imma be real here this is probably the best game that's uploaded. It was very immersive and fair, easy to learn and difficult to master. Nice job.

I can try the Mac version but I get a **Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server.**
Notify me if you can fix the link

Very interesting, Lemings-like!

Unfortunately there are some problems with the Linux build. The executable is not worked as such and needs a chmod to run.

Also scolling didn't work for me, so could go very deep :(

Really good game , takes a lot of thought. Well done!

Neat concept, I was confused at first why I kept hearing death sounds until I saw you can zoom :).

@dhim ow sorry, wrong url -_-'. It should be fixed now, could you try again ? Thanks !

@snesgaard sorry to hear that :(. You can also scroll using the arrow keys if you want to give it another try!

Incredible game! Hard to keep the dwarves from diyng, though. Maybe add an indicator above each dwarf about what he needs/wants to do, like "get to the surface" or "dig down" or "eat", etc. Sometimes they'd just wander around without digging anything, getting up the ladders but then ignoring the path to the surface, jumping down & dying. Anyways, fun game, great job!

@lisyarus Thanks for your feedback! There are some indicators that appear when they really need to sleep or to eat (with a pillow or food icon), othwerise they always prefer to dig. Yet, their behaviour is "random-ish" and they can decide to do something that is not the best option, to add some variety to their behaviour. I had more ideas in mind for UI indicators but sadly time is what it is :p

It works well on macos once you accept the app from unidentified dev.

The game is challenging. It would be nice to update ladder to ladder with platform. or platform to platform + ladder.
Some way of removing "errors"

It gets hard to follow them all! which is cool I guess, some sort of visualisation (like an arrow) to indicate out of screen trouble / danger would be nice!

Great great game

@dhim Thanks for testing out the mac version.

You can actually upgrade platform + ladder or ladder + platform into ladder and platform, but you can't place the "ladder and platform" on an existing ladder or platform (I hope I am clear x) ). I think that my mistake was to show the "platform and ladder" in the list ; it makes it more confusing for no reason.

As for the visualisation, I wanted to add a bar on the HUD that would show icons of the dwarfs and their depth in the mine. It's in my todo list, right after "dwarfs need to drink beer" and "dwarfs hurt themselves when there is not enough light"... Some features that will sadly never see the day...

Thanks for your feedback :)

@rolly ah yes i built over but you are right the platform and ladder threw me off. Just having it also upgrade would solve the issue!

Thank you for the game, it's very nice, I'll play more after the early day rush to play as many games so that people also see my entry. I love to find cool entries that work on my Mac :)

Nice game, love the graphic of this

Nice game! I can see it becoming a real thing.

Would be nice if you could destroy/overwrite placed buildings (at least the danger sign, it's annoying if you change your mind there), and I got a little confused with the whole ladder+platform thing at first as well. It would be nice if you could plan your mine a bit more, maybe with some indestructible rocks so you know for sure that they won't go there?

Really liked it! Great entry!

I had a lot of fun "managing" around the bunch of compulsive miners. It felt like trying to manage a bunch of cats or a bunch of little kids that think "well, why don't I poke a hole here, I mean, what could possibly go wrong" the last thing before they fall to their inevitable death :smile:.

The game was pretty fast and I made a lot of mistakes that led to deaths of many dwarfs (such as placing a light in the path of a future ladder etc.). If I was able to pause it to plan my approach I would not protest, but that would probably defeat the "dwarfs out of control" feeling - Ok you don't dig here, you need to climb a ladder, oh, you need food, ok and you just died because a bunch of our mates dug all the blocks in this area, and in the mean time this guy dug all the way down into total darknes and is starving now, wonderful :smile:.
However, I did not even notice how much coins I had, I think a lot, so maybe I could have but many more structures to save more dwarfs.

Graphics, music, and sounds were totally on point.


Anyways, a great entry, thank you!

I really enjoyed this game! I love the theme and the humor you used. The only problem I had was the game didn't tell me (as far as I saw) that I couldn't break things so I just thought I was pressing the wrong button.

This game was incredibly well made! The music is really nice and all the sound effects fit wall. I really like how you did the art. The combination of low poly and pixel art worked out. As for the gameplay it was very unique and interesting. It kept me entertained for a long time, but it would get a bit tedious towards the end instead of intense. Overall this was an excellent entry.

Wow, very cool game! Very addictive managment gameplay. Good strategy and a lot of fun dwarfs with "need to gems" :D

I love this game
My dwarfs keep falling to death like idiots, I love it

Thank you all for your kind words! I understand that there are some problems, mostly because I think I over-scoped the project for a LD, but all your commentes are appreciated and I will keep that in mind :)

@pavel-smejkal I'm so glad you had a good laugh with the game! I aimed for that "out of control" vibe as you say, that's why I didn't want a pause button or to possibility to destroy stuff, but I hear you loud and clear. At first I wanted to multiply the dwarf spawn frequency by the current number of dwarfs in the mine. Imagine you have 10 of them, spawning 10 times faster. It was litterally raining dwarfs x) Congrats on your score, it's pretty good !

@zachhof sorry about that... I wrote it in this page's description, but didn't do in the game, that's a big mistake... I will spend more time with in-game tooltips or tutorial next time :)

@fermingimpel hahaha! I must say they are especially good when it comes to dying like idiots :D

Some many dead dwarves ... Too bad they keep destroying the path I was making for them!
A fun game, special point for the voice acting! It is definitively nice for a compo entry! Good work!

Funny game!

Thats a really great game, the best i´ve played so far in this jam

What a funny storyline! made me smile^^
This game has way more depth than I initialy thought. Letting the dwarves do their own thing, while you try to prevent them from dying is really awesome and even a bit innovative :D The pacing is also really fitting, it starts easy enough to get used to the controls and to understand how the dwarves work and it ends in an escalation of moaning dwarves xD The step by step introduction of the building blocks also made that pacing possible. I really wanted to keep the dwarves alive, not because otherwise I would loose, but mostly because they would give me money, and maybe I even cared a bit for them^^

Such building/preventing escalation games usually tend to get pretty boring or frustrating for me, but this wasn't the case here, cause I always could improve my mineshaft (which felt like progress) and the dwarves weren't dying too quickly.

Also cool detail in the menu, letting the pickaxe sound effect happen with the rythm of the music.

Awesome!

Good game! I did not understand what to do at first, then quickly figured it out. I liked it. Nice music and graphics!

Good entry. I liked how it felt more like babysitting a bunch of dwarves instead of managing a mine. I wish I would have read I can't destroy anything before playing the game because a bad light placement killed a lot of dwarves that insisted on slowly killing themselves. Everything is really well composed and there is a good amount of content(especially for a compo game). Great job! :)

Good concept. I didn't feel like I really had an impact. The people just did their own stuff. One way to fix this might be to have the ability to take control of a character. The art was good though.

Ah those suicidal dwarves! Fun critter-minder game, could learn what to do pretty nicely. Artstyle is quite cute too, I like the clouds-on-ropes!
In the end the mine got quite deep, but was fairly safe. Only occasionally did dwarves find their way all the way down, most were sleeping, and going to the canteen. Mission accomplished?
All in all a fun entry :)

[Disclaimer](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/so-so-phia/done-with-compo-i-might-yet-move-to-jam-if-i-feel-like-it)

Hey @rolly. Here's my exhaustive feedback.

**Fun**

The game was fun to play. Strongest part was exploring the game mechanics, and there was plenty for a gamejam game. I do have some beefs tho:
The most painful aspect was the fact I wasn't able to remove the blocks I already built. This made it troublesome to keep ladder/walkways at the spots I really needed them to be, and once I placed a light it pretty soon became a deathtrap. I mean I could work around it with walkways and stuff, but it didn't feel right in the end. There was also no distinction between walkways and ladder/walkways, so I didn't know where the dwarves would descend. I figured out later that they are the same thing, but it took me a while. I couldn't really watch it long enough to figure it out, since I had to babysit these suicidal children of yours \*insisting gaze\* :smile:

I ended up doing 2 rows of walkways and ladders near the surface on the second run, and most dwarves ended up just walking around up and down, until they got tired/hungry, and then went up again.

The mouse wheel scroll is a very nice touch, and it speeds the game a lot.

What I was trying to say is it's a fun game, but it has it's downsides.

**Innovation**

Nicely done man! I never played a game like this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these mechanics seems very original to me. Original, and fun to play with and explore.


**Theme**

I mean it's a basic "dig a mine" take on the theme, but the game mechanics add a layer of meaning, so there's a half star right there.

**Graphics**

Well, you have three separate styles in one game. The pixelated ground blocks, the low poly char models, and 2D vector environment on the surface, and I'm sorry to say they don't work very well together. I'd advise to keep to one unified style. Also the surface colors seem too bright, or candy to me. I can't find the right word for it. Maybe some shading or moving clouds in the background would help?

**Audio**

I like the music track because it reminds me of "A boy and his ghosts" music, although the instruments used are not my thing, but I'll remain impartial in this case. The game actions are well covered by audio, and all the yawns and grunts are a nice touch. All in all, the audio did seem a bit bland to me. I can't really explain why, but it's a game jam game, so it's understandable. At least in my case, the audio is always an afterthought, not the main focus. What I found out is that adding more bass and trebble to your sound effects make some difference, like having both more high pitched clips and low bass clips can make some difference in this regard, I think.

**Humor**

The game is light-hearted, and the \*insisting gaze\* made me giggle. It's a half star up above average for me.

**Mood**

I think the mood is a combination of graphics and audio. With the graphics not working together that well, and audio being more on the bland side, it feels okay, but not stellar. Most of the mood comes from the gameplay itself in this case.


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