Tokelau by Chinchilla

[raw]
made by Chinchilla for LD29 (JAM)
*****Update*****************************

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I've now added a postcompo version which rethinks the economy, and makes the first few levels a little easier. Now, houses no longer produce gold, but when they get fully upgraded, a new villager will come to your island. 1 out of 5 villagers are miners, which decrease the time it takes to dig.

I will probably be making a few more updates, there were plenty of ideas that I didn't have time to implement.

Thanks for playing!

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An unspeakable horror lives 15 levels beneath the surface. You must kill it to save Tokelau!

WASD to move camera, Scrollwheel changes camera depth

You can earn gold by digging for precious metals and gems, or by building houses

But beware the monsters that lurk below, you will need to build traps to defend your town

Houses generate more gold when are connected by roads, and have trees next to them.

Ratings

Coolness 60% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.61 128
Audio(Jam) 3.13 347
Fun(Jam) 3.31 187
Graphics(Jam) 3.63 272
Humor(Jam) 2.50 393
Innovation(Jam) 3.35 216
Mood(Jam) 3.47 192
Theme(Jam) 3.78 81

Feedback

rogberth
29. Apr 2014 · 08:27 UTC
Nice idea, but it felt unfair because it rewards if you are really patient since gold generation is slow, but safe. But if you go to the depths searching for gold you find skeletons very soon and you are not able to do anything at that point.

Nicely made overall.
DragonXVI
29. Apr 2014 · 12:33 UTC
Impressive, creating effectively a sort of Dungeon Keeper/Dwarf Fortress-esque idea in such a small time. Starts off a bit slow though with just the one poor guy digging everything :P, but looks gorgeous!
Jared Sartin
29. Apr 2014 · 12:34 UTC
Cool little dungeon crawler! Can't wait to see what you do with it.
quill18
29. Apr 2014 · 12:37 UTC
A fantastic concept for a game, but definitely tricky if you dig down too fast!
Doubstract
29. Apr 2014 · 12:38 UTC
Hard to understand in start, but i like it!
MSaul
29. Apr 2014 · 12:52 UTC
What a game i really enjoy it. Really cool idea, and nice graphics. Good job !
SirJson
29. Apr 2014 · 12:56 UTC
I have no idea how to I can do something in this game. The controls aren't quite obvious.
donan
29. Apr 2014 · 13:43 UTC
Nice idea :D
ArcturusDeluxe
29. Apr 2014 · 15:31 UTC
Very cool take on the typical mine/digging style games during this competition. Reminds me of Dungeon Keeper. I'd love to see this game expanded upon.
4026
29. Apr 2014 · 19:44 UTC
Some lovely little touches here. I particularly like the gently undulating waves around your town, and the Minecraftian ambient music loop while pottering about your cave, digging up gold.

Crikey, though, those skeletons are tough to stop. And, as rogberth points out, that tends to encourage total inactivity while you wait for your taxes to roll in so you can build more defences. Maybe you need a roguelikey hunger mechanic of some sort to drive people to explore the dungeon? And, er, some more early-game defensive options would be nice...
gre
01. May 2014 · 09:32 UTC
quite impressive entry!
Charimation
01. May 2014 · 17:07 UTC
Really quite an impressive game :) I enjoyed playing once I got the hang of things ^^
TeamFlare
02. May 2014 · 17:45 UTC
Fun :)
Cirrial
02. May 2014 · 19:38 UTC
The post-compo version is a much better approach at the idea, but I must rate the entry a little more mediocre. Still, a great improvement.
Huder
02. May 2014 · 20:38 UTC
I liked more compo version with taxes than post-compo, because i don't like digging in games :P sorry. I prefer more automatic income. Do something with trees because they are expensive like houses but have no use.
LTyrosine
02. May 2014 · 21:09 UTC
This game is amazing!

I will get it as a personal lesson on how to proper perform on ludum dare. Simple graphics but lot of care on details (smokes, fx, water with sin waves) and deep strategical gameplay.
The amount of skill to assemble such amount of things together is impressive, its a shame that is a jam entry for I would love to see code behind this.

I've been playing it for like 20 minutes till reach something like 60 golds per minute. But then skeletons came and raped my cities haha amazing. I will try the post compo later on. Amazing work, congrats.
GAFBlizzard
03. May 2014 · 04:17 UTC
The concept of supporting a village with digging is cool. Unfortunately it seems super slow to dig, especially to dig gold blocks. Also, my gold generation did not seem to increase even when I put trees next to houses.
Mental Atrophy
03. May 2014 · 18:14 UTC
Unsure what to do. The Dig button seems unresponsive.
Pavel M. Dlouhý
04. May 2014 · 20:11 UTC
Very nice entry! I like it. Good job! Would be nice to have keyboard alternative to Scrollwheel.
matthias_zarzecki
04. May 2014 · 20:12 UTC
Neat idea!
aelita1992
13. May 2014 · 21:53 UTC
Wow nice game, nice graphics and funny gameplay, I'm a total fun of dungeon keeper, dwarf fortress, those kinds of games, so hope, one day your game will emerge into something of that size :D