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Game's Take on the Theme
Mechanically I can only argue that the many luck based gambling gimmicks are akin to spinning a roulette. Thematically I incorporated as many spin-related concepts as I could imagine: the main battle system and much of the plot includes drills and the golden rectangle, your damage output is based on your drill's RPM. The library part of the game with the bosses stories was meant to represent "spinning a tale." originally the story was much more confusing because I wanted to make heads spin, but i ended up putting too much logic into it and may have lost that. There are still plenty of unexplained things that I dont plan on explaining either to keep that part of my intent in it. these were my spins on spin as a literary device, rather than a gameplay mechanic.
Did your team make the majority of the art and music during the jam?
100% during the jam
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Comments
Amazing, really unexpected genre and impressed by the amount of content! I liked the narrative and stylish artworks, and the battle system and character abilities are very cool too! Great works!
Being called stylish by someone who made such a stylish game is an honor, I'm flabbergasted.
I really love the art and music, good job!
The graphics are amazing. How could you draw all of these cool images in 1 month omg. I'm jealous. Related to gameplay, I think I would simplify the combat parts and include the values in the hud all the time (When it's relevant) so you can make more informed decisions. But really good job!
It would be awesome if you could play our game too! Thanks in advance.
The graphics on this game are AMAZING! Theres so much given the time we had, and the story you have is fabulous! I was honestly really confused going in but still really enjoyed this game! I'd love to see more like this in the future!!
(P.S.: If you're willing to I'd love it if you can rate and leave some feedback on my game! This is my first ever jam and I'd love to see where I can improve for the future!)
Thank you very much!
I'll do more of this, I have another, older game (this is my first published one but my second game) nearly ready to go, and will keep doing more weirdly written awkwardly systemed games, so stay on the lookout!
So, I tried this game 2 times.
First time I didn't quite understand the mechanics from the tutorial, partly because their peculiar names. I managed to defeat one boss, but then was bored by counteless defeats by overall seeming randomness.
But somehow I wanted to give this game a second chance, I guess because I felt a bit bad, that I didn't try to enjoy it fully. And here is my feedback:
1. So, on second time I got how basic mechanics work, though some abbreveations weren't introduced, like DP, SP, 3DI (3DI thing meaning I've only got while was writting this review), so some mechanics were still a mystery; where bug with incorrect text for using GRR makes it even worse, like it should increase your flow by 10 and 3DI by 5, but instead game says that it increases your flow by 5 and 3DI by 0 after you've used it.
2. You can outheal your max hp https://ibb.co/PnB136S with resting for example, dunno if it is intended.
3. My first encounter was with "a friend" https://ibb.co/d4pCxcp6, but game counts it as a battle, which is kinda strange. Another moment, I would say it is a bit inconsistent, how we don't know the enemy encounter and mark it with "????", but we know for sure we will meet "a friend" on another path though we are going there for the first time. Shouldn't it be the same like with the enemies? So if after rewind I see the house there, now I know who lives there and know it is not an enemy and etc, but for the first time I can't know that. Then instead of "a friend" perhaps could use another words, like "a house", "a stranger" so player can make better decisions.
4. In some places Rectangle is mispelled https://ibb.co/dJjtW22D
5. So after house my next encounter was vampire driller, I've lost and strange things started to happen. On back home I got this message POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT (dunno if it is actually counts as a spoiler, and if it is that heavy spoiler, I can remove link if you want), so like game decided, that I've actually completed the game, instead of losing a battle :D.
6. After the rewind everything was as usual, until I met him - the bald old guy. So I peacefully defeated him and after that my game was cursed. On next encounter I met him again, but after I charged my drill, encounter instantly abrupted and I got usual rest screen after battle. Then on next encounter I met him again and again and again, and each time I had the same battle skip; until I think I got to the last Inferno layer where, I'm assuming i've met one of the winged semi-final bosses, but again, instead of actual fighting after drill charging I got message, that I reached the center of the planet with tree. (I can send you screenshot if you want, I've though perhaps it is a bit too spoiler-ish to post it here). So after that, i'm assuming, instead of final boss battle I was able to just continue go deeper in Inferno as usual and all battles were like "I use drill charge" - "Battle instantly abrupts in the next screen and rest screen with rock is shown". So game was in general heavily broken, like also sometimes when I encountered some enemies, on their turn they turned in other bosses. And etc, so text and images were desynced, except candy-meetings and resting.
7. Vampire-driller iirc doesn't have any fight introduction, and some other fights don't have proper introduction as well. This felt a bit strange, like we just fight with everything we see without any purpose for it, except "friends". So would be nice to know what was the cause, since we don't fight with some brainless slimes, but with other humans (?). But dunno if it is somehow was explained in boss lore books (?), because I didn't manage to read them.
8. I would remove annoying spiral thing completely. Iirc it doesn't have any explanation lore-wise (like we don't ask the Keydrill about it after the first fight, so it could explain what this thing is and how it works; but just accept things as they are). And what is more importantly it adds many frustration with "lemme set your 2000 RPM to 500", which is happens quite often. And that's kind of random is kinda frustrating, because you can't really heal and you need to waste your turns to accumulate RPM again, so it is kinda a run killer, which you never wanna use.
9. Poison boss. Dunno if it is intended, but they can't kill you, because no matter the poison rate, poison damage depends on your current hp, so when I gave up and wanted to just die to him to reset the run, he dealt to me 0 damage, when I had 1 hp. And I couldn't kill him either, because my charging was super debuffed and was like 37 RPM for charge iirc. So it was kinda super troll fight, were we both couldn't kill each other. (well, in theory I guess I could win but it would take very long time because of low charging rate)
10. In general fights felt a bit too random-ish, like again, with poison boss I missed like 5 times in a row iirc and like I can't do anything with that, cuz I don't have some kind of accuracy buff. Or when you can block enemy attack, but suddenly another enemy attack becomes unblockable and you should've used dodge or parry, but you couldn't know that. Like yeah, for some bosses I think you can use some consistent strategy, but not for all, unless you learn all their attack patterns, which can be a bit time-consuming.
11. Resting and candy-meetings scenes felt kinda repetative after some time. But dunno what really can be done here, like it was particularly annoying to skip candy-boy lines, because you always want to take candy, from what've understood, so you like have to manually skip them everytime.
12. Art looks cute, but style seemed to me a bit inconsistent, like if you compare candy boy and man with a big drill from your screenshots. But maybe I have that feeling cuz of a bit different dithering. Also perhaps fights could look more engaging with OMORI-like battle animations.
Overall, good job on your game; in addition to default art, music and game logic you, I assume, had to spend a lot of time on writing, which may be quite hard to polish, and you still managed to finish it to playable state. But there is still room to improvement. 🙂
Let me start by thanking you for being so thorough and writing all issues you found, I'm very glad to have so much to check to make the experience better.
1) Will look into this bug (I honestly can't even presume what is causing it, maybe I'm pulling the wrong variable on the text)
2) You weren't supposed to be, I put an event to stop the overheal. If it's possible to skip it, I'll have to look into it
3) I wont lie to you, I knew there was a chance someone would see a friend and get the first battle dialogue, but I noticed it too late and didn't have the time to fix it. It's namely a simple fix, but I had so much stuff to do at the last few hours that I sacrificed it. Sorry for causing you that experience when I knew itd come to pass. And also being honest, I went for "a friend" to communicate to the player its a friendly event on early development and didnt think about it again at all, but you make a very good point. I'll try to work on that too.
4) That's lore not a typo❤️
5) The worst bug imaginable, I'll put it on the top to solve. I don't think it's related to the enemy, as the loss event is supposed to be equal to everyone, but I may just have accidentally put a switch somewhere in his attacks that activates the post boss event.
6) I'd say I'd even want a video of this to see how it goes, but now it might be too late. I'll playtest a lot to see if I can trigger it and solve the issue. I had a similar one which I solved before submitting it, so perhaps I know what this one is already. The bosses desyncing is new to me, but my playtests had bosses not despawning on losses, so maybe it is similar to that and something on the battle code is off depending on circumstances.
7) I was unsure if the normal bosses needed introductions, but I should have made them themoment I decided the semifinals and final ones had. But now that you put the idea in my mind, I'll probably give them specially illustrated intros on the full release, just so their first appearance is special. I probably would sleep on intros altogether without this input, thank you very much
8) She was supposed to be helpful and troublesome, and in my runs she often helped, but so many people who talk about her say she gets in the way... but she's plot relevant and I can't remove her. AND THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ASKING THE KEYDRILL WHAT THE SPIRAL IS BUT I DIDNT MANAGE TO PUT IT IN im sorry, i prioritized the books too much and didn't give the basic gameplay features the attention they deserved (because I couldn't understand others wouldnt understand it like i did). I'll add the spiral event in future updates, but I cant remove her even when out of the constraints of Spin theme.
9) It is intentional that she can't kill you, but I didn't foresee that possible stalemate result to the fight. Thank you for the report, I'll make it so she puts you out of your misery if you get to 1 HP. I'll repeat myself, but thank you for engaging so much with the game, without this feedback I'd really have such a flawed encounter forever and be none the wiser. Bugs are a thing, but this kind of design issue really shouldn't be there.
10) I set learning what the boss does to 5 encounters (3 if you eat their souls) thinking itd be good enough, but that was clearly too many encounters, considering not everyone will be eating souls when they don't know what it does. I'll reduce it so youre only really surprised at your first encounter, I guess. It was naive of me to think itd be fun to be shooting in the dark for so many fights. I apologize for the frustration.
11) I'll make the repeated encounters be shorter, probably. I felt that a bit too, when testing, but too late to start editing them. I'm glad you said that, it's an important reminder.
12) I'm a bad artist, so there isn't really an excuse or fix for the art I can give other than I'll keep practicing to be better. Not to get into my life too much, but it's just that I preferred to choose to put it out despite being bad, than forever be trapped in trying to improve until I think I'm good enough for the world. I know some people won't touch it because its ugly, but if one person can get through it and see me within the work, I'll be happy enough.
There's indeed infinite room for improvement and you've given me countless tracks to go after to continue this project, and for the third time, I'm infinitely grateful. You didn't need to go so far for me or my game, and still did on the goodness of your heart. I'm blessed to have someone like you pass by me in this journey.
6. I forgot to mention, after peaceful fight with the old man I was just basically spamming Enter, so his encounter was always first in the list, maybe it will help to debug it.
12. No worries, same goes for my game :D, but we need to start somewhere.
Otherwise, no problem, was glad to help. Maybe, someday, you will show me your game again, when it is finished.🙂
I was thinking it had to do with the peaceful encounter, good to hear it actually may have been so. As the jam's almost over I'll probably soon start going over all the bugs reported and clear them all out. At the same time it's really sad to hear so much went wrong, I'm determined to make it the best I can.
(I did rate your game a few days ago, but to me it was such a seamless experience I couldnt even find something to comment. Concept, execution and gameplay all perfectly smooth. Don't put yourself on the bad artist boat, you did great.)
Inshallah you'll see it again before 2026, I promise I'll put my life into completing this beautifully. Bugs aside, there's the true end to write, many more songs and art to make, but if I could do this much in a (albeit crunchy) month, I can realistically complete, polish and test it all in a year.
Thank you very much for everything.
Certainly an interesting game with a lot of charm, I got very far even if I didn't have a clue what I was doing.
Main flaw is it mostly like you're just guessing majority of the time, even with a dodge of 100 it never seemed to work.
In terms of vibes and feelings the game has it down perfectly, and I'm sure the mechanics have a lot of depth just takes a bit of commitment to learn.
So overall good job, its a nice submission and well worth a play or two.
I'll have to look into that because there were supposed to be only two characters capable of hitting you at 100% dodge (two of the semifinal bosses, the wind one has 100% hit rate no matter what, and the dancing one is testing your dodge parameter, so she can get results that surpass 100%). The other ones should be mostly dodgeable unless they crit. Thank you for the report.
Thank you for praising it, and I'm also happy to hear you got far despite the confusion (and probably few of the metaupgrades), as balancing it to be able to get by without the info you unlock as your cycles go on was important to me. I didn't expect the systems to be so hard to understand, so that balance was completely wack, (as in, I assumed youd be able to figure what actions are effective against certain enemies, but due to the lack of explanations it really felt like a guessing game) but the winnability of the encounters being alright is big to me.
Precious feedback, thank you very much!
Interesting game. It is like reading comic.
Please try out my duck game.
Really interesting stuff.
Not my usual genre, and I admit to being hugely overwhelmed in the opening moments of the game (felt like a bit of an avalanche of concepts, mechanics and numbers), but the effort and skill put into this thing is absolutely undeniable. Really original, in my opinion, and I feel like the 'spin' element is right down deep in its DNA as well, which is really cool to see. Lovely presentation too, both visually and sonically.
Great work - I didn't expect to play anything quite like this.
Thank you for all the thoughtful words. I'm glad it could touch you so much and I'm thankful you allowed yourself to be taken in by the world when it isn't a genre you're into. Really means a lot to me to have heard this.
This game has amazing presentation, I'm really impressed with the art, music, and the amount of writing! I didn't expect to see a visual novel/jrpg style game in this jam so this is a really neat take!
My only piece of criticism is this is clearly a complex game and it's hard to understand. The tutorial throws a lot at you all at once. If you can find a way to smooth out the tutorial experience and present more of the info in combat to the player I think you have a great core here!
Awesome job!
Thank you very much! And to think I still wanted to write some more, but had to stop for tests and art.
What I got the most were such comments about the tutorial, so it really was a learning experience! Inshallah I never be this dismissive on the tuturial again when I make a system filled with weird keywords and RNG.
One of the games I like the most in terms of graphics. Very good job at the time of controlling each conversation and each attack. Congratulations. Good luck in the Jam.
Thank you very much for all the praise!
JRPG's are not the most hard games to make, since they all have similar mechanics. But making so good arts and music is really impressive. Music changes very smooth. If you really made all of this by yourself during the jam, that's very good.
A bit 💢 to hear it's easy to make, but perhaps that can be said of many other genres, so I sublimated it.
Thank you for the praise!
I used to make jrpgs with RPG maker, and it wasn't difficult for me. i think you used the same program, if you're not, then ok.
This game was a lot of fun to look at, but it felt like there was a lot of information to track and not a quick accessible way to view it without taking intermittent notes. The abbreviations weren't super clear to me either. I personally would have preferred more concise text and more separation between storytelling and gameplay.
Abbreviations were a bit of a hail mary, so I'm happy to hear it. I'm making a guide now and will remember to put that in it, thank you.
all the art and music are all top-notch!
it's a bit hard to keep track of all statuses during combat, it would been nice to have your stats window at the same time as the choice window to be able to check it whenever.
sadly I couldn't understand the game very well, do I see a lot of effort went into it!
my biggest complaint would be the lack of information at most times, a combat log, a help window that reminds you of what actions and a better way to keep track of all status would all help
Fixing the status part is something I'm planning to do, but I'd like to ask what would a combat log be for? I've never felt the need for one in an RPG and I can't see what'd do for this one (if it were active battle I can see how there'd be the event of something happening and you couldnt register so youd want to scroll back, but when everything is text messages that move when you click next, I don't know what surprises are taking place) so I'd like to know what you are envisioning with that.
a combat log would be another solution to handle information aside from the stats window,
it would possibly help learn boss patterns and to review player mistakes,
it's just that in this current version it's a bit hard to keep track of stuff so any kind of feature that gives more info would be welcome
Really enjoyed reading the dialogues and lore, but I have no idea what's going on in the gameplay. I see text sequences like: consumed rpm to use shield -> without shield, you took full damage (??? where my shield go?).
I can't see anything different in stats page when I charge grr thing. Also some boss I randomly attack first turn and one shot it, other boss dealt 600k dmg to me on his first attack. I don't think I've gotten a single good result from the spinning thing lol, it always steals my rpm or buffs the enemy. Also at some point after defeating a few bosses, my dmg got so buffed it says I do like 40-50k (after a couple rpm charges)? Then after the next battle took a 50% debuff (iirc) and went down to 1k? I have no idea how the stats are working. Overall I like the story and rpg aspect, but I'm just really confused on everything else.
There's a switch that activates when you don't have enough RPM for the shield, which rolls the "No Shield" message later. I didn't add a line to turn that switch off anywhere so you just keep getting the message forever ♡ thank you for the report (you're not taking full damage since that switch is just for the message)
There are 3 bosses which are oneshottable by design, the witch, the cyclops and the old man. The witch is because she has absurdly high evasion, the others are to show you the world is not just about killing whos in front of you like a machine. But if your build is strong, some other bosses also have a mediocre HP stat and can fall down to a good hit. If you can tell me which of them is dealing 600k I can tell you if it's a bug or a feature, because there are some which you're not supposed to let touch you, unless your charge output is good enough to afford all the reviving.
The attack stats are really just your DP x RPM. A few bosses mess with it, but the witch in particular isn't trying to kill you, just make you weak so somebody else can kill you, so I think it's likely it's her you're encountering and becoming that weak. Some encounters have special conditions to give huge debuffs to your DP or charge, but she's the one that does nothing but that naturally. If you'd like a list of all the bosses that debuff you I can tell you, so you can avoid them (assuming you got their names unlocked).
GRR is just for a turn, when your stats show up again on the next turn it has passed already. On your defense turn you'll see that the numbers between () for Third Eye and Flow have changed according to your Bonus parameters.
Also, thank you for the first spiral report! Personally, the spiral helped me more often than not in my games, so I'm always thankful for her. But you'd never guess it from the outside, but sometimes the spiral affecting the enemy actually is helping you, or at least not hindering you, as some buffs do nothing for certain enemies. Sometimes you will find yourself getting 100k on the face because of the spiral, but I assure you the odds of her helping you are supposed to be greater than the opposite!
Thank you for all the reports, seeing how you're trying to engage with the mechanics and finding out where there's friction is great intel!
That is a lot of info I think need to made more digestible in the game somehow. Especially unblockable attacks and the like, I don't think I saw any special indicators for those and thus had no idea what defense to use. A tooltip/guide the player can revisit would be good too.
It's either the 40k hp boss or drillgamesh that dealt the 600k dmg. And regarding the debuff, I had just beaten the 40k hp boss (I had like 40k+ dmg at around 3.5k rpm in this fight iirc), then decided to chose accept punishment after the round, and I remember the text saying something about halving the drill power, then the next boss I went against was drillgamesh and my damage was in ditch (definitely muuch weaker than half power, weaker than how I was at start of game).
Revisited game briefly (it's nice that it saves), and damage feels like normal again (not buffed, but not in the ditch where it was when I left off). Also I chose atone with blood and ended up with negative hp and it let me continue.
The unblockable indicators are unlocked after a few encounters with the boss, but maybe I should make it be less encounters. At first being surprised and not knowing what defense is safe to use is the intended experience. Guidebook I'll work on for sure, that's my top priority now to explain the game better to the player.
The only drill power halved by perils is the Shieldrill, though (I was going to have a DP halving one, but didn't like the balance of it and removed it). The 40k boss, which I'm thinking is the one that doesn't show you her face, buffs your DP during the battle with her, then is supposed to debuff you for all she increased, but maybe, just like the shield switch, I didn't make her debuff reset between runs. I'll check the code to make sure (ToT)
Didn't consider death at the perils and forgot to put a death check there, oops.
You're a great debugger, thank you for reporting all those things!
All of the art in here is incredible. I loved the feeling we get when increasing drill's RPM! Very unique entry :)
Because of that moment in the intro where you charge a lot, I really wanted the Charge event to look awesome, so I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it!
I love the unique takes on theme. A lot of reading so I will play it again later. But I enjoyed what I've played so far.
Thank you!
If you like any of the books or storylines, do tell me! I'd love to know what connected with you.
Very cool project, there seems to be a lot of lore and details to unravel. I'm not very good at it but I still had fun. Good job!
It should be easy, I just failed to teach you well how to do it, so it's on me. Glad you could enjoy it despite the confusion!
Really cool unique concept and look. It took me a little bit to understand what was happening and how the fights worked but it was fun once I got it!
I've been waiting for people telling me they found the fun in the fights for so long, I'm so happy to have you here.
This game is so unique!! I haven't seen anything like this before, the story is very cool. I found it very confusing how to combat and all of that stuff but I'm sure with more time in this game I can get better, the art is great , the boss design is great too! Good job.
You totally can, it's weird at first, but it's actually a really simple system.
If you have any questions, I'd love to explain what each thing does so you can truly experience what the game is about
I gave it a second chance and now I feel how fun this game is! I think I kinda understand it but anyways it's very fun, one of my top choices for this jam, very good job!!
Thank you very much, I'm very happy you could find it!
I think there are some bosses which are more fun than others, so I'll really be thrilled if you get to know them!
Very unusual "boss" game. It has a lot of story and lots of unique art.
Combat has some depth too. I was mostly just charging my drill though :)
There are bosses designed to be easier using other things, but you can totally cheese through just charging and attacking. My playtests were mostly "can i beat this by mostly charging?" and only a few bosses weren't beatable via ungabunga, but it's a totally valid way to play.