In the Hole by Kramdar
In the Hole is a real-time resource management game about digging yourself out of debt, by digging deeper and deeper into the surface of a distant planet.
Controls
- Left Click to select buildings and options
- Right Click to close menus
- W/S or Up/Down or Mouse Wheel to move the camera up or down
- PageUp/PageDown to do it faster
- A/D or Left/Right or Mouse Left/Right buttons to move the camera left or right
- Escape to quit at any time
Mechanics
Try to get your debt back to zero by selling resources obtained from smartly (more so luckily) placed extractors.
Click on a room to see your options. Any room can have a tunnel built off of it for the cost of one mineral. Only newly built, unimproved rooms can be specialized into three different buildings: - Extractor: mines out whatever resource the room is placed directly on top of. Cost: 1 mineral - Sensor: reveals resource locations within a longer range than regular rooms. Cost: 1 mineral - Fortification: flex on your homies. Time constraints blocked the completion of this feature. Cost: 1 mineral
To survive on the hostile WASP-143 d, you need to consume one unit of 3 resources daily. Oxygen, Water, and Food are all measured in one-day units. You consume these units at 6 in the morning like clockwork because you're weird like that. If you don't have at least one unit of these resources at 6 then it's Game Over.
Aside from eating things you pulled out of the ground, you can also buy any resource for delivery straight to your space helipad. These of course cost more to buy than sell, and add to your debt. Don't worry though, the D.E.E.P. won't mind getting some more time out of you!
Story
In the indeterminately distant corporation-run future, being in debt somehow sucks more than it does now. Luckily you have been permitted to take part in the D.E.E.P., a program to help debtors tug at their bootstraps.
On the face of it, mining out a seemingly desolate world in the Inner Arm all alone, until your debt is paid off or you perish, seems like an agonizing waste of time. However the alternatives offer only worse prospects.
D.E.E.P. participants often come out the other side as leathery withered versions of themselves, if at all. But at least those few make it out at all and can go back to consuming Argus Megacorp's products guilt free for a while. Perhaps you will be as lucky... maybe even more so.
(...42? I must have been running on fumes when I made this :face_palm:)
| Link | https://github.com/Kramdar93/LD48 |
| Link | https://kramdar.itch.io/in-the-hole |
| Untested Mac Build | https://kramdar.itch.io/in-the-hole |
| Untested Linux Buiild | https://kramdar.itch.io/in-the-hole |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/in-the-hole |
Ratings
| Overall | 225th | 3.738⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 425th | 3.357⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 84th | 4⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 19th | 4.405⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 245th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 228th | 3.548⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 214th | 3.125⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 71th | 4.024⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 4🗨️ |
I also think that debt is an interesting mechanic. That said, I never found anything that would allow me to start to pay back the loan XD It could also be interesting if there was some mechanic that made it more cumbersome to build down so you also branch out on the sides. Maybe also a long range scanner.
I like the core concept, and I can see this expanded on in multiple ways, well done!
@ristoretto
Resources get more valuable and there are more of them the further down you go so it is technically possible to pay the loan off. It takes a minimum of 15 minutes though so without anything else interesting to do in the game I probably wouldn't recommend trying for it. Had to cut some features to make the time limit unfortunately.
Also, there's no point to extracting anything other than minerals (except if they happen to be right next to minerals) since you need to spend 2 minerals to get them, but it's always cheaper to just buy them directly.
Pretty addictive play, I liked the moody sound, after some time some progress in gameplay was missing.
Nice entry!
@someoneman that's a very good point I didn't even consider lol
**Edit: It took me 400,000 credits of debt to figure out my strategy.
Edit: and seconding that the Linux build works, though it requires the 32-bit libraries to be installed.
Some remark: game lacks of indication of sensor's and extractor's radius. Expectation: game shows the radius when you hover mouse over corresponding option. Hope this will be helpful.
Good job!
Congratulations to everyone who beat it! In hindsight I should have made it a more achievable goal since I leaned pretty hard on the theme to begin with. That just makes it more impressive though!
I appreciate all of the suggestions and combined them on a trello board with how I envision expanding on the game post-jam. They might not all happen and those that do might not happen quickly. Feel free to follow along here if you're interested: https://trello.com/b/fT5P4PsM/intheholepld
The improvements are largely around making the underground more interesting via more mechanics. I'll be aiming for a similar play time, but make it more interesting. Some graphics might change but overall graphical fidelity probably won't. Trying to keep the scope down because it is just as lethal to both my jam and post-jam projects.