Hey, thank you for your critics, I appreciate that.
First of all I have to say, I'm a hobby-game-dev not a professional. So I think this might answer some of your questions already ;-)
I started this for and with my son, just to have fun. Then I got pulled in more and more and the idea of creating a whole game out of it, with upgrades and stuff didn't let go anymore.
The partial lack of a consistent growing difficulty level as well as some conceptual bugs or even wierd sound effects are surely related to the fact that I dont have mutch experience in game development.
I learning a lot here... :-)
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"The "reveal all secrets" upgrade..."
Yes, if I think about this, it seems to be in fact a conceptional bug. I apparently never tested this caves with the "reveal all secrets" upgrade.
The possibility to switch the upgrades on/off would realy solve this and would also be a benefit and additional user freedom. Will check this for a next update.
"Why are there lives?"
"At the start of the game, the fact that pushing sometimes doesn't work..."
When a started with creating the game, I wanted to stick closely to the original Boulder Dash from C64 that had lives as well as the unpredictable push success of rocks.
But you are right the lives does not make a lot of sence anymore since the game evolved and with the possibility to restart every cave.
"Why are there no level names in Wonderland?"
"The first level in Wonderland is quite hard..."
Wonderland is weird stuff and I simply got tired to come up with new names for every cave :-)
"The alt key for placing bombs is weird. I would suggest X or Z."
Right. I moslty played the game with the gamepad, but for my next game I will make that customizable.
"Cube is too big!"
Yes this is certainly too mutch.
"I find the sound of many gem drops annoying"
Sound and sound effects are realy not my thing. I got the gem drop sounds from some original SID sounds but played around with them (for the worse I suppose)
"I still cannot finish Ghost in the Shell..."
Hmm honestly, I have to replay this first some day, to be able to gave a propper answer here.
"Why is New York twice in the list of levels?"
I realy thought I had corrected this before launch. But if it is still there twice, it is a bug.
Hope this answers some of your questions and thanks again for your great feedback!