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Geominer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #38 | 3.643 | 3.643 |
| Audio | #71 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
| Overall | #78 | 3.482 | 3.482 |
| Graphics | #101 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
| Authenticity (or, Creativity in use of resolution) | #110 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Tools
Godot. It was my first time using Godot so it took a while to get used to, despite my experience with Unity. I found GDScript easy to learn since it's similar to Python and once I got the gist of Godot's paradigms, it was much easier to work on the game.
Lessons
It was my first experience pairing up for a game jam. Collaboration brings unique challenges, especially timezone related, but also brings an opportunity to combine knowledge and ideas..
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Comments
The game idea is neat here, sadly didn’t managed to finish it as to my taste it was slow, monotone and way to grindy, but the overall idea are really nice here.
I kinda wish you could also drill upwards, because this way you have to go back to upwards channels to be able to progress vertically.
Thanks for the feedback. Glad you like the overall idea. Yeah, the pacing and grindy aspects are something to think about.
Regarding drilling upwards, that's an intertesting idea I considered during the development. My initial concept didn't even allow for drilling while in the air. My original concept was that there's always downward progression. You can strategize on how much down you go and how much left/right you go, but overall you're always going down. Going up would change that directionality. I will have to implement that and playtest on how it affects the gameplay.
Great job. Very good graphics and sounds. I really liked the atmosphere of the game. I spent a lot of time on this game because it was fun to play.
Thanks for playing! Did you get to finish it? I plan to release a "director's cut" version after the jam with some balancing fixes and updated UI
I didn't beat the game because the red stone is hard to find. I will be very happy to see the finished version of the game!
For something so simple, this is an amazing game and it made me spend a lot of time (the red resource is indeed hard to obtain). I love how the lava serves a double purpose, both as a challenge and as a way of resetting (re-randomizing) the map, that was a really clever idea! Great job! :)
One of my favorite parts of the game while playtesting was taking risks and having close calls with the lava. Trying to frantically find my way back while getting confused by the dead ends along the way. I'm glad you managed to make it to the red gems. I tried to time it so that you can barely reach them before having to go back, and yet I didn't want to make it too tight.
Nice game, takes some time to play through but where is the harm in that? I like the sprites and the pressure from the lava coming up adds some tension to the game which otherwise would eventually become dull. Nicely done.
Thanks for playing!
Hi all, I recorded a full playthrough video so that you can see the ending
Had a super fun time with this one! The gameplay loop of mining as much as you can before the lava creeps up on you is very engaging. What really sells it to me is the audio: listening closely for the gurgling of the lava to grow from a safe rumble to a concerning growl, and then allowing the player to choose when they should book it out of there. It kept me invested every run and led to exciting gameplay moments where I decided to push my luck a bit further to try to find just a few more gems. My only issue was that I got the full drill and jetpack upgrades pretty quickly, which made the rest of the game a bit of a grind to repair the ship. Adding more player upgrades to speed up resource collection further could be a good solution to this. Overall, the game is super well made and fun to play, and would be a great project to keep working on in the future. Great work!
Thanks for the feedback! True, it can be a bit long for a jam game. Originally it took me about two hours to beat, after some cost adjustments I can consistently beat it in about 30 minutes, which is still quite lengthy. The trick seems to be to rush level 3 drill and level 2 jetpack (level 1 is too slow to escape from deeper caves). After that you are equipped to get the reds and you can get yellows and green at a rapid pace also.
Working on the project post-jam is an interesting idea. I had some other things planned for the game that I had to cut due to time constraints. Would be nice to have an opportunity to bring them back.
I loved Motherload as a kid and this felt just like it. Great gameplay loop but felt like it was taking a bit too long to get things done. Also the lava indicator only being audio made it so I had to keep audio on, but the drilling noise was getting a bit repetitive. Overall a very nice submission. Great job!
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, originally there was a visual indicator in form of a text but due to how little screen space there can be for text in a 64x64 game I had to cut it and due to time constraints never added back any visual feedback. Roughly the game is balanced so that once you reach red gems with level 3 drill you are almost out of time. I guess as a developer I playtested the game so much that I can "feel" how much time I have left without audio cues. But a player wouldn't know that so there's certainly room for improvement there.
True, the drilling noise can get jarring after a while. For this jam I realized how much I rely on pre-existing assets and one of the lessons learned is to learn some basic audio editing tools and learn to make my own sounds.
Fun game - could zone out and play this for hours
Thanks for playing!
Funny, how we both had the idea of a digging game. ^^ Even the story.. (I know, it might not look like it, but I had the idea that my mole is an alien who can transform into animals, after crash-landing on a planet.)
Very cool atmosphere here, and the rotation of digging, fleeing from lava and upgrading made a nice gameflow. But sadly I've never seen one of those red minerals; and I was reeeally deep down there.
They're quite easy to find, but they are really deep. It's timed so that with max level drill once you get down to the layers where they spawn, you really don't have that much time and have to rely on jetpack (at least level 2) or teleporter to get out in one piece.
I added a full playthrough video in the comment to prove that those red minerals do exist :)
Ah, I see. ^^ I think I was deep enough (I had full upgrades and was digging nothing but down until the lava has thrown me out), but maybe I was at that one spot where nothing has spawned. Bad luck, I guess.