Really cool idea! Felt like an Archaeologist , the rusty artifacts gameplay was really cool, but it was also a nightmare because they took so long to fix!

@hotpaw thanks for playing!

The multitasking is quite nice having to get your tools ready and clearing up the artifacts.

Really nice game! I liked the interface and graphics, and the multitasking aspect of cleaning artifacts while digging up more. The broken items bug was pretty harmful - 7 out of my 10 shovels "broke" for no apperant reason moment after I mass-bought them - and the mud was much harder to clean than the rock, but other than that, great entry! I managed to have 377 time left (score?) in the end.

@wunarg Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

@frogman Thank you for playing. Thanks for comment. I did not expect these bugs to be so bad. I fixed them.

Very good game, I got so rich, I got over 50 artifacts in queue! :smile: The idea of buying game time is really neat. I love the style of music.
Would make a great mobile game in my opinion if you tweaked the times it takes to finish certain actions a bit.

@vrerabek Thanks for commenting and playing my game! It's a great idea!

Cool concept, I really liked it. I can see this as a very attractive idle game if you add some progression mechanics like upgrade tools and make them work faster or buy several tools etc. Well done sir.

Interesting game. I felt like I didn't have much reason to buy anything but time, because most of the time I was getting artifacts faster than I could clean them anyway. You had some nice animation on the tools though.

This is a really neat game

This is a good clicking game, didnt actually realize i could dig at the same time as cleaning of an archeological find. The only grip i had was the music, i found it quite jarring and would have liked to have scored more in that area.

@luc-creationallabs Thank you for stopping by and playing my game.

@taft-punk Yes, I agree that the balance of digging and cleaning speed should be better. Thanks!

@chumzy Thank you for playing.

@deadmanjw Thanks! Couldn't come up with a theme for music so created few short one just to put some music in. I didn't have much time for this. Also, it turns out that itch.io compresses (I think) music, so it doesn't sound as smooth as it should :(

An unusual approach to design. I like the way the layers of the earth look. It looks neat, technical and beautiful. Nice graphics and animation.

@3eal0t Thanks for your kind words :)

Cool game! good balance between doing things on the side and digging. Probably needs some balance so it doesn't get spammy, and maybe some strategy aspects as well? As far as i could tell it didn't matter where you dug or anything. But great concept, and well done for finishing it.

@p0l4r Thanks for playing! Yes, it doesn't matter much where you dig right now. The idea was to have multi-tile artifacts and you have to dig up all the tiles that cover the treasure to get it, but time was merciless :)

Very interesting concept for a game. I've bought a lot of stuff and was digging like crazy, as a result I've got a ton of artifacts that I didn't go through revealing. Maybe if they were revealed automatically it would feel better. And another suggestion is to make tool more expensive with every purchase. I enjoyed playng your game.

@maximbegunov Thanks for the suggestion and for playing! I'm glad you like it.

Fun game! Very easy, but enjoyable! I think the multitasking starts to get a bit ueven when you have enough money, so it could benefit from an idle clicker type mechanics (hire people who clean or dig for you). For a long time I thought that the red text for the prices meant that I couldn't afford, and I almost died, then bought a lot of stuff and starting clicking and moving the mouse like crazy. Nice job!

@le-slo Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated!

wow very polished game, and story is great!.

@eugenik Thanks! Happy you like it!

Tutorial was very long but at the end of it I was a graduated archeologist :D cool concept and nice realization

@antonishig On my first Ludum Dare, I made a really rough and short tutorial and some people were confused about what they should do and how in-game mechanics works. So this time I decided to do better one :)

Thank you for stopping by to play my game!

Cool game! Nice idea and very good use of the theme. Also really nice presentation. I guess at the end I had enough people and was getting more artifacts than I could reveal and enough money to always increase the time, so I could have played endlessly, but I guess that's ok for a jam game :slight_smile:

Only 31 fame here, but hey it's something. I really like the concept of a clicker game with archaeology. I think wish a bit more polish and balancing, this could be a game that I can see myself obsessing over :D Well done!

@pavelc Thanks! I'm glad you like it. The balance between excavating and cleaning up artifacts is unballanced, so it definitely require some fix after the LD is over. I don't know how long you've played but the timer runs faster and faster and at some point you have to spend almost all of your fame to get more time, and then you shouldn't be able to keep up. But maybe I play tested it too short, maybe there's a chance that you can continue endlessly.

@finntastico I happy you spent your time to play and comment on my game. Thank you!

Fun game. Enjoyed the multitasking aspects. Visuals were decent individually but it felt like they don't quite make up a coherent whole. The tutorial is appreciated! The artifact cleaning mini-game was a really cool addition and really sold the concept of it being about archeology not just about digging a hole!

@nidzakornjaca Thank you for playing! Unfortunately, I ran out of strength, and there was not much time left, to improve some of the graphics. Cleaning the artifacts was not in my plans at the beginning, because I thought I would not make it in time. But then I realized that without it, the game would only be about clicking ground patches and that's it, and that would's not too much :/

@zimny11 Ah, I really like the idea of the timer decreasing faster and faster I didn't notice that, I probably didn't play long enough, but I think it's a nice way to make it more challenging.

Cool game, pretty easy to have infinite resources but nice concept :smile: :pick: I liked the graphics, good entry overall

Great idea, relaxing and satisfying!
A bit easy tho, once you buy time at the start and you have 16 tools of everything is quite straight forward, maybe increase the price of things over time and break tools after a while would have balanced the game a bit

@ommadawn Thanks! Glad you like it!

@axeltherabbit Thanks for your feedback! Over time, the gameplay becomes more and more difficult. The clock is set to gradually accelerate so I'm sure you can't go forever, but... Surely the game can be improved on many levels. As someone suggested in the comments, I'll try to made it to a mobile game. Better balance and more features! And, thanks for playing!

This is great example of simple and satisfying mechanics. Great job and especially for using MSPaint!

Very fun and addictive game.

I liked the archeologist theme and the isometric view !
The gameplay idea is interesting, it became a little boring at a certain point because my artifact stack was growing and I wasn't quick enough to reveal them ! I would have been happy with upgrades to speed up this ;-).

Congratulation for your compo entry, it's a good one !

Warning: highly addictive and fun :)

Really great !! I have a very long session on this game, I like the mechanics ! Good job

Very nice game. After some time it gets too easy though so it needs a little bit of balancing. I managed to have 10 tools of each category and then the time decrease was just not enough. Maybe limit the amount of maximum tools?

Oh wow, so many people!

@bangkerpow Thanks for playing my game!

@jokubasg I'm glad you like it! Thanks!

@sebbernery Thanks! I centrally want to improve the gameplay experience after the LD is over! So all constructive criticism is welcome!

@numex Thank you for stopping by to play and comment!

@pitivie I happy to hear that! Thanks!

@panagiotis-iatrou Thank you the the feedback and for playing!

Really fun and addictive concept ! I was a little bit confused the first time but the tutorial really help me to figure out what to do. Art and Sound are quite simple but it's fully functional and not repetitive at all :D When i past 10 min into the game, i had hand pain due to the fact that we have to click everywhere XD Could be fun if there's a mobile port one day, maybe it would be less hand painer :p Great job !

Edit : I just seen that you have done all of this alone, amazing work !

@corentin-sabiaux Thank you for the kind words! Yes, it still needs a lot of improvement. It was difficult to create this. All I did was: sleep, eat, take short walks and work on the game, so thank you so much for noticing!

Honestly, this is a really good skeleton for a full game. If you made it into a museum tycoon and gave the player more things to find and different kind of artefacts, it would be worth paying for. Imagine different excavation sites that you can unlock by paying for the rights to dig there or buy the property. Dig up, run a museum and pay for more digging with the ticket admission prices and government culture funds.

Really enjoyed it and it inspired a lot of ideas :D

@langotriel Thanks a lot for your feedback, I appreciate it very much! This is the idea, to develop it further. Various digging sites, more artifacts and cleaning mechanics, multi-tile ruins to dig up and so on :)
The idea of spending earned points to unlock more excavation sites is interesting. Thanks!

Nice game mechanics! As many have said and you already answered the balance in between the tasks need to be redone. It would be very nice if it took longer for things to dig.

Some mini game could be added for the left part as well for extra points/fame : like an hard dig, a particular sensible brushing to be done. Like a star with a timer would appear and as the chief archeologist you go get your hand dirty instead of you minions (probably some phd Students)

At first I didn't understand that you could use a tool multiple times so I was waiting for each step to finish! I like the little animations XD I managed to scored 8858, it becomes addictive!!! My hand is hurting ahah

@dhim These are some good ideas! Thank you for shearing! And thanks for playing!

@lamamour Thanks! Nice to hear you like it! Also. The creator of the game is not legally responsible for any health problems that accure during or after the use of the product. :P

I liked the game overall. Digging and finding the artefacts was fun. However, getting the sand of artifacts was very time consuming and also felt a bit random when you had enough for it to fall off. Compared to how easy it was to brake the stone it might needs some tweaking.

Good game

@thijs-tak Thanks for commenting and playing my game!

I feel like this is kinda great concept, but missing a bit of player control - I mean at most moments it felt like a clicker game without real dessision making. But still fun in terms of discovering new items and progressing. And very unique what is important) great job!

@corporation Yes, there is many things to improve! Thanks for playing and for feedback.

I got a fame of 6200 at the end, but I must confess that I also stopped because I was going for a while and I felt there was not much more going to happen. The concept was really nice! I liked that you had to juggle time between buying things, digging, and cleaning your artifacts. After a bit I found out that you could just spam the digging site to dig, whilst cleaning your artifacts. Once I had 9 shovels and pickaxes or so there was always some digging happening while I was cleaning. This made it so I always had more than enough fame to buy extra time, and there were no real decisions to make anymore.
The art was nice, and I liked the sound and music as well. The game was polished, played well, and after reading the short tutorial it was very clear what to do. All in all there is a solid basis here I think! Perhaps it could help if the digging site requires a few more clicks? Such that you have to divide your attention more.
Very well done in 48 hours! Good job :D

@wuppos Thanks for taking the time to write this comment! Such feedback is very helpful! And, of course thanks for playing. It's nice to hear you like it.

Cool! I found it very addictive and the graphics were very clean and simple. I also liked the isometric digging area, I think it adds a lot to the game. All in all I think this is a very well put together game!

@nurav Thank you for playing my game!

Really like the concept. Adorable graphics and decent sound effects.

What a shame the gameplay is not really completed. After understanding what is going on, I was quickly able to go infinite.

I would like to be able to automate more, maybe if it went just a bit in the direction of idle game.

It was weird that the "shaking" artifacts took much more time to get than the "rock" artifacts.

@boltkey Thanks for playing the game! Yes, the game needs balance adjustments for sure. Hope to add more stuff to it, after LD.

nice game i enjoyed playing it

@globulous Thanks! Happy to hear that.

This was pretty cool and fun but I felt the timer aspect was unnecessary. Would be fun to casually just keep digging deeper and deeper.

@blackopsben The idea of letting a player choose between playing with time or without is really cool! Thanks!

Really enjoyed this! The archaeology take on the theme hadn't occurred to me at all, but I'm delighted that someone's made an archaeology game. Good fun trying to balance digging out more artefacts with cleaning up ones that you've collected.

This was really creative and I haven't seen a game tackle the theme with archeology yet! The graphics read really well and the music matches the tone. Really glad the player can dig multiple places at once, gave it a good pace and really felt like you were discovering as you were digging deeper.

@jhax I glad you like it! Thanks for playing!

@kirbloid Happy to hear that! Hopefully I can add more stuff and balance the game better after LD is over.

Very cool game. I like the minigame where you have to dust off the artifact.

Very cool game. I like the minigame where you have to dust off the artifact.

@andrewaprice Thanks for playing!

Really fun! Cool idea! The music is great. After awhile you can just infinitely play. Great for a jam, would love to see a full game of this with even more mechanics/tools/challenges. Great work!

@pnkvrt Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you like it! I'm going to keep developing the game once LD is over.


This queue is worse than my Gmail inbox :joy:

@joonamo Yea... it is "a little bit" unbalanced ;) Thanks for playing!

Good job with this unique game, max points for innovation. I liked the mechanics. I felt the animations and the general UI are a bit unpolished, you can work on improving these. Like the music. Good job!

@jose-bonilla Thanks for playing! Yes, the game still needs a lot more polish.

My finger is sore from all that clicking ahahah!

Neat and well-scoped game. Hiring more people after having about 3-4 of each was pointless because of the artifact cleaning taking much more time than it takes workmen to do their job and add more to the queue.

To be able to make such a complete game even with its separate tutorial in such a short time is impressive, well done!

@talops Thank you for your kind words! Yes, the balance is way off :) I'll fix it and add more stuff to the game once the LD is finished.

Cool concept, it gets very satisfying as you unlock more workers. It got stale after a while though, as it became impossible for me to lose and I didn't see any win condition.

I could see this working as an incremental game, where at some point you can get your workers to do their job automatically (maybe even the artifact cleaning) and you just watch as they dig deeper, maybe upgrading their speed.

Good job, keep it up!

Well done ! That's a fun game, and I think it's the first game I see that is about archeology, even though it looks like a logic take on the theme. Graphics are cool, gameplay is addictive, maybe the music is a bit repetitive at times.

Nice

I liked the general vibe of the game, although i hated having to brush pixels off my findings! (This was a solid game mechanic given the time limit, it was innovative, but just not fun)

Audio needs work ofc, but it was decent. Sfx were good, music didnt hurt the ears ^^

Solid entry m8, congrats :)

Very cool! I didn't realize the "click frenzy" it would boil down to at first, and my initial try ended with 0 points as I tried to slowly and methodically dig like a careful archaeologist. I did _way_ better on the second go!

@asdehielo Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I thought about adding more cleaning mechanics and fixing other issues and making it in a mobile app, so constant clicking shouldn't be such a pain.

@jrevel I was also surprised by the lack of archeology base games as well. I was also expecting more psychology theme games, but there are only a few. Thanks for stopping by and playing my game!

@luddegodofpain Thanks! Originally, the brushing mechanics idea was more polished. The rust should only obscured the outline of the artifact, and not this rectangular shape, but I was out of strength and time to fix it. I also realize after the deadline that making the rust come off after "touching" the mouse was a bad choice, and distance to the mouse based mechanic would be a much better idea since I could control the cleaning speed. Thanks for your feedback.

@saintchristopher777 I'm glad you like it! Thanks for giving it another try. It was supposed to be a balancing game to get a higher score, but the balance in a few places didn't work as intended.

The pace is frantic, as you go back and forth between the shop, dig site, and cleaning table, but I don't feel it's frantic enough. Once you've bought enough workers, you quickly accrue artifacts much, much faster than you can clean them. Before long you can afford to ignore the digging portion of the game entirely, and just sit there dusting off artifacts and purchasing time until you've burned through your backlog and can start digging again.

Once you have enough points in the bank, you're never in danger of running out of time, because every time you hear the beeps you can just quickly splash out to set the timer back again. I got to 15,000 points before I got bored and stopped playing, and I honestly think that if I had the time and patience, I could keep playing indefinitely and never run out of time.

Apart from that, this is a nice, straightforward interpretation of the theme, and I can see what kind of game you were going for. With some balancing work and a bit of polish (no pun intended), you could have a very fun and addictive game on your hands here.

@f1krazy Thanks for stopping by to play my game and for your feedback! Yes, the game is unbalanced, but I thought fixing it would be a bit against the LD rules, since it's not a bug. Hopefully I will continue to develop this game since it got so much attention, for some reason :) I have already planned some directions which I want to follow with this concept. The word "polish" is even more a pun that you think, since I'm from Poland XD

This is super well thought out! I love the cute isometric graphics, the music was great, and the gameplay was surprisingly engaging. I found myself clearing off an artifact, then while its fall-off animation was happening, clicking wildly on the left to get stuff done in that short window of time. It could be even more interesting on a multi-touch screen, where I could be doing it with both hands.

At the end, I had a queue of artifacts so hopelessly large I could never get through them all. Eventually I just gave up and let the timer wind down. I wonder if there should be a button you can mash to auto-clear artifacts, where you only get half the fame for it (because you hired someone else to do it).

Also, it said my fame was my high score, which didn't seem right (I could have very low fame at the end due to dragging out the time as long as possible). I thought it should be depth, but I could also have just been thinking about it the wrong way.

I also think it could be interesting if there was a way to make the player have to think more about the screen on the left, beyond just clicking wildly after more workers are hired. It could be interesting if there's something you CAN'T click... like a curse cloud that you have to wait to dissipate, and if you accidentally click it, it kills a worker. Maybe even cursed artifacts that you have to clear carefully. Just a thought!

@ultimatewalrus Thanks a lot for your feedback! I really appreciate that! The idea you posted is very interesting, especially for non-clickable places. I think integrating a timed event that sets some tiles to "you should not dig this up or something bad will happen" (losing: tools, some artifacts in the queue, time, etc.) will be a great addition to the game. In a similar way, I could add some kind of timed event that if you complete it, it will give the player something good.

The aim of the game should be to balance, when to give up and finish with high score (lots of fame) and when to spend fame and buy more time, but apparently I haven't tested it enough and you can go on and on.

Thanks for playing! Glad to hear you like it.

Very nice idea and fine execution!

Could use some balancing. Maybe a timer running out faster and faster the lower you dig, and your end score being dependent on how many artifacts you found and cleaned, not on how fame-money you have at the end? Right now, if you have a resilient arm, this game can probably be played forever :laughing: You get artifacts much faster than you can clean them, even if you don't click around frantically. At some I discovered that you can basically chill and click around without much hurry (and only when the artifact cleaning animation plays), and your queue of artifacts will still be fine. If you dig around fast, the queue grows so much that you will never clean them all unless you stop digging and bringing in more. There also doesn't seem much reason to hire more than 2 additional guys in each category.

I eventually just decided to let the timer run out.

Music is nicely done - it's pleasant, fitting, and the loop is varied enough that it doesn't feel repetitive. Graphics is okay (besides the table, which doesn't really look like a table :wink:) and the colors are very pleasant.


@fabula-rasa Thanks for your review and taking the time to play my game! Looking at this image, you can clearly see which art I started working on first. I thought about how I want them to look and tune them to look clean and ... which were done after I realized it was taking too long and I need to speed up the process XD

Hey! Very fun! Your game is very addictive! Music is very good! I very enjoyed your game!:)
Original theme implementation. Great work!:)
Here is my score!

@phoenix-gi Thanks for playing! I'm glad you like it.

Really enjoyed the manic pace of this game. Having to manage so many things at once while trying to go fast was a lot of fun. The little minigames you have to do for the artifacts also help add to the chaos. If I had to criticize the game for anything, I do feel that the tutorial was a bit too bloated. Also, some of the UI elements were small and not easily readable at a glance. Since the game is so fast, big obvious UI elements would be a better fit. For instance, a giant clock for the time and a pictographic representation of each remaining pick/shovel instead of just numbers. Those gripes aside, the game was a really enjoyable time. Great work!

@superpokeunicorn Thanks a lot for your feedback, I appreciate it very much. I will take this into account. I like to hear you like it.

Nice job.

@naali Thanks for playing!

Nice crazy digging game! I didn't quite get the strategy and mainly kept digging, but it was fun and the graphics are nice and clean and very functional.

The music was a bit obnoxious but in a fairly funny and charming way.

Got my score up into the 10k range but I think at that point it was actually bordering on impossible to increase my overall score with the rate my time was decreasing. Also my hand was cramping up, lol! Great game!

@neontropics Well, unfortunately there is not strategy to digging, at least not in the current version. Thanks for playing!


@luthwyhn Thanks! Hope your hand is ok :P That was the point of the game, to know when to quit, but with the randomness of the artifacts some people have proved that you can continue playing probably indefinitely.