soloadventurergames 2025-10-06 01:07
honestly very well done, I'm coming back to this to finish it up later, great concept
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → Gemwright
By jimbly
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 9 | 4.12 | 30 | |
| Fun | 7 | 4.12 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 34 | 3.89 | 30 | |
| Theme | 95 | 3.64 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 62 | 3.80 | 30 | |
| Audio | 74 | 3.40 | 29 | |
| Humor | 166 | 2.04 | 23 | |
| Mood | 116 | 3.21 | 30 |
honestly very well done, I'm coming back to this to finish it up later, great concept
The interface is well presented and the icons are nice. I did like the sound effects and the increasing complexity of actions felt good.
That was fun :slight_smile: :heart:
Very nice! I love the sfx/music! It took me a little while to wrap my head around how the game worked, but once I got it it was quite fun. Keeping this one open in a tab to continue later :)
That was fun! I think it felt more complex than that it eventually was. I was theorycrafting about what tool to focus on when upgrading, but they all have useful stuff and I got to getting quality 5 gems sooner than anticipated.
I liked the core gameplay loop. I think some more variety in the ores would make it more interesting, in a way that prevents you from using the same routine for every rock. Once you get certain upgrades, they guarantee max quality and results no matter the resistances.
Overall, though, very enjoyable game! Great job :D
@soloadventurergames @tim-eriksen Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it! Your progress is saved in browser local storage, so you should be able to resume if you return =).
@melektaus Glad you enjoyed it, and nice score, congrats on beating it!
@frib Yeah, the end-game balance was a bit off - my initial balance pass there was when I had an earlier skill system (could only upgrade to 10 total skills, then had to trash a tool if you wanted something else), and I had trouble making it even _possible_ to get to T5 with each of the tools, but with the final system it definitely gest into a state where it becomes trivial (or, if you're patient, you can, I think, get infinite quality :laughing:). I originally had defense apply to both Quality and Progress, but I also ran into some cases where I just couldn't get a T5 unless I got super lucky, so decided to simplify towards slightly easier =). Probably it would have been more interesting if the defense affected Quality, and I solved the balance in some other ways...
Definitely ore variety would have been good, thinking about it now, maybe you should just choose the tier of gem you're going for, and then the quality bar would have been trivially simpler, and the higher tier ores could have more defense or require more progress or something to make them more interesting...
Very nice game, played longer than expected. It did get repetitive but leveled up my tools to 4
Fun game. It started out quite easy, almost too easy so I didn't really learn to be strategic at all :laughing: But getting higher level gems did require some planning. Most of the time my greatest enemy felt like it was myself accidentally getting too much progress too fast before I had upgraded to quality enough.
There were some quality of life improvements like changing the cursor over buttons and perhaps also warning when taking a mining action would empty out or fill up a bar before clicking it. I know there was a chance aspect but just not having the player do the math and let the UI inform the player that it could happen.
It didn't feel like I was playing the game for an hour, but apparently I was, so that says something about its design being satisfying, collecting stuff... but maybe it is a bit on the long side for a jam and the variation it has in its current state.
If some available ores one could select from were rare and extra hard it could also have added to the game loop a bit, I think
Playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klwm2Dypak8
@local-minimum Yeah, for sure starts easy, and then quickly "progress" becomes the accidental enemy, that bit me quite a few times too. "Telegraph skill effects" was next on my list if I had another hour to polish, but I just barely got things wrapped up as it is (and, probably, the hour putting in the sound effects was way more valuable =). Varying ores is a nice idea, some choice there, or some opt-in difficulty ramp probably would have worked really well. Thanks for playing and recording a video! (Also, yup, you totally ran into a bug where it sold the wrong gem - fixed now).
That was oddly addicting. Was engaged till the end, and was not really efficient (wasted lots of days learning tricks), but got all 5 in 47 days! So far, this is my favorite with no real contest - I forgot it was jam game and compo at that!
win.png
Managed to finish the game! Let it forever be known that I used to be 5th place :) SS.png Anyway, this was really fun! I really liked all the effects and having to balance between durability/quality/temperament. The SFX was pretty good too, especially the different tunes for quality/progress increases. I found the midgame the most interesting, since I had to think a bit for each gem and hadn't had a consistent strategy yet. But the end was pretty fun too, where I just got all level 5 gems in a row after unlocking Laser Focus :) It was a bit annoying when I had a high quality gems and no collectors to buy them (except at a lower level which felt bad), so I found myself intentionally making lower quality gems to match collector/upgrade requirements, which also didn't feel great. Otherwise though, I really enjoyed it! Great entry!
Reminds me of FF14's crafting system, aka VERY fun, love the progression, and thought process for everything. Great great great work!
Got the three gems in 41 days! Very interesting mechanics, kept me hooked longer than I expected. The game feels balanced, and it allows for some nice planning and optimization. I'm also very impressed by the SFX that adapts tto your choices, very satisfying. I'm not sure what the "temperament" stat does, though ? But other than that a very polished (no pun intended) entry!
Screenshot 2025-10-10 at 13-49-16 Gemwright.png
@frogman Thanks for playing, and nice job! Yeah, the midgame definitely is the most interesting. The collectors wanting specific gems sounded better in my head than it turned out, another case of trying to cram the theme in where it doesn't belong, had I just let you click on any gem and sell it, I bet it would have been a better game (and simpler UI =).
@taximan981 Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, heavily inspired by FFXIV - though I haven't played it in a literal decade, I remembered it fondly (though did look up some of the details for inspiration while working on this ^_^).
@ghettobastler Nice job, glad you liked it! If you mouse over Temperament, it'll tell you, but it gives a (IIRC) -20% to +50% bonus to the next action, so you can use it to time doing big actions to bigger effect, and the other skills that change temperament will force it further up or down before the regular random fluctuations. Clearly it wasn't necessary to pay attention to it since you won without it, but I guess that's a good thing, just allows a little extra mastery for those who dive into it =). It is included in the calculations in the tooltips for how much the next action is going to do though, so probably was having a noticeable randomizing affect even if you didn't know where it was coming from...
An amazing game with an interesting idea and addictive gameplay. And the way the different sounds complement each other is beyond all praise
Great concept for a crystal-crafting game. Rather unique gameplay loop and consistent visual style. Awesome!
Really good! I'm impressed you have a leaderboard and everything! Took me 57 days, but I could probably get that down now that I understand the game.
Wow you knocked it out of the park with this one! I'm going to get my bragging rights in before I get Buried in the scoreboard I got #2 not that far from the number 1 spot ( @melektaus well played sir)
Screenshot 2025-10-10 232234.png
I think you are really good at having the player do "exploration" but in mechanics and systems, instead of spaces. I remember the last game I played from you (Dwarf) also had a very similar vibe with trying to balance somewhat abstract resources/concepts (my head canon is that the two games are in the same universe!). I think this is a very innovative and smart approch.
I might have found a bug but I'm not sure. I tried to really push the quality to see what would happen past grade 5 and I got this. It may have been just trying to tell me that I overcooked my egg, but it was a little jarring to see
Screenshot 2025-10-10 231654.png
I really like the satisfying interface too. The pixel art is clean and together with the sound effects, they really make clicking the various buttons enjoyable. While my monkey brain was trying to do math, my lizard brain was going "no think. I want press button! >:C". All in all a great experience!
Feels pretty good to collect gems!
such an addictive game with lots of mechanics, you need to use and combine your abilities smart to increase tier of ore and not break it
@torte478 Glad you liked the sounds - I had a thought that a semi-procedural sound system (it's just notes in a scale made in 1BITDRAGON, but it always tries to play at least an ascending pair up to wherever your progress is) would work well here, I'm really happy with how that turned out =)
@custodi Thanks for playing and your kind words.
@triggthediscovery The leaderboard is part of my engine I use (you'll see a leaderboard in most of my games), so that's perhaps not as big of a deal as it seems (usually less than an hour to add a "score" evaluation function, put some hooks to save the scores, and add format the leaderboard a bit), but is always worth it (if nothing else, it gives me so "analytics" on how far people are getting in the game =).
@noobman64 Huh, that's the "failed to load texture" texture, and _shouldn't_ show up there, as it's capped to T5, and I swear I tested that (with all skills unlocked, I managed to get into a loop of possibly infinite quality using all of the abilities with cooldowns but don't affect durability and occasional repairing :laughing:). Looks like I never actually tested _finishing_ the gem though, at which point that error shows up even though the gem you get is still just T5 :sweat_smile:. Fixed now, for the rare person who seeks that far into the mechanics =).
I'm glad you like my mechanics exploration. They are also a bit of mechanics exploration for _me_ as well, as both this and DWARFS were based on mechanics I liked in other games that I'm considering combining in a game with a larger scope - at the time I started the jam, my vague plan was finding exotic ores with the scanning system in DWARFS, and mining them with a system like in this game =). After the jam, my current plan is to do something simpler for the mining, and maybe use this for something other than the constant/moment-to-moment gameplay, as this mechanic would probably be on the boring side if it were not paired with the (relatively) rapid progression here - if I needed even like 10 T1 gems, I think I'd just _nope_ out. I also consider them, perhaps, in the same universe (I almost named this one _Dwarven Smith_ just for a callback...).
@d-demetori @kenneth-gibson Thanks for playing and glad you liked it!
Pretty good game, it was enjoyable to build up my skills and figure out how to get those higher tier gems. - Personally I think the highscore should first be filtered on days completed, and then wealth, otherwise the player is incentivized to grind for money infinity, instead of finishing the game. - I felt the collector requests were a bit too random, I often had gems I wanted to use for upgrade or higher tier gems, but the collector was not purchasing them and had to wait for him to refresh (especially for higher tiers - 4). Maybe having one of the collectors offer always include one of the gems from players inventory?
@ellaris I initially had the high scores sort on "won, then fewer days, then max wealth", but the problem was until you win the game, more progress is only achieved coupled with days going _up_, so all of the scores (for people who didn't yet win) were "Won: No, days: 1, $0", which was a score that can't be beat :laughing: (until completing the game, of course). Quick fix was just sort on wealth (and I'm not _opposed_ to people going up in the ranks if they're enjoying the game and want to keep playing, though I agree it'd probably be better if the competition encouraged one to play a new game better a second time). The leaderboard system I use only stores a single number per entry, but I guess I could encoded the scores in such a way that if you won, then it puts the days into the high bits and if not then wealth there... Might be a little finicky, but should work, I might have to re-process the leaderboard after the jam ends to do that =).
Agreed on the collector requests, I think trying to make that mechanic follow the theme just made the game worse, it could have just been a simple "sell" button for each gem, and I bet that would have felt better... if you try to only craft gems collectors are asking for, it does provide some direction to the gameplay, though it then basically penalizes you if you make something a higher tier than requested :sweat_smile:.
@jimbly it's ok, at least you have high scores, although you could count non-won games as having +100/1000 days for example, or only allow won games to be submitted to the high scores. I'm not even sure how I could set a high score if I didn't finish the game as I would just close the site.
The gem collectors are most often asking for tier 2, but it's not very efficient when trying to get higher upgrades, and once I got a tier 3 I think I had to wait a couple days before being able to sell it. Another way could be to have the last 2 lowest tiers show up in the collector. So when you craft a tier 4 only tier 3 and tier 4 requests will show up, since you got to tier 4 once you should be able to do it again and get a tier 3 no problem.
Nice collection of abilities to gain. They all feel unique and worthwhile. Eventually the player needs to pick which skills they want for a day's work, which is a great restriction. I think it comes a little late in the game, since it leads to some interesting decisions between days.
Overall a great entry. Always appreciate a leaderboard too.
@pincushion Thanks for playing and the feedback! Yeah, I bet the game would have just been more interesting if the skill limit was 6-8 instead of 10! It didn't occur to me at the time (since the current skill toggling system was just a "quick fix" for some other design change - originally you could only purchase 10 upgrades, no picking and choosing skills), but more limitation there would probably be much more interesting =).
This is pretty neat, and has a lot of nice visual polish! The goals are pretty open ended, so I went for a beat-in-fewest-number-of-days goal.
First thought was that if I could plan to beat the game with fewer tools, that would save me time mining crystals for the cost of those tools. Started trying to go for just the laser upgrades since Laser #2 + Laser #5 is a huge combo, but I had trouble getting Blue Gem #3 with just lasers (and Alchemy #1, since it's practically free and gives plus temperament).
Second plan was to get all laser and alchemy upgrades, since Alchemy #3 and #5 are the only durability tools in the game. Alchemy #3 helped me get the Blue Gem #3 and Red Gem #3 I needed to purchase Laser #5 and Alchemy #5, respectively. Then three days later I had all #5 gems and beat the game.
Ended up using every laser and alchemy tool except Laser #3 (and Laser #1 was only useful as an early game stall). It never felt like the progress meter was a problem to fill, more often then not I had to slow down to give myself time to fill the quality meter.
For most of the game I had a loop of *Stall -> Laser #4 / Alchemy #1 -> Laser #2*, which got me to Gem #3 consistently (and zero broken gems). Last three days had a loop more like *Stall -> Stall -> Laser #4 / Alchemy #1 -> Laser #5 -> Laser #2*.
Spent 8 days mining gems for tools, 17 days mining gems to sell, 3 days mining gems to collect, and won on day 29. Is that a record?
gems.png
Just a couple notes on balance:
- The general gameplay loop was pretty consistent for most of the game, and I wonder if it'd make sense to add more randomness to the values (to create more of a risk/reward dynamic).
- It didn't feel like the ore defense system affected my strategy much past the first few turns of the game. I wonder if it'd make sense to buff the ore defense and/or weaken Alchemy #4 (maybe have it last only a few turns).
Generally though, I think the game has a really unique flow! It was a lot of fun exploring what mechanics do, how they interact with each other, and finding optimal ways to go about mining for different gem types.
@sudocoffee Nicely done! Yeah, winning on day 29 might be a record. In my testing I made sure I could get each T5 gem (barring especially bad luck) with just Laser (or Drill) up to T5 and Alchemical to T3, but I never actually played through a whole game to get there =). After the jam ends, I hope to change the scoring for won runs to be fewest days first, then wealth, and then re-run the leaderboards from what logs I have, and then we'll see where you land (however if this was your second run, I probably don't have your score in the logs, as you likely never "beat" your first score...).
Yeah, gameplay loop got a little same-y, I think being able to choose some harder ore to tackle for variety would help, but, yeah, maybe just having more tools be more random would be good - however if the first 2 tiers of tools are even a little more random, people would fail to get their first T2 gems and get blocked, as they were basically tuned for just barely guaranteeing a T2 gem with a T2 tool... but I guess they could just be random in the upwards direction, and I could balance the later tiers based on that ^_^.
Due to what you said about progress (usually it was a struggle _not_ to finish too soon), I don't think Alchemy #4 was actually overpowered (if anything, I only used it to stall, and lowering the cooldown makes it a _better_ stalling tactic :laughing:). But, I agree the defense didn't matter much later, maybe it needs to be stronger, or also affect quality so that you can't just use Laser #2 all the time (except I had some balance problems when I tried that, as it became impossible to get a T5 emerald, so I'd have to fix that :laughing:).
Glad you enjoyed it!
Very interesting balancing and skills. Fun to play with
@jimbly -- Definitely! That makes sense about Alchemy #4, I think I probably mostly just used it for stalling too. And I didn't even realize I could have stopped at Alchemy #3, that could have saved me a couple days :)
Got a day 23 win --
gem_2.png
@sudocoffee Nice! That sounds like a record =)
Hope I don't seem too obsessed, but I got a day 15 win --
gem_3.png
In theory I think that's the best you can do. I can get Gem II consistently after Laser II, Gem IV consistently after Alchemical III (when used twice), and Gem V consistently after Laser IV (as a stall to let me use Alchemical III a third time).
| Day | Gem Sold | Tool Bought | Gold Left | | Gem Collected | | --- | -------- | ---------------------- | --------- | --- | ------------- | | 1 | | | 0 | | Any I | | 2 | Any I | | 100 | | Blue I | | 3 | | | 100 | | Any I | | 4 | Any I | Laser II | 0 | | Any II | | 5 | Any II | Drill I / Alchemical I | 800 | | Any II | | 6 | Any II | | 1800 | | Red I | | 7 | | Alchemical II | 1600 | | Red II | | 8 | | Alchemical III | 100 | | Any IV | | 9 | Any IV | | 4100 | | Any II | | 10 | Any II | | 5100 | | Blue II | | 11 | | Laser III | 3600 | | Blue II | | 12 | | Laser IV | 600 | | Any V | | 13 | | | 600 | | Any V | | 14 | | | 600 | | Any V | | 15 | | | 600 | | |
@sudocoffee Oh, wow, did it without Laser V?! I would not have guessed that was possible :laughing:. I love the enthusiasm! And, no, not "too obsessed", but definitely fitting my personal rule of "I don't know if I'm really enjoying a game until I make a spreadsheet or two" :grin:
This is one of those games that could keep me hooked up for hours. Add save-game, some more variety, make it mobile and put it on the App Store, I would be the first one to buy it :wink: It really fits in the category of those games that you can play when you have 5 minutes spare and keep progressing.
Oh wow, this is really detailed and has a surprising amount going on for a compo game! I love the graphics as well. I really got sucked into it. The "progressive upgrade" mechanic is really fun and the crafting mechanic was really interesting and unique. I also wasn't totally sure what temperament did, but I see now that you have a tooltip for it and it wasn't necessary to complete the game. The concept of "upgrading and building up resources to collect higher-level gems" reminded me a bit of the board game "Splendor" (though of course the mechanics here are very different.) Oh, and the progressive sound effects are really neat. Well done!!
@cassowary Thanks for playing, and glad you enjoyed it! Interestingly _Splendor_ is one of my favorite board games, but I didn't _consciously_ take any ideas from Splendor here (except maybe which gems to include? They're the pretty obvious choices for Red/Green/Blue though :laughing:)... might be why I thought of "gems" to be the thing I'm collecting though =).