Send In The Interns by A-Flat Miner Studios

[raw]
made by A-Flat Miner Studios for LD 43 (JAM)

Interns_Map1.png When you're a world famous archaeologist, hunting down treasure is the name of the game. Sometimes, however, it's just not worth the risk of death. So, what's a professor to do? Send in the interns, of course! The plan is send in some interns to scout out the place. You may have to sacrifice a few of them to figure out the safest paths. Then, send in more interns to grab the treasure. Meanwhile, you get all the credit. And the treasure, of course.

You will choose from among three temples and send wave after wave of your own interns towards the treasure. If your interns meet with an accident, just click the "Run!" button to whistle up some more. If your interns stop to catch their breath, hit the same button to make them start running again. If you find your interns repeatedly falling into traps, remember to look around for switches to click. Those spikes don't look nearly as scary with a bridge covering them! Also, be alert! There may be other things to click down in the depths of the dungeons.

Credits - Jodi Slade - Art/Sound/Music - John Thrasher - Code - Micha Faw - Code

Interns<em>GoatsRevenge3.png Interns</em>NoFoam1.png

Ratings

Overall 34th 4.167⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 125th 3.813⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 213th 3.583⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 329th 3.75⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 179th 4.14⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 108th 3.87⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 66th 3.979⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 128th 3.896⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 25🗳️ 22🗨️

Feedback

DeathStorm
04. Dec 2018 · 09:48 UTC
A great game, pretty good work.

Keep going :)
Niarkou
04. Dec 2018 · 19:43 UTC
Aww, what a beautiful game! It feels very polished and the levels are pretty tricky if you want 3 stars. Great job. I actually played a while. Thank you for this game :)
arctic_allosaurus
04. Dec 2018 · 20:20 UTC
First of all the audio and color design were on point! Your artstyle was both detailed and relaxed which I enjoyed immensely. Secondly the story at the beginning really gives your game character. I could have played this even more, I hoped there were a superhard level option :smile:
EliasCizl
04. Dec 2018 · 22:26 UTC
Really funny and original game. There were some choices I did not know how to decide: exe vs zip, easy vs medium vs hard. You captured the theme nicely, though.
8thKingdom
05. Dec 2018 · 07:54 UTC
Brilliant game! Definitely a good challenge for those who want a good game to play;3 Only recommendation I have if developed more is to have a level select screen within each temple, so you could go back and play levels without 3 stars for example. Overall, you've made a masterpiece!
theforceluke
07. Dec 2018 · 11:47 UTC
Haha, the intro had me laughing :D It was fun to play, great entry!
Matank
09. Dec 2018 · 05:05 UTC
Graphics were excellent. Almost has qualities of a finished product. I think you designed some excellent puzzles! One thing that bothered me though (and maybe it's just my personal taste) - it seems like the main challenge is in getting 3 stars at every level, since just passing the level was always trivial (as long as you don't care about sacrificing interns, it's very easy to make some of them reach the end). I think it would be better if even just the challenge of completing the level would be more difficult (e.g., by limiting the number of interns, or at least not allowing the player to proceed if >X interns are sacrificed).

Otherwise, I found your idea very funny, and I enjoyed my time with the game.
kaiagan
09. Dec 2018 · 18:56 UTC
Very funny game. The art style is great and the concept interesting. However, the levels are all quite simple and the true difficulty is to get 3 stars everythime. Besides what said @matank, maybe unlocking next levels after a certain amount of stars could force the player to try his/her best.

But very good game overall. I particularly enjoyed some details such as breaking the jars, clicking on the goat statuette and spamming the "Run!" button (it is a pleasure to see an intern tsunami entering the temple!).
comenoha
09. Dec 2018 · 20:36 UTC
Loved the art style here. Feels significantly more polished than other games I have seen. Only issue I could possibly find is that sometimes one or two interns wouldn't run when I pressed the button, but it never kept me from doing anything in the game. Nice Entry!
Haustgeirr
17. Dec 2018 · 17:47 UTC
Lovely art style. Clever gameplay, with good puzzles. Very charming and definitely something you could polish and release. :grin:
jk5000
17. Dec 2018 · 18:22 UTC
This a funny little puzzle game. The game mechanics and level design is in general good, but it could still need a bit of polish. The graphics and music/sound is overall pretty good. So overall a good LD game. Well done.
pelicanodepico
17. Dec 2018 · 20:51 UTC
Loved the art style!!! Very very original
syRoK
18. Dec 2018 · 18:50 UTC
Wow, very cool game, good graphics and audio. A good idea for a puzzle, I really enjoyed playing and even nothing to add, a very positive experience! You are great! Good luck to you!)
KsardX
18. Dec 2018 · 19:05 UTC
I'm impressed, very VERY great entry. I like absolutely everything about this game. Almost top notch, great job! I had fun and a desire to continue the playing!
bbaf
19. Dec 2018 · 19:23 UTC
Very simple and entertaining game. The gameplay is clear.
Puzzles are designed very well. Art and sound fit perfectly.
So it was very easy just pick and play straight from the beginning.

There is only 1 small issue which I met.
I was holding a lever when my interns reached the destination. With a happy face, I started releasing a lever, but the UI pop-up decided to make fun of me. The restart button turned out straight upfront the mouse cursor.
As you may guess, it restarted the level for me against my will.

Nevertheless, it's a minor issue.
In total the game is great! Good luck with voting!
Riyroo
23. Dec 2018 · 16:37 UTC
I loved this!!!

The music was catchy but not annoying, helped me stay focused and in the game.

I think my only problem was the same that @bbaf had, I think it was the 3rd level of the Goat's Revenge, it was fine because you could still win but you couldn't win with all the stars. Besides that a win screen would be nice, or a way to know that you've completed each temple thing.

I loved the humor in this game and I thought the story was great. You guys had a ton of levels I think my favourite was Soul Sanctuary, the addition of the boulders made it difficult and you had a lot to take care of if you wanted to get all 3 stars.


All in all this game felt really complete and it was super fun to play, thanks for making it!
JorgeGameDev
31. Dec 2018 · 16:39 UTC
![2018-12-30 21H-39M-09S.png](///raw/e5/z/1fe1a.png)

Well, that was definitely an interesting puzzler yet one with an unsettling premise. Not only are those poor interns getting barely any (if any) pay, they still have to deal with the chances of falling down pits, being squished by boulders and being impaled on spikes and... well, dying. The professor really needs to get it's own game going.

Jokes on the plot aside, I really found the puzzle mechanics of the game to be engaging, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that there were multiple difficulty levels with increasingly hard puzzles. You can really tell the difference on how hard it it is to micromanage the different interns movements and levers from the easy levels, in which I was able to obtain full-stars on, compared to the hard levels, in which I was only able to obtain two stars in most of the levels.

I also really enjoyed how there were secret levers in the latter levels that made solving those puzzles a much easier feat, all while motivating you to click on everything in the level in order to see if you could find any of those.

All in all, if I had some suggestions to make, I'd really have enjoyed if there were some keyboard shortcuts for calling run and increasing the speed (rather than just the mouse) as I couldn't be pushing a lever to get interns through while increasing the speed at the same time. It'd also been nice if I could resize the game's window, as the graphics are look really crisp and appealing!

This was a great entry, and on [behalf of our team](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), thank you for this intern-powered puzzle game! :whale: