arina-belova 2026-10-19 23:44 ♥ 2
So relaxing game! I like that u don`t need to think. Maybe, the digging mechanic might be a bit too long, but it`s okay. Good relax game
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → ARCHAEC
By mateusboga
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 17 | |||||
| Fun | 17 | |||||
| Innovation | 17 | |||||
| Theme | 17 | |||||
| Graphics | 17 | |||||
| Audio | 17 | |||||
| Mood | 17 | |||||
So relaxing game! I like that u don`t need to think. Maybe, the digging mechanic might be a bit too long, but it`s okay. Good relax game
Good, relaxing game. Lovely guitar sound and digging animation. The only things that’s a bit inconvenient is that it takes a long time for the grains of sand to disappear after digging. It’s harder to see the pieces you find. And when you’re collecting pieces, I think it would be more comfortable if, when the pieces are arranged correctly, they “stick together” and don’t come apart after it. So, if one of artefacts isn't finished and you put it away to try another one, pieces of unfinished artefact would remain in the same place where they were previously assembled. Otherwise, the game idea is great! I liked it and had a good rest. Thank you for your hard work!
**Really loved the game!**
It was nice seeing relics being placed on the pedestal after you assemble them :)
My only two minor suggestions - it would be nice to see a bit more color variation in brown pieces and allow pieces to stay glued together after they fit. But maybe that's a skill issue on my part 😄
**Overall, the game is super relaxing, the pixel art is gorgeous and the sound design is great.** Thank you!
This game scratched alot of nostalgia itchs for me. felt like those archeology sand toys from when i was young mixed with a classic clicker game(which i love) solid simple game play. decently on theme. really nice work, great art BTW.
Interesting game! I couldn't quite tell if there was audio feedback when getting close to something... sometimes I convinced myself there was, and then it turns out there's just stuff everywhere, so I wasn't quite sure... I ended up having to dig up literally every square on the map to find all the pieces :(. Assuming there was an audio cue, maybe it could have been a bit less subtle... I did put together all of the artifacts though! It was rather challenging, I'm not one who normally puts together puzzles. More than half the time I put the thing together successfully, and it was upside down, and often I couldn't tell which way was up (like with the coin-looking one), and I had to try three different orientations before it stuck, it would have been really nice if it took it once all the right pieces were in the right positions. Very nice art on the artifacts, and I liked that they all had _similar_ colors, but upon looking closely you could tell a bunch of them apart.
The atmosphere was perfect. I liked the occasional instrumental music in the background.
My patience was challenged by the amount of digging you have to do, but I blame that on modern technology conditioning. It was probably made worse by the fact that (I assume) artifacts are placed randomly: I figured I should just dig up everything before I tried to put anything together so I wouldn't end up trying to put something together I didn't actually have the pieces for. I kind of wanted a brush that I could use to sweep away the dirt particles too, I could never see the items I was uncovering.
With that said though I had fun putting together my first few items, I started with the items that were easiest to differentiate, and called it quits after an hour: Screenshot_20261020_084242.png I was stuck on this one: Screenshot_20261020_083257.png
Nice work!
Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 15.03.46.png I tried, and I did it!!
@jimbly Thanks for the feedback! There wasn't any audio feedback to getting close to a piece, I didn't think of that when making the game, but that sounds like a good idea! (kinda like warm/cold mechanics) I'll consider doing that for the post-jam version. Also, you can use the button on the top-right to rotate the entire thing without having to manually rotate all the pieces, I'm not sure if that was clear. I considered making it detect the correct configuration regardless of orientation but that was too hard with the limited time I got. Thanks for playing!
@lone-wolf I forgot to say this, but the pieces for each item are all on the same layer, so they're only semi-randomly placed. Sorry you struggled so much with the horse, I had no idea that one would be so hard for so many people xD. The brush is a good idea! Thanks for the feedback and for playing!
Oh! I thought the top right button was a random shuffle when I tried it earlier, so I didn't try it again 😆. And, hah! I totally convinced myself there was a low thumping sound when I was digging close to things, but then convinced myself either it wasn't precise enough or I wasn't good at hearing it. =)
Nice game, I really enjoyed playing it!
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2909614359?t=02h54m58s)
Obviously the "realism" of the archeology process was an intentional part of the design, which I can respect. 👍
I think if the ONLY change you made was to make the pieces and the assemble spaces bigger on higher resolution monitors, I could get super into this. 👀
Cool ideia and execution but I would like a little more variation in digging, some of change in gameplay in this part.
Nice sounds effects, functional pixel art.
Really nice relaxing puzzle game. I might be repeating what others have already said, but it would be nice if the pieces of certain artifact were closer to each other or as you said at least mention they are supposed to be on the same layer, because i did not know that, so I always uncovered the tile completely instead of going layer by layer. Also the digging could be a bit faster (In the end I started spam clicking because it was faster a bit). and the dirt particles were often covering the dug up artifacts so i didnt notice them.
Regarding the completion of the artifacts themselves it would be nice that if you correctly place two pieces together they would become one piece. Another thing what would be nice, at least for me, would be to change the background of the place where you assemble the artifacts as it was hard to see some of the edges of the artifact pieces and I had to get really close to screen to distinguish them. And one last thing could be that blindly trying to assemble the pieces is very difficult. What come to my mind was that you could put outlines/shadows of the artifacts on the piedestals in collection screen until they are assembled at which point they are placed in the place of their shadow.
First of all, I love puzzle game and I love digging pieces for puzzle pieces. However, in this game the digging part can be tiresome if you can't find any pieces. Assembling is supposed to be fun but since most pieces have similar colors save 2 artifacts, it become really hard to find which piece goes to which piece. I had to see examples in both pages to find hints. I did complete the game though I really wish the artifacts had unique color to ensure no one confused which piece goes to which artifact.
