Cave Dwellers by Cheesey Bob
Cave Dwellers is a puzzle game in which you build villages for a subterranean civilisation. The underground caves in which these people live are small and cramped - as you expand their villages, you will quickly run out of space. So you must lay out the buildings carefully and efficiently in order to reach the desired population. There are 10 levels in total: 5 tutorial levels and 5 puzzles.
Controls (keyboard) and instructions are provided in-game.
If the audio sounds very glitchy when you start the game, then please try exiting and restarting the game, as this should resolve the issue.
Installation Instructions
Extract all files in the zip folder to the same location, then run the executable Jar file.
A Note on Difficulty
The first non-tutorial level is possibly the hardest level, and several people have been unable to get past it. As this isn't a bug, I don't feel as though I can update this while the ratings are still happening. But, if you get completely stumped, a link to the solution is below.
https://imgur.com/a/Dt3ZVbl
| Windows | https://cheesey-bob.itch.io/cave-dwellers |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/cave-dwellers |
Ratings
| Overall | 203th | 3.62⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 99th | 3.76⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 184th | 3.52⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 388th | 3.5⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 564th | 2.74⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 522th | 2.3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 383th | 2.891⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
I however seem to fail to grasp the mechanics, I was stumped at the level where you have to get 9 population.
Maybe you should indicate more which characteristic requires more.
Still, solid little game!
The graphics and sounds are not that great but gets the works done. And it would be nice if it supported mouse.
My win screen :D
Apologies for the difficulty spike! I should really have done something about that after playtesting, but didn't for whatever reason. If anyone gets completely stuck on a level, you can edit the data files to change the win condition for the level (though you'll have to restart the game). The "level_x" files show the layout of the level and the "levelData_x" files have the win threshold on the second line.
Congrats @sh1rogane!
It got very difficult for me at "Cutting Corners", I think I still need to figure out how the mechanics work. If the game taught you the mechanics of the game (and the tricks it may have that you'll need to beat the game), it would be a lot more enjoyable for me. Also, the audio hurt my ears just a little, might need to make the sounds a little less strong on the ears.
This puzzle game is really cool! It controls great, rattles my brain, and it has so much potential. I'd play a post jam if you made it. Keep it up!
@lexyvil I've now put the installation instructions from the itch.io page onto this page as well. The file "Cave Dwellers.jar" is an executable java file, so you should be able to run it as you would a .exe file.
If your pc can't run the file (after extracting it from the zip), then you may need to update or install java for the game to work. This is free, but if it's too much hassle for you to do this for a LD game, then I'll understand if you skip this one. Though, as far as I know, it's pretty standard to have java, so this shouldn't be an issue.
I feel like I've done every combination but I keep getting a population of either 7 or 8, when I need 9. Not that it's a bad thing, since I do love myself a challenge. 5/5 for the theme and as well for fun though~
https://imgur.com/a/Dt3ZVbl
I think the levels after that are of a more appropriate difficulty.
@the-tophat-demon Sorry about the audio! Was the issue that the volume wasn't balanced between different sound effects, or were you getting inconsistent volume between repeated plays of the same sound effect?
@crastinator Thank you very much!
What I did for the main levels was make the map, then play around with it in game for a while to see what score I could get. This method, of course, only works for open ended puzzle games like this, and I wouldn't recommend using it for anything other than a LD game, as it's really not exploring the possibility space thoroughly enough.
I think what I did right in terms of puzzle design was the tutorial levels. For those, I wrote a list of all the aspects of the mechanics that the players should know, then put them in the order I thought they should be taught. For each aspect, I then made the simplest possible level which required the player to understand that aspect.
If you want to hear some good advice on puzzle design, you should play through Portal with the director's commentary on.
I think that I took 9 level to fully grasp some mecanism.
Well done.