LOVE this one, great execution <3

You can skip a level by pressing F12!

This game looks nothing short of amazing.

The puzzles hare HARD though. I mean, oldschool seriously hard :D Like the later levels of Lemmings, that kind of hard.

The dwarf model and the animations are great: I love the style and everything fits well together, especially with the sound effects. Good job!

I found the puzzles totally absorbing. It reminds me a lot of Sokoban and Kye, but with very distinct mechanics. In particular I was impressed by how many different ways the lifts can/must be used; they made the puzzles a lot richer than I first expected - especially level 3, which was hardest for me.

I'd be interested in playing more of these puzzles if you get round to it. I think you could probably squeeze out a few more without needing to add any features! I even (briefly) looked into making my own but it was a bit too difficult in the spare time I had. Am I right in thinking you exported TMX or Tiled JSON to a lua format? If so it'd be interesting to see the raw assets and have a go at making some! :)

Here are my turn counts, in case anybody's interested: L1: ???; L2: 47; L3: 102; L4: 78.

@toasty, yeah, I used Tiled Lua export. It's pretty simple, really. Just create a map, set it to 10x10 with 64x64 tiles. Load the tileset, add two tile layers: one called main and one called background. background is completely decorative. in main you can do whatever you want, as long as all the non-solid blocks have tile id 0 (i.e. "erase" them in tiled). Then add an object layer, creatively called "objects". Make sure all objects' x and y coordinates line up with the tile grid. Then assign one of the following types to each object: "dwarf", "block", "exit", "gold", "elevator" or "hint". Elevators will always use the maximum height available, putting their motor in the first solid tile above them. Make sure the exit is put on a non-solid tile.

Then add two map properties: "name" for the name displayed in the bottom right corner, and "next" with the filename of the next level, without path or extension. Then put them in the level folder, load them in main.lua and you're set.

If you want to use hint objects (to display a text message), give the objects two properties, "title" and "text".

Oh, no object can have a size greater than 1x1 tiles ;-)

It's sokoban with gravity :D It's a fun little game, with good animation and sounds. Despite the introduction, some of the actions were unexpected, like using X to leap from elevator to elevator. Level design is just about the right difficulty, as it kept my attention without boring/punishing me, and I did manage to complete it. I least liked the "origami" wall textures. Overall a nice entry. Good work.

This is such a well-crafted game - the brain-massaging music, the simple yet fitting art style, solid animation pacing, the nuanced puzzles, the elegant game mechanics that give rise to those amazing Aha! moments. I could go on. Not a piece stands out of place.

That's the stuff I usually mention in a Ludum Dare game. There's something in your game that's deeper than those superficial aspects. Your game is not an easy game. Yet, I don't want to drop it. Your game has earned my trust. I know that every level can be beaten with the abilities I have, so I want to keep trying. That is an extraordinary thing that this game does. I feel a true sense of accomplishment, one that is not arbitrary and is actually satisfying.

You are an inspiration to me, because you have shown that making an incredible game is possible in the LD Compo. You've worked hard on your craft, and it shows in Dwarf World.

It is a shame that I found out about you while you were being vocal about your frustrations with the state of LD. I can sympathize with your frustrations, when I can see that there is much at stake for you, and you feel perhaps that things could be better. I am personally just thankful that LD exists and that my horizons can be expanded by participants such as yourself.

Thank you for choosing to make games.

Great entry, before I get to the meat of the game which are the puzzles I'll briefly comment on everything else.

• Theme, it's ok, I can see how it fits, but I'd say it's a bit loose, tough we can *almost* all agree the theme wasn't very evocative.

• Environment was I think the weakest factor, it didn't mesh too much with the dwarf looking for gold theme,
that said it's very clean and doesn't distract at all from the puzzles which would've been a much bigger offense.

• Sound, was serviceable (I don't know squat about sound past playing sound clips or merging them together),
some sound effects were a bit jarring, mostly just due to their volume,
as a whole they work and provide some dimension. Some music or environmental sound would've helped to set the mood a bit better.

• Animations were cute, I liked that the dwarf takes thing methodically,
and they're pretty decent for being a rush job, despite liking them I think they are a bit too slow,
when the harder levels roll around I found myself groaning as I had to restart and redo a sequence of a couple dozen actions.
I liked the little dust clouds, nice detail.

• Puzzles are what I think is most important and they're VERY well put together,
the tutorial while being basic perfectly conveys the mechanics and controls, something a lot of entries fail to implement or do so poorly.
I'll go over most levels after the tutorial:
[Continued]

○ Deep Gorge:
I like this level, tough you are told dwarves can't push more than one rock, in similar games this means rocks alongside each other and not on top,
so this level cleared that out, nice use of gold to guide the player, despite being very simple it still holds some challenge which
sets the tone for the rest of the levels.

○ Subterrania:
This one I found harder than I tought, but wasn't too hard I'd say it was a good progression on difficulty,
The gold bars next to the blocks felt a bit unnecessary, given that you have to take an extra action to pick it up,
but I like that it revolves around proper sequencing and I tought it was well designed.

○ Golden Cornucopia:
Again some gold pickups which I think are wholly unneeded, but they're a minor grievance, this one had a really cool moment
when you realize you can put block on top of elevators, and I think the level layout hints at that possibility very effectively so kudos on that.
Now once I had that figured out I tought the rest was easy, it wasn't. I feel the difficulty spiked a bit here, there were a couple different ways
I tought for getting a block to jump to the last gold bar, and a lot of them required a restart when they failed, which meant repeating a pretty lengthy sequence.
The puzzle itself was pretty cool, but I think I'd have enjoyed it more had I had either no animations or an undo function.

○ Dark Riches:
This time I feel the gold pieces are mostly fine, the one stuck between the elevators might be a bit pointless given we are in level 4
and we have toyed around with them quite a lot, but the other two feel rewarding and perform their function mostly as storytelling.
This time the end state is pretty apparent, which I like! much easir to think about where were going, it felt pretty good to solve this one,
and even in a puzzle theres something inherently awesome in jumping from an elevator to another, the sequencing is pretty nuanced, but it's also not that hard
because you don't have that many available moves. I think this is the one I enjoyed the most.

I think your level design was great, something that certainly lacks, mostly I guess due to the time constraints, and since you need to get to "do" stuff many
go past that (we know we did), and as I suck at level design I was really impressed with your levels.

I might have been a bit too critical of certain aspects, I know this is compo, and it's really impressive you managed to do this all in such a short amount of time.

Awesome game!, do get a nice thumbnail, once, if we ever, get them, as I feel that's critical to getting more visibility and I think your game deserves it.

(I didn't realise I had written so much, not sure why we have a 2048 character limit, also wish the site didn't keep scrolling me up.)

Man the Dark Riches level...I almost forgot how much time I was spending playing this because I was so invested in trying to beat it. The puzzles are pretty well designed; they made me think a lot and got me a bit frustrated, but in a good way. I like the sound effects, and the tutorial is well paced. The levels themselves increase in difficulty really fast, but with the amount of levels you currently have, it's well rounded for a game made in 48 hours.

Specifically, sound wise, the gold mining and dwarf completing the level sound effects were satisfying. The background music is all right; it's simple and not annoying after it loops. I do like the art; the rocks remind me of crinkled paper, which goes with the rest of the character and component designs.

(I still didn't beat the Dark Riches level btw. I know I can skip levels, but most of the time I prefer to proceed to a level by beating it, and this is one of those cases. :P)

Nicely done! As some have mentioned, it is quite similar to some existing games (like Sokoban), but I do like how you took a side view rather than a top down view, which added gravity as an element. Overall, your game meshes very well with itself and has a very consistent art style which is also quite enjoyable. Some of the sounds seemed out of balance with the others (walking, digging, and exit opening). These seemed much louder and since they are quite common (especially walking) it can force a player to reduce the volume and maybe cause a player to have more difficulty hearing the other sounds.

I do like the level designs, and they quickly start making you think your way through as in some, one mistake will cost you being able to complete the level.

Awesome game! The puzzles got quite hard quite fast and you had to plan out your moves very well.

The dwarf was really well done with his little "hop" when he jumps and the throw of the pickax when he climbs.

What I didn't like was that a small error might prevent you from finishing the level. So a "back" button would have been nice.

@smbe19, it was on my todo list. Sadly I ran out of jam before I ran out of todo items :-p

Amazing entry overall. Puzzle mechanics are well done and the levels are friggin' hard.
The only problem I had were the slow animations, but they actually annoyed me less than I thought they would.

Excellent classic puzzle game. Experienced game design. Animation is exquisite too!
It would be better if the Dwarf moves faster. Always want to click the <Okay> button instead of press "Enter". Another issue is when paused the game and switch back, the music is gone.
Overall is a solid entry! GJ!

Wow, this game has a really cool art-style and the animations etc are spot on, LOVE how the dwarf first throws up the lantern before climbing up. Really well made tutorial at the start to give you all the mechanics. Puzzles are well made and really like the level design. Overall just really good.

@dgspitzer, the music thing is a bug in love.js, I think. It shouldn't happen in the download version!

Great puzzles! The first real level was actually already great, the puzzles were very thought out. The problem I had was how getting things done was kinda too slow and the game was very unforgiving for that reason... it's really easy to push the blocks into the wrong place (at least for me) and then you have to do the whole sequence again. Otherwise fun game overall, and you have some of the best puzzles.

The climbing two blocks become too difficult for me. It had instructions to press 'x' but that didn't seem to do anything. But nice execution on emscripten based game. Excellent animations.

Just finished Dark Richess without using the right elevator.

So yeah... Fun game, good looking animations.

Well made puzzles in 48 hours! :smile: The puzzles are harder than most puzzle games I've played (fortunately.)

If you are going to make a longer version, please make the animation quicker in later levels... It's fun to look at in the first few levels, but after that it's just annoying.

@tero-pulkkinen: I assume you dropped into the 2 block deep place in the second tutorial level? You're supposed to jump over that and use R if you get locked. Once you're down there, the only way is to restart.

i loved the concept, but the controls kinda ruined to me because it made me do lot of mistakes. maybe with a undo button instead of restart the experience would be nicer. that said, very nice graphics and a good theme interpretation. once the tutorial is done, the puzzles in the levels are very good and challenging. good work!

Absolute beauty, such polish! The animations, the character, the sounds, the funny 'plot', the puzzles... This is fucking amazing, one of the nicest games so far, great job!

Really well done!

Congrats on the compo, this was nicely polished and felt complete!

Finally I beat all the levels! \o/

Level 3 really threw me off, as I worked on a wrong solution for too long. The game feels very polished. The graphics is top-notch, and I appreciate the level skip key because I had to try it multiple times. Well done!

This is a really good game. The first few scenes made me think that the entire game would be a hand holding tutorial, but then the puzzles came and I really appreciated the difficulty of the levels. My main critism is the sound effects, which were kinda annoying and in your face. I liked the vectory art style, and the animations were cool.

Very well done! I can't believe you did all of this in just 48 hours. You must have had a very clear and precise idea of what to do. The animations are very funny the first couple times, but then it get's a bit annoying to wait for the dwarf to end his jump. Although very good overall. This might be one of the best I played so far in LD38.

Really nice puzzles. But I found the animation and movement too slow and got frustrated before I finished. Even at double speed, it is still really laborious.
I want to press right right right quickly and expect the character to move 3 squares. And I want the character to turn around instantly when I change directions.

There's so much polish on this thing I could see my face on it!

Another great game from @rnlf, this one has it all. The first thing I've noticed is the absolutely marvellous animations (throwing the pickaxe when going up, OMG the cuteness), and they're all accompanied by the best sound effects I've heard this LD. I also liked the choice of palette. The colours of the blocks mix well together.

Now to the puzzles: They were hard! I had to restart a few times, and to think quite a lot. I did manage to finish the game, so no complaints here :)

One thing that bothered me a bit was the text font, I've found it hard-ish to read.

Other than that, it's nothing short of amazing! Great job :)

The puzzles are good, the sounds are fun and the music isnt awful.

But the visual style is wonderful! Six stars! I felt like i was playing a 90s game with prerendered sprites, which I suppose might have been intentional on your part - i think maybe you might have a slight interest in games from this era?

Awesome game! The puzzles in the tutorial levels became a bit became a bit boring, but then the game caught me with its trickier levels. Almost gave up, but then solved them! I love the graphics and the animation, as well as the sound effects, these are great! The music gets a bit monotonous after some time. Very well designed levels!

This is a very polished game! The animations, the graphics, the "rules" of the game, all very well made and thought out!

You even have an excellent tutorial! kudos!

The lifts make the game - when I realised they can be used to carry things, as normal blocks and as lifts, I had an "aha!" moment. You could easily make a full-blown puzzle game out of this, with some more puzzle elements.

Very good stuff - especially for a compo game!

I'd like this game a lot more if there was a way to play it without all the lengthy animations. The puzzles are good, but I can't stand having to wait around so much. It's a waste of time, and tends to ruin the enjoyment. The puzzles are what make the game fun, and the long animations only serve to get in the way and distance the player from what they really care about. Fast mode is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough.