notredamstra 2025-04-08 06:06
Impressive visual style, and easy to grasp!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Archeologic
By cameronpenner, pixel-greg, auxc, chrissx2, Veka, LudumCor and Malczan
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 78 | 4.09 | 32 | |
| Fun | 141 | 3.84 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 94 | 3.96 | 32 | |
| Theme | 59 | 4.30 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 47 | 4.55 | 32 | |
| Audio | 79 | 4.03 | 31 | |
| Mood | 178 | 3.98 | 31 |
Impressive visual style, and easy to grasp!
that's a cool looking 3d tetris game has some depth to it
noooo someone will archaeologist me someday ;-;
Great visuals and a creative mix of mechanics that fit the theme well. The music and audio is solid too. The controls felt a bit quirky, and the difficulty might be a bit high for players less familiar with this type of game—I couldn't make it past the first third even after a few tries. The auto-descending camera didn’t seem to work well in a 3D tetris match 3 with this camera angle, as it made the game ends before it should end. Still, congrats on what you've achieved!
Very well executed. The balancing feels a bit off, I wasn't able to win a run until I got lucky with a bunch of bombs toward the bottom. It gets very difficult if you aren't able to keep the whole top layer cleared, and that is not very simple to do. Overall, simple gameplay with a charming graphical style.
An absolutely great game on all accords.
The graphics are really nice. Well done. Music is top notch as well. And the gameplay is new to me.
After my first 3 plays I thought it was basically impossible to win. But then I got a lucky bomb streak and finally beat the game.
To improve for me would be that towards the end it gets quite chaotic (a little bit too much for my taste). One does not really understand anymore what is going on with bombs exploding, the limited space and the many block types that make it really hard to make any sensible move.
Generally I would experiment with a simpler level. With the current one, one gets easily into a place where one does not understand anymore what is going on, as you can't see all the blocks anymore in the 3D space. For long term engagement I'd like a bit more 'control' over what is happening.
I'm actually thinking of downloading the audio file for the victory track. It's really nice!
scrot_2025-04-08_08-28-39_screenshot.png
Note: I had some technical problems. In firefox it absolutely broke my window management. I had to kill firefox to get control over the system again. Then I used chromium and it worked just fine. Not sure what that was about
Nice and simple game! It took me only a little while to get into the flow. The art style is also cute. I think bombs make it a bit trivial in the end (or maybe it was me being lucky). It felt like bombs spawn too often.
The only downside is once you start losing, it's hard to make a comeback because in some cases it's hard to see the character behind all these blocks :D I wish there was some silhouette highlighting through the blocks.
Anyway, great game!
I really like the music and the overall style of the game! It’s just hard to see what’s going on when you're inside a stack of blocks though
This is a really fun and charming game, though a lot harder than it looks! I enjoyed playing it, but I wasn't even close to beating it until I got a lucky streak of bombs that let just barely get to the bottom. Once I hit the bottom I was able to clear everything out and win relatively easily thanks to the camera not advancing further. It took until probably at least my 10th attempt to get that luck though. Art, music, sounds, and surprisingly the itch.io page were all superb. Only bug I encountered was that volume settings seemed to reset at the start of every run. Gameplay wise my it could use a little balancing, and depending on the style of game you want it to be probably some sort of catch-up mechanic. Thanks for the fun game!
A really cute game with great art style, atmosphere and audio. Unfortunately let down by some frustrating game design. Overall i think the concept is a fun take on some of the ideas. However i was constantly having visual issues not being able to see what I was doing and select blocks. I wish that the camera had stayed centred on my character and there was a different sort of visual que to show you were about to run out of time. Maybe something crushing blocks above? Very satisfying getting the bombs and hitting a good combo. Overall a good entry on a bunch of different fronts.
well done! loved the take on the theme and the game's overall vibes. :)
The art is super cute, and the music’s really nice too. The controls feel a bit clunky though, especially when you fall into the middle area—it’s so frustrating but kinda funny hh
The game is absolute fun. its simple and very addictive at some point, but still need some skill to complete it.
I'm not a fan of puzzles, but it's very enjoyable to play!
Amazing game! Felt like something i would play as a flash game or maybe a 3ds game, it really felt like a complete game. I did struggle with maintaining oversight later in the game though but thats a small nitpick
cool gameplay idea and great art direction, with a little more time put into it, i can see it being very addictive ^^
I am impressed by the quality of it, a 3D puzzle game tha looks good is not an easy feat. Also the controls feel quite good and snappy, I played that on a laptop without a mouse and did not struggle at all. My only piece of feedback would be that the camera looks a bit low and when the character mocves to the other side of the platform it becomes a bit difficult to control, other than that I think this game looks and feels good to play
Awesome work! To start with, the game looks amazing. The archaeologist, and all the world elements are dynamic, bright, and cohesive. I thought the game play really started to pick up once you get down to the bombs. I found the camera could be a little tricky at times. I tended to dig myself into a hole in the middle of the stack, and then have troubles finding a good angle to get a view of what I was doing. Being suck inside a giant puzzle you need to navigate to get out of is an under appreciated genre. This reminds me of classics like Intelligent Qube and Catherine. Awesome work! Kudos to the team!!!
Very polished as always! Love the style and the silly brainrot copywriting. Building in the centre makes it very difficult, but adjusting to that and figuring out how the minecraft-style physics work was enough for me to get in the groove. I like the shaders when the camera rotates too.
I agree with what everyone has posted so far and wanted to add that I appreciate whoever thought to highlight blocks that you are about to or able to grab. Also, though some people have already said it, I thought the controls felt very strange. The camera wasn't so bad for me, but it was really unintuitive for me to drag blocks from a lower level up to make a match. I had to restart the game a few times while I figured out what to do (since you have to drag up to start the game), and I still don't feel very confident with it.
I think it's the nature of the camera angle, and maybe the easiest fix would be a keyboard only or gamepad mode, where you can press the up arrow or move the stick up on a gamepad and move the block up (or to the side or down). Or even just 3d match three/tetris without the controlling the archaeologist: you highlight a block then can move it up down left right, then move the camera to move it in the third dimension.
Also, while I also had bombs all the way down, I may have nearly gotten stuck/unable to finish. I'm not sure, but it looked like there was a block with no nearby blocks that matched. Everything was chaotic because bombs kept chain exploding and blocks falling, but I'm worried that could be an issue: you're stuck at the bottom with a block you're unable to match blocking the exit, and all the bombs already exploded. Something to consider if you keep developing this game.
Wow! It took me about half an hour, but I finally made it all the way to the bottom and got the ankh as a reward! It wasn’t easy, but I got lucky — from the middle onward, a bunch of little bombs helped me dig deeper into the mine :) You’ve made an excellent game — and a complete one at that, one that you actually want to keep playing! What’s more, while playing, you start thinking strategically — how to move the blocks, how to clear more... and that’s really awesome! You’re absolutely amazing, thank you so much!
Really nice sound design, it's super satisfying when you get a chain reaction of matches. Original idea with high quality assets. It would be good if the highlighted block has more contrast then it currently has. It can be difficult to see what you're about to pick up. Good job overall.
Whoa, this got me really hooked. Finally made it to the bottom! Took a long time. Found it hard at first, but it was a good level of difficulty. The randomness that influences luck was about right.
Other than that: Cool and cute graphics, great audio (the music!). The controls were sometimes a bit tricky (grabbing a block and having the right direction chosen), but rest was great!
I came thinking it'd be a fast-paced game!! It did definitely took me by surprise but not in a bad way!! It's chill, it's relaxing but don't let that fool you, else you won't be able to go too deep!
It does need some polishing with the movements and selection, maybe 3D grid-based movement could be better but can't say for sure. Good job though!!
Screenshot 2025-04-13 202339.png
Very Nice Game! loved the graphics. In the end i just kept pulling random blocks from the bottom of stacks hoping it would do something. Somehow that worked. Not to different from other match3 games sometimes. So well done I guess!