leorean 2025-04-07 15:37
Could you tell me the controls? I can't seem to interact with anything :thinking:
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Descent Protocol
By fingolfin, matim90, TurKiSsh and Broco
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 599 | 3.32 | 65 | |
| Fun | 712 | 2.90 | 65 | |
| Innovation | 462 | 3.20 | 65 | |
| Theme | 138 | 4.15 | 65 | |
| Mood | 455 | 3.53 | 64 |
Could you tell me the controls? I can't seem to interact with anything :thinking:
I was a little bit confused by this game, I was not sure of what to do but it looks very good! I also liked the door maze quite a bit, I imagined myself desperatly reaching the machine at the top before the drill stops working.
yup, cannot figure out the controls.. stuck in the first room.
@leorean @larseivl @mgear added the controls to the description! Sorry, didn't had enough time to put them in the game. Will try to release a new version before the jam ends.
Once I had the controls, it was fun. Audio and Graphics were some of the best bits!
Absolutely loved the art style and the animations were top notch, music was really well done too. I will say it took a bit for me to understand what to do, I think there should be more resources to pick up since it felt like the wait was too long. But besides from that great game!
loved the art and music, the drill design is awesome, just to add something maybe set the filter mode of some elements of the ui in "point no filter" to fit with the pixelated style. the engineer design and animation are super cool :sunglasses:
great look and music
The graphics are super stylish :D Got a bit confused at the minigames but was fun once I got the hang of it.
Could someone please explain what to do? The design is cool and I really liked the premise of a drillship, but I haven't figured out the gameplay at all. There are doors and my thing just goes down till there's a gameover for no discernable reason. No objects inside the ship seem to do anything. How do I get to the minigames or is that referring to the door maze?
Hey @aurelius thanks for playing the game! We wanted it to have a sonar feature that would tell you where the resources would be, but we couldn't manage to get it properly working. You can just set the drill to stop (even if it sounds contradictory) and it will automatically stop on the next resources stop! Just get down the ship, get the resource, and take it to the corresponding machine to play a minigame! This is all we managed to produce before the submission time 😅 You can go down to 2000 mts to get the ending I suggest playing on itch.io, or play it on fullscreen, since the resolution here in Ludum's site ends up cutting the gauges of fuel and temperature on the top. 😅
@broco thanks for clarification! Yeah, I didn't see any meters up there which might be the reason for the gameover. And for the future players: To interact with machines and play minigames you need to press stop as soon as the drill starts moving so it automatically stops at next PoI. Is that correct?
@aurelius Yeah! That's right! Just set the drill to stop, and open the side doors to get resources here and there 😉
Played one round. Liked the image, and the interaction. But I was just moving between doors, with no concrete goal or mini games, then the game over screen. I would request more hints here about targets.
@jackshadow thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to wrap everything up like we would have wanted to. We added the section "What to do" on this page's description so you can understand the gameplay.
Great audio and art. The music is good.
Great game I will not be surprised if this doesn't come in top 10!
Like some of the others it took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, but I enjoyed the graphics and the overall drill concept. Also, that music was awesome, if I had that blasting in my subterranean drill while I worked I'd be having a great time lol.
A cool game! I thought the style worked really well for the them and filling up the engine was interesting
This song is amazing! Can I like download it somewhere? I want make this my ringtone haha :D Great quality game, and I love the art style a lot. That little dude in the yellow suit is an immediate hit. I found the controls a little confusing, wasn't sure what to do and how, but I was enjoying the ride anyway, bobbing my head to this bop of a song seriously.
Took me a little bit to get oriented and understand what I was doing, but once I got the hang of it, it was a pretty fun! I liked the little minigames and the music was really jamming. I did have some difficulty with the radar and I'm not sure what I was doing wrong there. I was just stopping the drill whenever I saw a visible change in texture on the sides.
Cool game!
I like the radar mechanic and the graphics in general. Nice Job!
Stunning graphics! Maintaining a drill machine is a great idea, the gameplay is a bit slow and repetitive though. Would be nice with some stress and time limit!
Seeing the red "stop" button initially before the drill even starting moving was a little confusing. I think my expectation would have been that green=start, so while the drill moves you'd see the red stop button. It was also not obvious that the drill couldn't be started before closing the doors. (I eventually read your "What to do" :D)
The blue radar didn't appear to do much for me. It was likely user error, but each time I scanned, nothing was ever revealed to me. I ended up just stopping the drill arbitrarily and sometimes there were tunnels... sometimes there weren't.
The slow stop time of the drill was also a little confusing at first. It's a really cool thematic touch, but having some kind of additional feedback there would be helpful to indicate your "stop" button press actually worked and the drill is indeed stopping.
Overall very fun graphics and SFX. Could be cool to see the tunnels expanded upon to be more puzzle like. Or maybe there's defenses you have to put in place after a certain depth to fend off tunneling enemies! Lots of interesting directions you could take this. Well done!
As everyone else has said, the art and music are really good, and they fit together well. I think the game might have been a little more interesting with a couple different minigames (maybe one related to the scanner thing, if that did something?), but I enjoyed playing until I forgot to put the drill on Stop after resuming, and ran out of fuel.
I did find it funny that there's just a bunch of water jugs sitting underground for some reason, and that their labels would be backwards when walking to the left.
I tried to figure out what to do, I stopped the drill, it stopped once and then the stop button stopped working. I'd go up to the floors pressed the sonar. Still nothing. Then I just got a sign that I lost. I do not understand neither the conditions of victory, nor the conditions of defeat, nor what to do in this game.
The graphics were really appealing and worked well with the theme. The gameplay is a bit confusing, the aim wasn't hugely clear, and I'm not too sure what then various drill functions actually did. I made it to about 1100 before I got the game over message, but after this appeared I could still move around and the drill kept going. Really good effort, just needs a bit of polish!
The player character looks cute :3
The game looks nice from art, theme and mood perpective, however it fall short on the gameplay, I was not sure how to do anything to improve the situation, finally I figured out it stop after a while when you tell it to and get water to fix the right bar, whatever it is? But couldnt figure out how to fix the left bar. Also I was able to open the door and walk through the wall and out of the map bounds :D
游戏里没有太难的地方，不过也有点无聊，很多地方都是等待加重复操作，一些场景道具的触发好像有问题
Nice art! I caught a bug at the end of the game, the fuel ran out a second before stopping on the floor with a new portion of fuel, and the pop-up screen, although it interfered, allowed the game to continue. When the fuel ran out, the doors opened again and allowed them to go completely behind the screen. All this time, the game completion screen with the restart button was hanging on top of the screen. Screenshot 2025-04-09 at 17.36.20.png
very fun 2 play idea!
Had some trouble figuring out this game unfortunately, couldn't really figure out progression. I saw something blip on the scanner once but it had already gone past by the time I went for the stop button. Still, good design and ambiance, nice work!
Really good looking game. I like the idea of controlling this big machine by yourself walking around it. Great potential for extending this further with more things to control for the drill. Great job everyone!
Great graphics and music! Drilling was fun but i was quite confused by the door maze.
@nordus @maskrosen @matthewdrake @dywanix @aleksey4adoff @ice-in-nortern @laurynas @vladimperator @chrisbeck @nicknickolas @jcourt @ohjuliego @fredrik-andersson @owinmowe @pro4 @smalltalkinc @sirblazealot @darwinigan @aynu @timelost Thank you all for playing our game! I know it's a bit confusing, that's why we added the description. I wish we had more time to build everything we wanted to add to the game. The sonar wasn't really functional at all, and the gameplay is a bit confusing! We also forgot to add collision to some walls 😅
To play you just need set the drill to stop, and it will stop on some pathways where you can grab resources. Each resource must be taken to their corresponding storage, with a little point & click minigame. Once you reach 2000 mts deep, you can see a very cool ending!
We wanted to add so much more, yet we didn't have enough time! We had tome ideas, like upgrading the drill, having an oxygen gauge, harder ways to get resources, more minigames, etc. But well, this is what we got, we were working until the last minute before the submission time!
Thank you all again! I hope somebody can reach the end! 😉
I was a bit confused as well. I got a game over after 800 meters. I'm sure there's a reason, but the drill takes a long time to actually stop once you press the button. I felt like between the time I used the radar to spot something and the time the drill actually stopped, what ever I saw was gone already.
Really nice presentation! Visually, the game looks great -- I really liked the animations and the drill design. The atmosphere’s solid, and it feels pretty good overall. That said, I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to reach the end. Several times I tried stopping the engine as soon as possible, and even then, I seemed to run out of resources before getting all the way through. Maybe I missed something? Still, it’s a cool concept and awesome work!
Great Game! The game looks fantastic especially the drill design. The theme is solid, and satisfying. Can we reach the end? Since I'm not the best at playing games, I struggled a bit lol, but the game is really well made! I really liked that you also updated the descriptions and gave feedback to players who had difficulty. Oh, and thank you for reviewing our game too! You’ve done an awesome job with it!
@pretendcoding there's a fuel and temperature gauges on the top! I recommend playing on fullscreen or in itch.io. The idea is to set the drill on stop and wait for it to stop, so you can get out, gather resources, and bring them back to the drill!
@duke-ua thanks for your feedback! As I said before, the idea is to put the drill on "Stop" and wait for it to stop automatically. We had to take some shortcuts for that functionallity, that's why we implemented it like a "bus stop", once it reaches a checkpoint it will stop, and allow you to go outside. There's not much to do, other than gather a simple resource tho, we wanted to do something a little bit more challenging on those paths, but didn't get quite there 😅
@glaupe-cabral thanks for playing! And thanks for your comment! We have some ideas on how to fix most of the flaws we got from the comments, not sure if we're gonna be implementing them soon tho. 😅
Thank you all!
I read commets here and thus don't have any question about game -- Broco already anwered all of them) Still I love the idea and how its done) Especially how effects and how it looks, very solid!
Great game. Had some trouble finding the right things to click in the engine at first. Also Banger Soundtrack.
This was enjoyable. It gave me WarioWare vibes, which I appreciate. To that end, adding a timed component to the various challenges could have been a way to make it a bit more of a pressure cooker. Good job!
Really loved the idea! The art was pretty solid, I was just confused about what to do, and I think some feedback for when the engine is too hot or fuel is low would help to direct the player. Overall a really solid entry, I'd love playing a more expanded version!
Pretty cool concept, but the game really need some additional work. Sonar is basically useless and gameplay isn't very dynamic. Nice idea with minigames so.
Great art and music! It's awesome to just chill inside and jam to the music as the drill rumbles downwards. :grin:
As others have also mentioned, the gameplay was a bit confusing at first. Once I figured out how to operate the drill, the gameplay was kinda trivial, though. Start drill and immediately stop - fetch resources - repeat.
I think I also encountered a couple of bugs. I was able to exit the drill from the wrong side and go out of bounds. Also, for some reason I couldn't enter the engine minigame when playing fullscreen. Maybe it has something to do with the 32:9 aspect ratio in my monitor? I was carrying a fuel barrel but I couldn't activate the engine with E. In windowed mode it worked fine.
Oh yeah, and kudos for making a UI that scales decently with a 32:9 monitor. Usually LD games are completely unplayable for me in fullscreen. :sweat_smile:
Cool game! Interestingly, the blue round object was hidden in the ground (I saw it using sonar). Otherwise, for the current gameplay, the game lasts a little longer than I expected. But very nice graphics!
Really fun game, great job!
Really nice atmosphere and there is potential to be really nice exploration game. At the moment everything feels a bit slot and for me it wasn't really clear how to use the radar. I think I saw some indication of the resources as a blue spot but how was I supposed to stop the drill in time? Also the tunnels felt a bit too long to get the resources as there was not much of other gameplay than walking. Anyways cool entry. A bit more polishing and refining the mechanics this could be an awesome exploration game :)
I think this game has so much potential — the art and UI are really well done. The starting interface felt smooth and polished, and I especially loved the moment when the instructions slid away as the character started walking — everything up to entering the drill area felt great.
However, I ran into some major confusion with the gameplay. At first, the "Stop" button on the drill didn’t seem to do anything, so I assumed the drill couldn’t be stopped once it was turned on. It wasn’t until I read the comments that I realized it was possible to stop it. After that, I kept trying to toggle it off, went up to the second level, pressed the blue button, and finally managed to stop it. I picked up a black item and reached what seemed to be the correct room — but once inside, I had no idea how to leave.
A similar issue happened on my third playthrough — I made it to a water tunnel, picked up the water, brought it to the right room, but got completely stuck at the "Open Fuel Tank" step. No matter what I tried, nothing worked, which was really frustrating.
The visuals and sound design are great, but I hope these gameplay issues can be fixed. It would also be really helpful if players continued to receive clear instructions after reaching the first tunnel and picking up an item — I think this would make the experience much more intuitive and enjoyable.
cool concept, interesting game loop. lacked visual responsiveness of the systems, I haven't found water yet, didn't understand what it was for at all, it would be cool if the systems visually communicated with me, showed their state not only through progress bars. is the same doors such an idea? if not, then I would like to highlight paired doors visually
The graphics are really nice! The general atmosphere is very cool. It's fun to control a giant drill :) But I only managed to find one minigame (Which looked pretty good, too). I like the world and the general setting is great. There wasn't much gameplay though. So a lot of potential :)
Very interesting idea, cool graphics and music, but the execution is a bit of a let down. For some reason it doesn't find any resources except water, and the scale doesn't fill up. But everything else is on top, I really liked it!
Great graphics and sound effects. Walking is very satisfactory, and the theme is ery immersive. I dont quiet understand the gameplay, could add some instructions in game, but fantastic job for a jam game!!!
The animations are fantastic! And the foley is great. I like how the music kicks in when you start drilling.
But... I couldn't figure out how to make it STOP drilling. I know you said that you set it to Stop and wait, but I waited and waited and it just kept going until I got a game over.
Pretty cool, like most people say it was quite confusing at first, I realised after a while that the start stop was setting it to stop at the next resource and not an immediate thing, so once I got that it was pretty smooth. The minigame for the engine was fun too, although it could do with a highlight or arrow or something telling you where exactly to click but its pretty decent as is. I never figured out what the bar on the right was tracking, I thought it was how far I was to the end but then it filled up at 1700 metres and I lost, but luckily the game doesnt stop so I just rode it down the last 300m to the end lol. I'm assuming I just had to find a different resource from the right door and I just missed it. Overall nice job ^^