To The Planet Core by Corporation
Reach bottom of the map untill all your blocks are frozen!
(game lacks sounds and tutorial because of bad time management)
Controls:
Select block to place in bottom left and click near existing block to attach. Use mouse scroll to move camera.
How to play:
Game goal is to reach the bottom of the map where you can find lava. As time passes top blocks will become frozen, so you need to hurry. Your building blocks cost iron, so you need to mine ore to sustain construction. Additional ores will allow you to buy upgrades. Main game mechanic is blocks physics - each block will compute overall upper presure and load of it's side's mounts. If any block can't be held - it will destroy. If you found yourself stuck without resources - restart. Changing difficulty level will make game easier)
Step by step guide:
Start with single block
Look for Iron ore and place miner in 2 blocks range from it
Expand to mine more ore to be able to build more blocks in downward direction
Use drill to remove 4 tiles and move to your goal
Hurry before all your blocks get frozen and you lose
Reach bottom of the map and place block near lava to win
If you got unlucky with your map just restart)
Credits:
Game created using my own fresh and unfinished engine (https://github.com/filscorporation/Steel). All art created using Aseprite.
Known bugs: your upgrades effects will keep after restart, need to relaunch the game( Post Jam fix: I've uploaded post jam version where fixed game breaking bugs (negative resources, wrong block info, spawning outside the map, unwinnable starts)
Ratings
| Overall | 157th | 3.827⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 252th | 3.654⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 132th | 3.852⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.385⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 271th | 3.712⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 501th | 2.313⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 541th | 3.096⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
True that resources balance is quite tricky, and within the limited time setting up scaled difficulty is almost impossible. Nonethless, great game!
@craig appreciate detailed review, glad you felt uniqueness of the game, that's something I'm always aiming) With clicking in building icon is actually funny part - my engine don't support kinda "ignore raycast" flag, so I couldn't make a button with image inside)) gonna be fixed soon ofc
@sonicpixelation glad to hear you got so engaged, thank you for feedback)
@ninjacatz thanks on your thoughts about UI, you probably have some massive resolution monitor like 4k, coz on my 2k 34' it looked ok, but maybe not that comfotable. I'll look into it because thought that this size is perfect for common UI text in my next projects.
@lisyarus thanks for sharing your win, i'm happy to hear someone enjoing mechanics because thats something i'm really trying to explore in every jam)
@william-rizzi Glad you liked it)
Graphics is good (but background is very simple..).
As I see there is no any sounds.
Is there any way to stop (switch off, for example if you don't want drill iron blocks) miner or drill? Or move blocks (or replace drill for miner)?
I would have liked some hotkeys or easier way to select tools (and see which one I had selected), I sometimes got confused ^_^.
Really fun when the mine range gets huge, even though I know I didn't really need the ores at that point =).
@deepak-kr Thanks for review) Don't really know what you meant by replaced by other.
@jimbly Glad you liked my game and finished it! True, I also felt howkeys was very much needed after release. Selected object is highlighted with black, just not that noticable. And I very much agree on end game balance - there too much ore when miner radius goes through the roof, probably something to look at in terms of balance. Thanks for sharing this!
In my opinion, there are a few things that could be improved:
- maybe R button as restart and ability to move up and down with arrows or W/S buttons,
- it would be useful to visually indicate the range of the drills and miners,
- an indication of where the player is on the visualization with ice and magma (one on the left side of the screen),
- I was constantly clicking on the image of the building instead of the name/button below, so maybe pressing the image could also select the building,
- maybe assign buttons 1, 2 and 3 to buildings for quick selection,
- maybe some quit button for the game ;)
- and of course it would be fun to have some sound effects and music!
Other ideas to that I think about looking at the game:
- powering the drills and the miners can be a thing, so more than just iron is needed to run them,
- some blocks or enemies to avoid or enemies that appears and attack you and turret building,
- drill for digging side ways would be helpful.
About your gameplay ideas: not sure about powering drill, gonna be hard to balance with iron peaces, but I'm thinking about nerfing mining in th end game; I don't think enemies will fit into my game concept, instead I was planning some kind of natural disasters, like earthquakes or magma erruption, also some kind of tough blocks to dig throu. Drilling sideways will kind of break some of puzzles when picking the right path)