~
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Return to Darkness
By t4ran
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 29 | 4.02 | 24 | |
| Fun | 56 | 3.68 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 152 | 3.29 | 24 | |
| Theme | 15 | 4.32 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 28 | 4.23 | 25 | |
| Audio | 5 | 4.20 | 24 | |
| Humor | 94 | 3.13 | 17 | |
| Mood | 12 | 4.31 | 24 |
Love this game so much!!!! the mood is amazing,wish for more content or some upgrades to unlock,I wish for a big boss under the ground to fight~~~
The mysterious music made me want to dig deeper, gunning when falling from above is quite satisfying.
Good game, I like the art-style and overall mood, game feel is very polished, but I have few notes: one is that you have ability to throw lighters, but game is already lit enough, so I havent found any use for them, maybe making game darker and limiting amount of lighters would make it more challenging. (spoiler) Second, are eyes the ending? or there is more to it, because "The end?" motivates me to keep playing, but the ending is always the same, and last is that I can dig infinitely without need to engage in combat or anything else, adding non destructible blocks would add more variability to playthrough.
Thanks so much for the feedback! @OldDog — Really happy you enjoyed the game! A boss underground is a great idea, I’ll definitely think about it. @BarnabeWild — Glad the music and shooting while falling worked for you! @Shakirovich — Thanks for the helpful notes! I’ll definitely consider tweaking the lighting, improving the ending, and adding new mechanics.
I am not really good at games where I have to shoot at stuff :( so I die easily, but I managed to dig through "the end ?"
I Loved the ambiance, the digging, and the lights!
Having the bullets and the F light be the same resource could have been a nice twist, with some sort of mechanism around the light being necessary to get down.
Nice atmosphere! I really like the image tutorial in the background, quick and straight to the point. I agree with the comment about lighters, I ended up not using them at all. The combat worked well, though I felt the enemies were a bit too vicious. Crystals with different colors giving different stuff was a good mechanic: I went for the red ones whenever I felt I needed my health back. Good job!
Thank you very much for your comments, I also like the idea about the lanterns.
I really like the ominous mood of the game. The ending made me replay it a couple of times to see if there was more to it, but unfortunately I wasn't able to uncover its secrets. My best guess is that you have to kill all the bats before reaching the end, but I died in the attempt. In another attempt, I just dug straight down. That's something the player can do if they want to, it doesn't really matter except that speedruns of this game would be quite boring haha.
I agree with another comment that said he didn't see a use for the lights, I also forgot about them until replaying it. One thing I kind of missed is having a reason to explore instead of just digging down, maybe something to collect or some hints that add to a bigger puzzle. Just throwing ideas out there.
Anyway, your game is really cool and I think you did a great job.
Well this was terrfying for a pixel game, loved the mood of it, the "lunatic" drwaings on the wall as tutorial was a nice touch. The light stick and digging down gave me some terraria flashbacks, 10/10 would build a hellevator again, but do wish I could do something on the lowest level.
I didn't realize at first you had to click in order to dig. I enjoyed the mood of the game ! I am not sure what I was supposed to do, killed a few bats, dug to the bottom and saw the eyes. Is there something to do in particular to "restore the balance disrupted by darkness" ?
Здорово, очень понравилось.
Thank you so much for your comments! You’re right — the game could use more interesting reasons for exploration, and the option to just dig straight down while ignoring enemies kind of breaks the balance. I’ll work on improving that in the future.
The idea of the wall drawings as hints was inspired by The Binding of Isaac.
As for the “restoring the balance disrupted by darkness” — it’s more of a hint towards a possible future expansion than a concrete goal in this version.
Хорошая графика и атмосфера игра. Задумка очень интересная, но ломается о то, что можно просто копать вниз, можно было бы добавить не разрушаемые блоки, и дверь, и спрятать ключи в пещерах, тогда нужно было бы исследовать пещеру и собирать ресурсы.
Спасибо за отзыв, классная идея, возьму на заметку.
I liked the game, I want a sequel!
Neat game! I really like digging and exploring, so that felt great! Kinda missed the final boss, the final room totally has that "prepare to fight" vibe. But still, great game!
Looked really promising, but I'm left-handed so the controls don't really work for me and I couldn't play it for more than a minute or two without quitting out of frustration :frowning2: Great job on the graphics and ambiance though!
great atmosphere, makes me think that a deep rock galactic styled game in 2D would be really fun. Loved being able to pull out a huge gun to deal with enemies. Super impressive work, would be great if there was a greater incentive for exploration or alternate paths to take, as my instinct was to always dig straight down whenever possible.
Nice short game! I wish the earth hornets had faster response but other than that, this game is pretty solid. I love the fact that aside you could choose your own path, you could mine gems to refill your health and ammo making digging to depths easier.
Great short game and cool atmosphere! Great job!
Oh boy, gave me a bit of a spook at the end there! Good game with a nice atmosphere. I liked that I could choose where I wanted to go so I could come in the top or sides of a chamber depending on what enemies I could see.