pavlov36 2025-04-08 17:19
Nice to play! Like the art style)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Gemsweeper
By defrag
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 251 | 3.77 | 29 | |
| Fun | 254 | 3.64 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 83 | 4.00 | 29 | |
| Theme | 197 | 4.05 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 338 | 3.87 | 29 |
Nice to play! Like the art style)
Good math game if I get it right, the artwork is cool. Rate our game comrade!
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This was a wonderful little game, I really enjoyed the sound effects and graphics. The gameplay was a bit repetitive, but still quite fun! Once I figured it out I really enjoyed it, so maybe explaining the gameplay loop a bit better would lower the friction. Really great game feel, overall nearly a five star jam game! Great job!
Gotta set the highscore for someone to beat - 454 gems after I finally collapsed on level 13.
snipHighScore.PNG
Very fun!! reminds me of a pirate board game
Very fun little game! Took me a couple of attempts to figure it out but its nice little gameplay loop once you get it down.
On my best run I was well on my way 13 mines but through thoughtlessness died to collapse. Very cool concept and very juicy execution.
Very interesting and innovative gameplay! I saved enough electricity and walked downhill for a long time~
really cute game! i enjoyed all the fun graphics like the screen shaking. nicely done!!
Capture d’écran 2025-04-09 080458.png Really good take on the theme with a minesweeper! It sure take some brain to manage high levels, congrats! I especially loved the game responsiveness to fast inputs, I don't know how to say it but you get it
this is one of the best games i have played so far -- i really like the twist on the game and the strategy you need to use -- could really do well with some more polish -- thanks for making it
I was surprised at how much fun I had playing this once I started to understand it.
I think the key/chest combo, and the ability to place supports, were great additions that did a lot to stop the game from becoming too repetitive. I'd love to see more stuff like that if there were a future version of this.
There might be a variable too many to keep track of. I wasn't a massive fan of the blocks also sapping extra energy when mined, although maybe it just needs a little more player feedback?
Also, I know you opted out of audio, but the sound adds a lot of satisfaction.
@mr-field I was on the fence about keeping the audio rating. Technically, I paid for some of the sounds at some point in the past. I don't have a effective, efficient workflow for coming up with my own sounds, although I thought about it for this one. Digging through sand, dirt, and rock wouldn't have been too difficult to create.
The key and chest was actually a very last minute addition that hit me as a way to incentivize excavating rocks that didn't contain one of the three currencies. I thought it was a good touch.
Thanks for playing! - and your game was great: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/cartoscoot
Very cool game, I like the combination of Minesweeper and Nonogramm puzzles. I really can't find anything negative worth mentioning, great entry.
My only critique (unless it was intentional) was that, while Energy was clear (and easy enough to pay attention to how much is used per block/step), and you did a good job defining when a collapse occurs (and were even nice enough to provide a warning when close), I never intuitively understood the relationship to amount of Orange framing material and whether or not it would prevent a collapse. Still, this is nitpicky: I did enjoy your game and rated it highly overall! I agree with every compliment above my post!
@mcgiants The orange framing material was a bit of a late addition. Orange is used up anytime a game-ending collapse would occur, in which case the block's value is preserved as if it were still contributing to the row/column total. The amount of orange material used is doubled the value of the block being preserved.
None of that is communicated well due to me not working on tutorialization until the very end. :/
Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
Neat twist on Minesweeper style gameplay! I appreciated the particles warning when a tile is in a row that's about to collapse. I kept running into tiles due to my broken keyboard sending multiple inputs, but I still managed to get a pretty decent score by the end. I did suddenly die instantly to a collapse upon entering level (I think) 14. I still had plenty of supports, so I imagine it was due to a row starting already below the limit.
That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the risk v. reward choices I had to make and the simple but effective mechanics. Nice artwork... overall, really fun. First go through, got 433 gems in 12 mines and ran out of energy. Going to give it another go! Great work!
Had to go back for more...
Screenshot 2025-04-12 234100.png
@scriveneroflight I'm pretty sure that is the high score. By level 17, I imagine most mine shafts were already in crumble danger immediately upon entry. Were you actively seeking the chest on each level to get that score? Otherwise, it seems the RNG deities were smiling upon you.
Improving the interaction with high-level mines would be one of my follow-up improvements, if I continue work. I've seen an issue where you automatically lose upon entering a higher-level mine despite having enough shoring material to survive even hitting a 9 upon entry. @mao Sounds like this was the issue that you encountered.
I was playing with an idea where each mine is just a reshuffling of the same 64 blocks, and after each mine, you get to improve or upgrade one of them. That'd give it a roguelike feel and perhaps help keep the mid/late-game a little more interesting. I thought about other types of blocks, such as magma and bomb tiles, which would add some additional complexity to the game, but they weren't core to the idea and I ran out of time.
This idea is quite original and engaging! I understood the basics but didn't quite get the amount it would cost me to take a step on a cell, felt quite random but I'm sure I'm missing something - you can probably have a clue by looking at related columns and row's remaining score...
Nice!
Very polished game with clever take on nonogram genre. The only thing I would like to see what exactly collapsed in the end, because I got feeling that it sometimes collapse when I leaving level. (hmm, actually now I think it's not leaving, but entering new level, digging first block immediately collapse - but you don't have a chance to know what is it. May be preview next row of next level) Also, great idea with instructions scroll above level, but I'm not sure it's possible to leave tutorial without restarting, but that's not scary in roguelike where you expected to do that much, eheh. Maybe, nice addition would be rolling dice and showing what exactly block durability or spent gold nuggets was, and to show what looted from chest. But that's for full game if you gonna release it. Good luck!
Ok, this one is really addicting game, I haven't expected one like that. I wish there was some music in the background, but at least the game has really fitting sound effects. Core game-loop is top, really nothing to complain about. I managed to reach 12th cave but got less score, and I prefer to share my score when it was the highest. Screenshot 2025-04-15 215846.png
@sztobar Thanks for the kind words. The core game loop kind of hit me out of the blue more so than any other game jam. I was starting late on the project, and I hadn't even looked at the theme until Saturday evening. I only had a little time on Sunday and Monday (Jam timeline), so I was nervous that I wasn't going to be able to spend my usual amount of time brainstorming. Fortunately, this idea emerged nearly fully-formed in my brain after just a few minutes of thinking on things.
This game is one of the few jams that I find myself going back to play "just one more time"! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Cool entry! I liked the presentation of the gameplay and how the grid and numbers interacted with movement, resource collection, etc. and it had me thinking of what else could be done with the mechanics. I think having some way of puzzling out key/treasure location using those same strength numbers could have been interesting... maybe all of the numbers within a row or column added together make up the respective number on the sides? Maybe the rate of terrain could also be indicated or puzzled out in that way... (Or maybe it already is, and I didn't notice? Hehe...) Just a really cool set of mechanics/rules to play and think about. :)
Anyway, the title into tutorial into gameplay transition was well done and fit the theme really well, and it's nice having information on how to play within the game itself. The visuals are very clean and do a lot of heavy lifting to ensure the game is readable and enjoyable. This entry could have ended up being "just numbers", but the theming and care taken to create a little world is appreciated. Polish like the strength numbers changing colors, "dust" particles, and little grunts also helped a ton. While I generally liked this one a lot, I think making the progression feel more meaningful would have helped make each mine feel more distinct, even if it was just changing the tileset or colors a bit. The orange resources becoming scaffolding could have also been clearer. That aside, great work, and a very interesting entry.