Dirty Little Secrets

0x-void-x0 2025-04-07 23:07

So far this is the game that hooked me the most, I spent over 30 minutes playing, you have an addictive gameplay loop and satisfying mechanics. It's clear that a lot of love went into making this game from all the art of each indivisual object to the informative descriptions. My only feedback would be that the progress felt very slow, which is fine for a normal game but for a jam game I can only play for so long. Other than that this is a solid game, I found myself singing a silly song about taking people's money each time the museum music started lol. Good job!

brian-russell 2025-04-08 23:53

Really nice game loop, had me going and going. Was wondering if collecting the same artifacts again really mattered? Once I switched from a shovel to the machine, it felt really nice! The upgrade process definitely keeps you hooked.

peppersalt07 2025-04-09 00:12

took me quite a while, but i managed to Screenshot 2025-04-08 at 5.12.10 PM.pngbeat the game!

red 2025-04-10 01:33

I liked the hand drawn art a lot! The music started bugging out on me a little bit about 5 minutes into the game, not sure why.

nuelijarma 2025-04-10 17:56

Start digging, immediately stop digging, collect money, repeat until you have a lot of cash so you can buy your dream machine and permit! This museum director paid me to do nothing hahaha. Great game, you can be proud!

suvi 2025-04-11 03:37

Nice take on the theme. The upgrade loop felt compelling and I found myself wanting to complete the museum collections.

I discovered some audio stuttering artefacts while playing. Holding down the movement keys makes it worse, and the deeper down I go (longest contract), the worse the stuttering gets. It seems that the stuttering happens when the browser complains about how long the frame took to draw. It could be performance/memory related assuming you are continuously spawning the brown circles that make up the path. If that’s the case, you could probably work around the issue with object pooling and/or with instanced rendering (since the circles are the same exact sprite).

lectvs 2025-04-11 05:01

Charming concept and great implementation! My one gripe is that I couldn't see the prices of anything in the store. But otherwise excellent entry! One of my favorites so far! :smile:

sven-schoeling 2025-04-11 08:08

@suvi yeah you got it right. I spent a few hours trying to get Godot to render the circles into a texture and reuse it before giving up and doing it the stupid way, and the web export is sadly a lot slower than the desktop version.

jtap 2025-04-11 17:22

Nice game, addictive gameplay, I thought the digging was a bit boring but it was still fun to play, thanks

linky439 2025-04-11 17:38

Great entry! A very interesting way of interpreting the theme, I like it a lot. The art is really good, the idea of collecting stuff for a museum is great as well (and I like how you even implemented the little notes to explain what the object is!)

Two minor gripes: you can't see the price of the stuff at the store, and even with the special superpower, getting all the hidden artifacts is a bit tedious. I mean, I hear the dead moan but I run out of time to find them all! ^^

Congrats, I had a lot of fun with this one!

felix-kern 2025-04-11 18:01

Love the graphics! I like thick outlines :D Nice humour and side gags, well done :)

suvi 2025-04-11 20:19

@sven-schoeling Such is the nature of programming during a game jam! The benefit (in hindsight) is that you usually learn something new :grin:

It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, but instanced rendering is probably the way to go to fix your performance issue. It essentially leverages hardware acceleration (magic) in a graphics card to draw many copies of the same sprite in one pass, instead of doing many individual draws for each unique sprite copy to the graphics card every frame (what happens by default).

I found this video that does a great job of explaining the technique at a high level, and show how to get that working in Godot (I'm not familiar with Godot, but the infromation in the video looks good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwMoEdAhtYQ

slay-a-stone 2025-04-13 08:06

Nice bit of story and art! Would have been nice to know how expensive everything is. I also felt little incentive to go deeper in the ground.

soul-grinder 2025-04-13 12:43

Really liked this game loop, had a nice pace to it. The graphics looked great and was nice and relaxing to play, nice work!

nbumgardner 2025-04-13 13:05

Having different background music per phase of the game is great for immersion. Given more time, adding a hover over sound effect for buttons would be nice, and price tags to know how much the shop items cost. Also the contrast of tall people in the museum and a rounder digger for exploring is a nice contrast.

smalltalkinc 2025-04-13 17:37

I really like that you put so much effort in the art and artstyle. It looks pretty crisp, especially the gaming part itself. It didn't feel like as a played you'd have to put in much effort to gain any items, so it gave a sense of calm relaxation, but also kinda felt like to easily a loop? Maybe if there more things to collect in a shorter amount of time, it would make it a little more challenging. But overall, I really liked it!

lespaul59 2025-04-14 10:10

Really cool game, enjoyed it very much and nearly finished all rooms. Awesome entry!

borabee 2025-04-14 22:55

Pretty cool game full of nice details. I liked that the depth of the artifact was tied to it's moment in history and that you added educational plaques on the museum scenes. The conversations wih the boss were funny. The game loop was simple but fun and the upgrades were interesting and well balanced. A few things I didn't like: not having prices on the shop and also the late game got pretty tedious, just grinding for that last artifact over and over again.

jorgen 2025-04-17 13:36

Super cool game, got me so hooked in! Only had 1 artifact missing left. Very well made game overall, feels polished, well put together and easy to play. Only thing i was missing were the prices on upgrades, but i managed without them anyway.

siilicac 2025-04-19 15:49

love the music right away, cute graphics love the concept and it's so complete!! love the text info that pops up when you hover over something you've found. first game the whole jam that i've played in it's entirety.

cynderen 2025-04-22 22:24

OMG! That is so funny! I cannot wait to find out what's at the DEEPEST!!!!

fakan 2025-04-23 14:44

Incredible game! It was really funny and satisfying