What did this game do well?
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A simple concept but very interesting. It definitely feels very good and gives you a good rush when you're able to fall down a large depth.
'A genuinely fun game! The core gameplay elements are really simple, but really well executed. Eating dirt creates a neat soft permission system where you effectively have unbounded movement, you can get to literally any tile, but there's clear incentives to take the take the clean path down to the point where it's easy to forget that you're really not bounded at all, except by time!
The unbounded movement also helps cover up a lot of the jank created by the PCG, where you might otherwise get really frustrated at being blocked off, or spawning in the wall.'
This game does really well on the pcg part, fits well with the game design. The gameplay is simple but also has enough depth to make it interesting: like making the player choose whether to eat through the tiles or try to look for a better route. I like the idea of allowing the players to eat through tiles, it gives an extra option.
The generated maps are really fun to traverse -- it reminds me of discovering caverns in Terraria! The ability to move up and down but also choose to drill through the walls is also a nice touch. It justifies the time limit well -- do you choose to take the long way or drill through a thick wall?
It's nice that the player has the ability to eat the tiles if they ever get stuck instead of just navigating through the tiles. It lets the player to strategize whether they should eat tiles or find another way to go down and the timer definitely adds to that strategy process.
Nice concept, a new take on maze solvers. Addictive! Before I knew it, I had spent 20 minutes on the game!!
The PCG is in line with the game concept, would love to see this developed further.
Simple controls and simple concept.
Its a fun game to play. I really enjoyed using the eating tiles mechanism. Generation of map procedurally gives the player excitement while choosing a path.
I really like this concept. I also like the fact that an eating the tiles thing was added in case I got stuck.
The gameplay was varied and you had to be creative in your timing of jump, smoothness of actions in game were solid.
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What could this game have done better?
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It does get a little repetitive after a while, but this game definitely has potential for more!
'A lot of the problems with this game were just things that need polish. There's lag whenever you load the next level, which just feels terrible. Sometimes you'll just spawn into a wall, and need to dig your way out! Sometimes there's a bunch of time-boosts that you just fall into, and sometimes there's nothing in sight!
The other thing I'm concerned about is where exactly the skill cap on this game is. This game feels like it has a high skill ceiling: you can go infinitely deep and there's a bunch of branching choices. However, most of the choices you're making are random. The thing that determines if you get a high score is much more so luck than any real improvement in player skill. I wish I had an easy 'Make your game skill-based with this one easy trick!', but I don't. It's just something that you should keep in mind as a problem-to-solve should you develop this game further.'
I didn't really understand what the checkpoint was for, is it supposed to respawn us when we die? It would also be nice to have some other mechanism to guard against levels that have a big block of wall. Perhaps to further develop this game, you can add some items(like bomb or something) that would add some complexities. This can add to player's choice: whether or not to spend time to get the bomb that would help them later on or just spend the time to go further.
I noticed that its possible to spawn directly inside of a wall, so spawn position may have to be shifted to accommodate that possibility. The background being pure white also felt a little weird -- some repeating cave background tile would go a long way.
It would be nice if there is other way to eat the tiles like using bomb and put the bombs around like a collectible. Other than that, it would also be fun if the tiles change their appearance as you go deeper
Control the randomness of the crawler by not letting it spawn tiles around the player spawn area. A lot of times, I was spawned inside walls and had to eat my way though.
Ensure that there is atleast one path from spawn to goal - there were few islands with a huge layer of walls and getting out of it was difficult.
Increase the size of the levels as the game progresses.
Little more gradually generation rather than abrupt change of screen.
Maybe make sure there's a path from where the slime starts because it seems unfair to have to use my eating power (since it's limited) when I get spawned inside a block of tiles and am forced to use up resources.
The overall game itself felt a bit too simple / one dimensional - it could have been a bit more exciting in terms of perhaps special effects or power ups.