Dwarven Depth Runner by Ausstein
🛠️ Dwarven Depth Runner
You dug too deep...
Take control of your dwarf squad and escape the collapsing mines, chased by an angry elemental force! Multiply your dwarves, level them up, and try to outpace the ancient threat.
Can you survive the depths?
🎮 Controls
- Left Mouse — Move your main dwarf leader
- Right Mouse — Skip intro / skip tutorial scenes
⚔️ Gameplay
- Pass through gates to multiply your dwarves or level them up!
- Keep an eye on your group strength — shown at the top right.
- If your group's strength surpasses the elemental, you win!
- If the elemental catches you three times, you lose!
*⚠️⚠️ ⚠️ Watch out for trapdoors! ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ *
- Trapdoors trigger fog and slowdown effects.
- If you slow down too much, the elemental will catch up!
- Avoid trapdoors to maintain your speed and stay ahead.
Changelog
Original Jam Submission
DwarvenDepthRunner.zip (Windows)
- ⚠️ Warning: Very buggy!
- Due to last-minute tutorial changes, the main game loop is broken.
- You can essentially only play the tutorial, and not even that fully.
Day 1 Bugfix Build (Game-Breaking Fix)
DwarvenDepthRunner_bugfix.zip (Windows)
- Main game loop works again!
- Playable from start to finish.
WebGL Version
- Same as bugfix build.
- ⚠️ Note: Laggy and lower visual quality in browser compared to native version.
Developer Notes
The last thing I implemented during the jam was the tutorial. Unfortunately, I wasn't careful with how I integrated it, and when I tried to re-enable the main game loop just before the deadline, everything broke.
Lesson learned! Fortunately, I was able to get a Day 1 bugfix version up, which restores the intended gameplay flow.
The trapdoors are a critical mechanic, but I probably didn't make them stand out enough visually — remember to avoid them!
Post Upload sleep deprived rambles (This was the game page on submission night xD)
Somehow my last few changes broke everything.
The fist section of the endless runner spawns on top of the end of the tutorial instead of after it, then you fall down once you reach the edge.
I guess you can watch the intro and play the first part of the tutorial...
It is past 3am I have not slept much the last days. Maybe I'll fix it tomorrow...
update 4am: the whole chunkspawning system that I implemented early first day and made no problems right until the end is broken and I don't understand why. The chunks are just ending in the wrong positions. I changed nothing about that in particular...
Screenshots
Ratings
| Overall | 707th | 3.138⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 735th | 2.862⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 783th | 2.603⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 502th | 3.586⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 235th | 3.345⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 489th | 3.483⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
I am on it, My first priority was to fix the bugs though, since I really screewed up the game in the last hours...
Bugfixed Version is out now, I'll see if it compiles for web and how much worse it is performance wise and visually.
Pics will also come obviously
Project Folder has 24,0 GB mostly from audio assets... Guess it takes a while to convert that
As some said that's a concept seen in some mobile ads, but still, even if you don't want to be evaluated on gfx, they are very nice, good particles a nice music... the game looks very good.
At around 800m (missing) I think that either there was a bug or the game was unfinished as I was seeing the skybox (a blue background).
Nice entry, this has potential to be one of those mobile games that you can sell on some store :)
Kudos on putting all this together in such a small ammont of time!
The camera doesn't work to the player's benefit, but other than that, the game's nice, all around. I like the characters' models, very rich in theme-appropriate detail. The trapdoors were a fun addition, although I can't help but feel like perhaps they could have been a little less punishing.
Not sure if this was an intended feature, but you can pretty easily divide your army at many of the crossroads, allowing you to harvest both of the rewards on each side of the tunnel. I didn't manage to get all the way to the end because of those dang broken bridges eating up my dwarves upon every try, but I still enjoyed my time. Thanks for the game!
I think you need some more visuals or explanation on how the game works
I was very confused for a bit as to why the smoke kept appearing before I realized it was because of the grates on the ground. I still don't know how to get past the jump portion without losing like 3-4 dudes.
My primary complaint has to do with the camera - sometimes my dudes were so far away, and there was some geo right in front of the camera, and it made it really hard to see what was happening. Tripped a number of trap doors in this manner that cost me some runs ;(
A secondary complaint is that my dudes really suck at jumping :( maybe I was missing something, or maybe this is intended as a kind of reset mechanic, but they kept jumping to their deaths whenever the bridge section came up.
Those things aside, I'm beyond impressed with this one, fantastic work! Definitely going to be checking out your games every jam from now on!
I always put the best rewards on the left after a jump, so you have to jump on the right then carefully manouver back to the left. Risk reward kind of gameplay. One more thing I should have made more obvious :laughing:
Thx for all the kind words!
Great art and sound!
Can you tell me more? That would be very helpful. I have not heard of such a bug in the current version. Could you at least see the intro?