Dwarves & Goblins by PlasterPhantom

[raw]
made by PlasterPhantom for LD29 (JAM)
Well, that sure was a whopping first game jam ever!
The beginning went very smooth, ran into some difficulties later on but we didn't back down. The man with the hammer couldn't get to us! Haha. Oh, the irony.

Instead, we took the man with the hammer to our own game.
In Dwarves & Goblins you take the role of a little fella with a gigantic hammer. It's up to you to protect your precious miners -- your kin -- from the dangers that lurk beneath the surface. A well known dwarven enemy, the goblins, will do anything that it takes to get a tasty bite from your juicy fat dwarven mining belly. Tremors through the earth's surface are going to be your best best to smack these hideous creatures into a warm kiln, namely the center of the earth.

Controls:

Move: Arrow Keys
Attack: Q, W, E, R
Jump: Space

EDIT: Okay, we are aware some people don't really understand what the power-ups do because of minimal feedback.

Powerup 1: Regenerates health of your miners
Powerup 2: Makes your miners invulnerable
Powerup 3: Get 2 extra miners
Powerup 4: The stability meter won't decrease
Powerup 5: Increased damage

All powerups, except powerup #3 have a duration. When the duration ends, the powerup ends also. Have fun!

Try to reach the highest score! Want to share your score? Mention us on Twitter! That'll be all cool and stuff. Twitter @PrzewalskiPaard.

Stay legendary.

-Team Jamplifier

Music: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/494588

EDIT: Little hotfix, controls now display on the page.

Ratings

Coolness 73% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.74 77
Audio(Jam) 3.60 141
Fun(Jam) 3.59 84
Graphics(Jam) 4.34 60
Humor(Jam) 3.12 177
Innovation(Jam) 3.77 71
Mood(Jam) 3.35 242
Theme(Jam) 3.86 55

Feedback

Riko
28. Apr 2014 · 22:31 UTC
dis gayme is awesozmee!1!!
davidc.
28. Apr 2014 · 23:09 UTC
great game, loved it, keep it up, ad add more quippy quotes now and again, would of kept the humour up
syawqy
29. Apr 2014 · 07:17 UTC
this look really solid
MSaul
29. Apr 2014 · 07:19 UTC
Best game yet, really well done. Good Job.
nonentheless
29. Apr 2014 · 07:19 UTC
Nice idea, nice art, great job!
thomz12
29. Apr 2014 · 07:21 UTC
Great game! music and graphics are awesome!
tiffi_gaming
29. Apr 2014 · 07:21 UTC
Great game, a little pause between the waves would have been nice. Looks amazing
rogberth
29. Apr 2014 · 07:23 UTC
nice job, It was quite challenging, specially controlling the bar
SonnyBone
29. Apr 2014 · 07:27 UTC
Oooh, this is a great start to something rad. Needs some obvious additions and fixes and stuff, but what you have here is really compelling. I love the 'balance/tilt' mechanic and the wave progression. I say keep working on this one.
DanEEStar
29. Apr 2014 · 07:31 UTC
Interesting and fun Game.
Very nice graphics and good music.

In the beginning I always destroyed my own mine because I did not understand that I affect the "health" of the mine with my own hammer.
Once I got this it was actually a bit to easy and a bit boring... Just waiting for the stability bar to go up before striking again.

I got to wave 17 until I accedently destroyed my mine again...

My suggestion:
The dwarf should not be able to destroy the mine. With the stability bar you could control how many times the dwarf could strike with the hammer.
The goblins should be more powerful against the miners. I still had about 8 miners at the end of wave 17 until my infamous self destruction.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 07:48 UTC
@DanEEStar The growth is exponential, so it'll get more hectic and it is definitely difficult at some point. We have to make some compromises on balancing and finishing the game, but we sure had re-balancing in mind. Haha
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 07:49 UTC
Thanks for the amazing responses guys! They mean a lot to us!
Valandre
29. Apr 2014 · 08:08 UTC
great concept, very fun!
HernanZh
29. Apr 2014 · 09:59 UTC
Cool! Great job guys!
Verspagen
29. Apr 2014 · 10:38 UTC
Yeah Awesome game ! I like it
Crowbeak
29. Apr 2014 · 11:01 UTC
I saw a lot of black boxes instead of enemy sprites. Made it harder to tell what's going on.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 11:39 UTC
We are aware of this black boxing issue. We are trying to fix this. But weirdly enough this issue did not appear to us a single time during the jam.. And it still does not. :p
Trying to fix it though, @Crowbeak :)
HernanZh
29. Apr 2014 · 11:55 UTC
FYI: I've seen the black box issue appear on people with Mac. Worked fine on my Windows machine.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 11:58 UTC
It's a WebGL related thing with sprites that are not in a power of 2, atleast that can be one of the reasons. PIXI JS should be able to handle this, but seemingly that doesn't always work. We'll look into it!
jujule
29. Apr 2014 · 13:33 UTC
Wow. Excellent graphics, smooth controls and nice and original gameplay that perfectly fits the theme. Good job !
By the way, I'm on a Mac and I didn't have any black box problem.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 13:37 UTC
Thank you so much jujule! We appreciate your kind words a lot :)
Robber
29. Apr 2014 · 13:40 UTC
very innovative! the music gets a bit repetetive, but it fits the goblins style i guess, some soundeffects for the special hammer moves with be the finishing touch..solid game..
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 14:09 UTC
We've been smashing on tables and throwing stuff on the ground but we couldn't really get to a good sound effect. Haha. Too bad we didn't have a sound designer :P Thanks!
Therrato
29. Apr 2014 · 14:26 UTC
Amazing looking game, it had some problems figuring out how the pickups worked, because i missed some when i jumped somehow. would recommend adding some sounds for the attacks
sP0CkEr2
29. Apr 2014 · 15:13 UTC
this game is so awesome. highest rating for me so far and added to my favorites list. outstanding.
quill18
29. Apr 2014 · 15:14 UTC
I found that managing the stability bar to be a bit awkward, but otherwise this was a stupendously excellent game.
pythong
29. Apr 2014 · 15:18 UTC
got to level 14, but didn't hear any music? Firefox 12.0 on Mac.
This game has great potential! Was a bit strange at the beginning though, because I pressed W twice and lost 2 times before I understood who I was
🎤 PlasterPhantom
29. Apr 2014 · 15:19 UTC
Haha, oh well. Firefox doesn't like standard HTML5 audio unless they're in an ogg format. The game plays best in Chrome.
donan
29. Apr 2014 · 15:30 UTC
Wow. Really addictive and good game :D
Awesome work!
ilovepixel
29. Apr 2014 · 16:48 UTC
Nice game!, really polished. You guys did a great job.
I had some issues with chrome on OSX. I could see some black squares, but that's only rendering issue, the game it self is pretty decent! good job
KooBazz
29. Apr 2014 · 23:21 UTC
Really great game! Interesting and original game mechanic.
calvinsm
30. Apr 2014 · 00:12 UTC
its a really fucking game!!!
congratulations!!!
but I confess to you, was very hard to understand I need to do in the first 10 fucking times. In beginner, all the things looked so confused, "what I need to do?!", "fuckkk", "what I do wrong, Why!!!"

ok its that. =)
oatsbarley
30. Apr 2014 · 11:01 UTC
Very nice! Could definitely do with some sound effects though.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
30. Apr 2014 · 19:02 UTC
Thanks guys! :)
GarethIW
30. Apr 2014 · 19:28 UTC
Wow, that's fun! Excellent graphics, great use of theme, nice music and solid gameplay. Made it to wave 23 before I accidentally collapsed my mine :[
ioboi
30. Apr 2014 · 19:47 UTC
Awesome sound, graphics and solid gameplay!
Really cool game, love it :)
pancakecity
30. Apr 2014 · 19:53 UTC
Looks very good! Wish there were some sound effects, but the visual appeal is very nice! Nice song too!
zdonkeyx
30. Apr 2014 · 20:17 UTC
Love this, felt really good to smash the goblins into a pulp xD
🎤 PlasterPhantom
01. May 2014 · 08:34 UTC
Hahaha yeah it's awesome, if I may say so myself! :)
Kingtrez
03. May 2014 · 12:54 UTC
Very nice game, i really enjoyed playing it. The only thing I didn't like was the confusion of the left and right controls when the character was upside down xD but no worries. Great job!
TeamEagle
03. May 2014 · 13:44 UTC
black box issue, can't seem to play it :(
Kate Kligman
04. May 2014 · 04:43 UTC
Liked the music and the graphics. Nice game!
🎤 PlasterPhantom
04. May 2014 · 15:35 UTC
We are aware of this issue and we'll attempt to fix it, but we're not exactly sure what might be causing it. I'll have some free time when I get home, so I'll google some stuff. Please stay tuned.
Thorig
04. May 2014 · 19:51 UTC
Really good entry.. but no sound effects? Awesome game!
Daniel X. Moore
05. May 2014 · 01:01 UTC
Nice graphics and music!
Cake&Code
06. May 2014 · 04:19 UTC
Damn, that is a really solid and polished game! It was pretty cool to be moving on the outer side of the world whilst the conflict within was going on. I think the death triggered by fatigue is a bit too unexpected, perhaps slowing the character down a little would make the effect feel more detrimental. As is I thought he would just need to take a little breather and then I'd be able to move again.

The powers were really cool and the enemies were varied enough to be exciting. Amazing amount of work you managed to get done, had a ton of fun playing it :)
Rednas
06. May 2014 · 10:32 UTC
A good and solid game, i just found it getting boring after a few minutes.
BadgerPriest
06. May 2014 · 23:35 UTC
Also getting the blackbox issue here. I know you're working it. If it helps though, the ones I got seemed to be stationary small ones - perhaps animated miners when they aren't running from goblins? I couldn't see them the whole time. Other than that some of the attack animations were black boxed but then went away afterwards (W attack I think). The most problematic was using R, which I assume to be 6 giant hammers all at once. Those blackboxes stayed the whole rest of the game, basically ruining the whole experience because they cover so much.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
07. May 2014 · 11:28 UTC
It's because most of our textures aren't in a power of 2. So we'll have to do some really solid refactoring for that. Currently we're all at our internships and we don't have as much time to work on it, communication is a bit of a problem due to that. We'll see what we can do, thanks for the feedback!
PapyGaragos
09. May 2014 · 19:45 UTC
Hey congrats on your first LD!
The graphics are awesome and the controls are pretty solid: the game is nervous and you feel powerful with that hammer.
However, I think that the lack of actual game sounds is really hurting the experience.
🎤 PlasterPhantom
12. May 2014 · 09:22 UTC
We hit up with a sound designer for the sounds. However, I do not think we may actually place the sounds in the entry as it's quite a huge change. Especially because you can rate sound.
pinkmonkeyhead
16. May 2014 · 16:27 UTC
I loved the music! Great entry overall