Really interesting game overall. I liked the whole concept and idea of it.

cant run the linux version :(

hi! the game looks interesting, but i can’t really figure out what to do :/ i’ve been mining for a while and haven’t found any gold yet. i’m probably missing something obvious though.

@seskon What's the problem? Linux dependencies you may not have: libogg, libvorbis and openal.
@elosociu The gold is there somewhere. The map generator doesn't always make it easy to find.

It seems like you went for an actual pathfinding algorithm unlike me. I'd say that quite an accomplishment for a ludum dare especially since I couldn't break it.

It took me a bit to figure out what was happening but it wasn't to complicated. I will say though that the map generation is pretty brutal on gold.

It would be nice if you had a wavepoint marker so you don't have to tell the AI to clear everything just to explore the caves.

Interesting game with a neat algorithm behind it. Would love to see this idea expanded upon further.

It took me a few minutes to realise that there was more to the game than I realised. I can see that there's a lot more planned for this than the time allowed for. I'd love to play this after another day or so of development.

One note is that I couldn't work out how to collect the wealth of gold I mined. I had to leave it sat lonely on the floor :(

This is a real neat prototype, I get some real Kenshi vibes from the characters and animations. Unfortunately I wasn't able to figure out what the square tool did, and the tools for purchase from the chest seemed to just sit on the floor. I think adding some bridges and ladders like you had planned would go a long way!

The graphics are cool and the audio complements the gameplay very well, but I found the digging speed a little slow. It took me a while to find gold and, when I found i,t I didn't understand how to collect it. Then I clicked by mistake on some distant place, panicked and pushed esc twice and it closed the game haha. It has definitely some potential though!

Very ambitious to create a free roam game, I respect that. After not really knowing what all the tools did, I decided to dig straight down until I reached the secrets to the game. Sadly, I didn't find much, so I guess it truly is an open world.
The game definitely has a lot of mechanics, but I felt like none of them were fleshed out enough to really experience the vision you had, at least for me.
But I did like how you had a mostly functional game loop, good stuff!

Would be interesting to see where this would go, good work.

I like this execution of the Dwarf Fortress/ONI concept a lot. The character AI was sensible and easy to understand, which is quite important for these types of game. I ended up just keeping the shop window open the whole time, as it was relatively compact and I didn't want to scroll all the way back to the chest to open it. As soon as I'd mined the starting gold, I just started digging a weird ladder straight down. The next deposit was large and was quite some distance away. Even with bags, I had to sit around for quite a long time while my characters hauled it up.

It looks like you have the core thing down pretty well, which is a neat concept, and a lot to do in a weekend. Nice job on all the little animations :thumbsup:

The big thing for me is that I don't want to spend all day watching a guy bang rocks, and then run a single gold at a time back to the start. For a jam game, try to think of how to give the player a great experience in 5-15 minutes. With what you have so far, you could start the player with 3 workers, make sure there is some gold near the start location, make the default mining speed faster, and let the guys carry maybe 5 or so gold at a time. That way we can do more fun stuff and less waiting around. Just my 2 cents :smiley:

I know you didn't get to everything you wanted, but another quick win could be to add an explore task. It's cool that there are pockets of air, but they are awkward to explore with just dig/place block.

@madbarron After playing it a lot I agree the character should have started off with the bag which does let you carry 5 gold. Bigger bag upgrades are definitely needed though.
Ensuring there is always some gold near the start would have been a good idea as it would also teach players how picking up gold works before they get stuck miles away.
If you just click somewhere with no tool selected it adds an explore task, it is still not ideal though as you can only place them on visible tiles. I intend to make an auto-explore task which will automatically uncover accessible areas.

Soooo... I have a rather unique custom shortcut for taking screenshot, don't ask me why ;). Long story short, I discovered one of your dev cheats. Guess which one :laughing:


I liked the graphics and the music. I guess you went for a bit of meditative slow-pace - the music, the slow walking pace and the fact that our miners just sit around in quiet contemplation when not ordered all set that atmosphere. And that is cool for a while but after a time the slow moving pace discourages you (at least discouraged me) from continuing exploration. As our protagonists carry their precious mining gold slowly, slowly. Maybe including some button that would allow the player to increase/decrease the speed of the overall happening on screen could be nice? That way if I just want to ponderously dig, I can, but if I want the nameless miners to get a move on, I can do that too.

Building stairs up from blocks works fine. But building stairs down is impossible. I guess that's how the real world works ;). But still, game-wise I wanted to be able to build stairs down into abyss!

Gold seems to be quite scarce and on some maps feels near impossible to find.

I liked the idea but I think it's a bit slow for a Jam. It took me 30 minutes to find the first gold vein (a small one) and more than 1h to find the second (luckly a big one). I managed to buy another worker but after he picked up a bag he got depressed and stopped working XD I tryied to wake him up diging around him with another worker but there's was nothing to do, so i bought another worker and give him another bag. I would love to see this concept developed as a full game. The animations were super nice and also the navigation of the characters were good. I missed a tooltip that says what are for the things you can buy. Well done.

It took me a little while to get the hang of things. A little rollover pop-up hint would have helped for each of the icons. One thing that I couldn't figure out how to do was explore. I had to perform some sort of task in order to get to an unexplored region. I wish I could just walk there. The animation states worked well, they just need a little blending. Really nice pathfinding too.

Cool game. Not really much to say about it. I like the graphics.

I really liked the idea, but the gameplay is a bit boring. It would be great if you had multiple employees instead of just one.

I find a good coder but not a good game designer :smile:
good at : dig and fix mechanism are great , I wonder how you write this , seems like a lot to do with meshes ;
all tools works well ,but I have some problems with the 5th tool ,
not good at : animation :smile_cat: this dig animation is so stupid but funny; audio seems need more time
anyway ,good job for this :smile:

Really great implementation! I found it a bit confusing to understand where to get resources at first and somewhat aimlessly dug around while trying to figure the systems out. Impressive AI RTS scope for a game jam!

A great entry!

I'm in love with your camera, it feels so smooth to control it.

I like the animations and also the fact that you procedurally generated the map.

Gl with your game and have a wonderful day :D

Nice work on the character AI, amazing pathfinding! It took me some time to understand when they started to work, but after a while I did and it was nice to see all of them digging into a huge gold vein! Apparently, I was lucky to find one close to the chest.

I would suggest fewer or smaller air pockets, or an easier way to travel straight up (ladders indeed), because it's a lot of work constructing stairs if you fall 20 layers down.

A last remark is that the buttons didn't always lit up when I clicked them. The game was also quite heavy in contrast to the low number of things that were happening. I'm thinking that can be the reason it didn't register my clicks sometimes.

Overall, very nice game, I would love to see it further extended, with possibly some kind of goal to work towards.

-Fun: (4)
Controls are a bit abstract, but works really well. The general pacing is a bit slow,
but building up & digging down is quite fun. I played it two times (total 2,5h) I think I go play it a third time...

-Innovation: (4)
It is somewhat like lemmings, but you don't need to be afraid of suicidal workforce. It's a good foundation for the
RTS I would like to have when I play Terraria.

-Theme: (4)
You need to get deeper & deeper - not necessary downwards my first gold was in the cealing of my start area.

-Grafics: (3.5)
The world is made in easy-to-read cells. There are quite some assets like the miners etc.
Although textures, light & grafic-quality wasn't that much of a priority here (imo the right decission)

-Audio: (3.5)
There is a small set of sound effects. The soundtrack was relaxed & fitting.

-Humor: (1)
You can turn of this option - your game offers so much it doesn't need jokes...

-Mood: (2.5)
Everybody get it, that you are underground. For more atmosphere you could use some lightning, fog & ambient noises
(howling wind or a metalic glittering so you can hear gold nearby)

-Overall: ( 4 + 4 + 4 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 2.5 -> 3.5 )
I've ignored humor for the calculation. Your game is mostly good, it's not great in the media department, but
it has interesting mechanics that function as intended, most of the time :P


The Points I would like to rate:

-Quality/Polish: (4.5)
The main menu is great, you can open it always & it offers audio & video options.
There seem to be rare glitches but I couldn't reproduce them.
The thing the game is in need of are tooltips.

-Genre: (4)
There are not that many Plattfomrer Strategy games, but this is a good foundation for it, with a hint of rpg with it's items.

-Szenario: (3)
There is no goal told by the game, it is more a sandbox game, where the collection of gold allow me to grow my workforce.

-Setting: (2.5)
Besides being underground, I could not tell what else is in the world.

-Story(telling): (2.5)
there is not much about what is happening ... there could be some hints for finding gold.
Giving your miners name is a gimmick

Gameplay:

-Controls: (4)
scrolling with multiple layouts, zooming out and in(towards mouse position) are great.
Selection works, and characters inventory isn't difficult to understand.
Assigning jobs(Tools) is well done. The automatic execution can get a bit confused, but nothing to struggle to hard. Waypoints or a walk command would have been great.

-Rules: (4)
Automatic character movement is solved in an intelligent manner. building, mining & transport are solved clearly. Buying items & personel could have been made more clear (in the game).

-Complexity: (4)
random world generation, yeah. There are a couple of activities & interactive objects (charcters, items, environment),
the game seems to be focused on growing & exploring - the game could use of some adversaries & obstacles

-Difficulty: (3)
The game is not hard to learn, it is more challenging to ones patience, finding your first gold.
Imho some initial gold in any form (ideally being spawned nearby) would have been great.

-Content: (3.5)
Replayability is given by world generation & the game world is quite large.
You can create a "small" mining group. The Environment can/should be reshaped by the player.

Well done! Like how the game looks. The perspective is interesting. You can even zoom in and out! The player animations are exceptionally good. And you even made some music. Unfortunately the goal and tools you provide are not easy understandable. But I had fun digging into the unknown.

My GOD, what a GREAT game. For some reason it really scratched an itch and I played it for several hours. It is AMAZING! I love the calm background song and the soundeffects are good. GREAT job! :smile:
LOOK AT THE GOLD :smile:
Finished project:

Nice game. I think that speed control could improve it, because sometimes i was just sitting and waiting for tunnel to be digged.

Just uploaded a post jam version if anyone is interested.
Still much to do but it has some significant improvements.
[Details here](https://sam.draknek.org/projects/diggy) or the post jam link above for a direct download.