Gravedigger 20XX by muramasa

[raw]
made by muramasa for LD29 (COMPO)
This is Gravedigger. A pretty simple platformer. I hope you have fun with it.

Controls:
Arrow Keys - Movement (up/down affects the square where you dig)
C key - Claw. Used for attacking and digging.
Space Bar - Jumping, selection.
Escape - Return to title.

Ratings

Coolness 72% 3
Overall 3.63 176
Audio 3.32 223
Fun 3.33 312
Graphics 4.19 72
Humor 2.95 266
Innovation 2.74 783
Mood 3.62 148
Theme 3.90 83

Feedback

WhiteWolf93
28. Apr 2014 路 01:57 UTC
It is really nice, music is good (could be better), graphics are great and the mechanics are nice, but SO hard. :/ Couldn't beat the boss.
DrMelon
28. Apr 2014 路 06:14 UTC
Reminds me of a NES game. Very nice palette!
thristhart
28. Apr 2014 路 06:47 UTC
Big fan of the aesthetic. Some of the tiling doesn't look quite right, but that doesn't matter because the color choices are fantastic. I loved the digging mechanic, and the level design showcased it well. Unfortunately that boss room frustrated me enough that I had to give up before finishing. I got stuck with only 4 health left in the boss room, and so I died in almost one hit every time. That combined with having to dig through the dirt for every single boss attempt had a multiplicative effect on the frustration. Side note - took me a while to figure out how to beat the boss, because the boss made an "enemy taking damage" sound when I hit it, so it seemed like that was accomplishing something. Still, a solid 4/5 - wish I could have seen the ending.
馃帳 muramasa
28. Apr 2014 路 07:04 UTC
The ending is pretty bad, don't even mind about it. I was running out of time.
And yes, that boss has some difficulty issues... AND the sound, which causes "misinformation" (it DOES damage the boss, but you would need to land an insane amount of hits while dodging Touhou-like fireballs).

If it's permitted, I would gladly do something about these difficulty issues. It makes it virtually unbeatable, right? (I did beat it two times, but that doesn't mean anything).
martijn
28. Apr 2014 路 09:49 UTC
I believe this to be a prime example of how pixel art games should be done.
Nnnnneeeedddd
28. Apr 2014 路 18:36 UTC
Really good
Figglewatts
28. Apr 2014 路 19:40 UTC
The graphics on this were honestly the best I've seen so far! Really nice work! The game's pretty fun too.
Almost
28. Apr 2014 路 19:49 UTC
The game is cool and the art really nice, but the enemies move and attack really quickly so avoiding damage is hard. I made it to the room with the giant head, but the bats always kill me since I only have 4 health.
Cryovat
29. Apr 2014 路 00:12 UTC
I ended up giving up after dying somewhere between ten and twenty times to the boss. That aside, I'm in awe of what you've been able to do in just 48 hours. The graphics and music is just perfect.

With just a bit of adjustment to the boss, I think this will be a classic LD game. :)
Mental Atrophy
29. Apr 2014 路 00:22 UTC
Oh, man. I am getting destroyed here. I will have to go dig out a gamepad because my keyboard skills aren't up to the challenge. It looks great so far, though.
jsspiegel
29. Apr 2014 路 01:17 UTC
LOVE the retro art! The whole game is pretty fantastic, and the mole guy is so cute! It gives off a very retro and moody atmosphere.
danbo
29. Apr 2014 路 01:37 UTC
I really love the colour palette and any game where death means your guy turns into a tiny tombstone is at least a 4/5
eerongal
29. Apr 2014 路 03:01 UTC
This is a great game! Really enjoyed it!
ENDESGA
29. Apr 2014 路 04:00 UTC
Wow, I love the retro feel of this game! It's so cool! :D
aelita1992
29. Apr 2014 路 06:51 UTC
Great game, good old visual style :) Really liked it
Jod
29. Apr 2014 路 10:36 UTC
Wow. Just wow. This such a _complete_ game. Good handling, music and gorgeous, gorgeous 8-bit graphics that I instantly fell in love with.

It just handles so very well. Well done!
KyleDAudio
29. Apr 2014 路 19:47 UTC
This game is really marvellous! I really love the graphics, colour palette, character & enemy designs, animations, sound effects, mood and digging game mechanic. Great job pulling this together in 48 hours! It's incredible!

I'd say the only two weak points of this game are that the digging is a bit inaccurate and the enemies are ridiculous; enemies' movement is unpredictable and every enemy is really hard to kill without dying.
trueyomic
30. Apr 2014 路 01:50 UTC
Excellent pixel art. The music is good for the style it is emulating. The boss does have difficulty issues as others are having. It's almost impractical to fight any enemies along the way either due to the tiny punch box vs enemy speed.
BenW
30. Apr 2014 路 04:43 UTC
I really like the game but I felt like everything was way too difficult. I also felt like the movement speed was way too high which caused me to miss a lot of simple jumps.
Jed T.
01. May 2014 路 00:28 UTC
Amazing just amazing how you were able to pull this game off in just 48 hours. Controls are just slippery and I kept falling when I wanted to jump to a ledge. The polish is really fantastic I haven't saw any bugs. Now I feel bad about myself :(
sP0CkEr2
01. May 2014 路 05:01 UTC
artwork and reto style was grate - ground digging idea was good - controls were a bit off - nice job
tomvert
02. May 2014 路 19:39 UTC
I love the artstyle and gameplay but it is reaaaally too hard and I got stuck for a long time in water trying to get out... so frustrating, but otherwise it's an impressive work.
monkeyavalanche
04. May 2014 路 09:22 UTC
I love the consistent pixel art and color scheme and the character animation especially the claw attack and crawl movement, really cute.

The only bug that I experienced is that when the character respawned from dying in the water she kept the slow underwater movement even when on land, but that was just it.

Overall a really solid game.
馃帳 muramasa
05. May 2014 路 00:02 UTC
Whoops. Yeah, didn't took into account that. The water physics were added at some point of the last day, and didn't even thought about it when I was making respawning (respawn was added because dying by the boss's massively stupid difficulty spike was horribly annoying).

Thanks a lot monkeyavalanche.
Jupiter_Hadley
09. May 2014 路 11:00 UTC
Love the story and graphics! I included it in part 16 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series, if you'd like to take a look :) http://youtu.be/ruvs0qoO4zU
馃帳 muramasa
09. May 2014 路 18:47 UTC
Thanks Jupiter! I actually was following your channel since a friend told me about your compilation series. I'm looking forward to your next videos.
AlexFili
11. May 2014 路 08:02 UTC
This game is one of the better Ludum Dare games this year. The graphics are very evocative of the Amiga/Commodore era and the sound effects bring you back in time. The mechanics work well and bar a few enemy AI issues the game is very well made indeed.