I am surprised at the amount of content in this entry! Great job team! I struggled a little with the front load of systems through only a text tutorial for such a complex game but it was great!

The game was very fun and the graphics are SO beautiful!

very cool. nicely done!

Fun, hectic, and well executed idea! Character is a bit difficult to control and water depletes a little too quickly in my opinion but makes for a compelling gameplay loop

@sirduck thanks a lot! That's why I expended some unreasonable ammount of time creating a gif for this page that sums up the mechanics. We ran out of time for the intial "tutorial" scene. I will check your game later, I'm kinda dying rn. @tiago-cruz thank you! I guess all that hard work paid off!

Game was pretty interesting and I LOVED the graphics SO much!

stressful 10/10

Very well done and surprisingly polished for a 72 hour turnaround!

Great game, so chaotic trying to manage everything I loved it. Was always the walls that got me in the end x_x 45 was my high score.

Very fun short little game, a lot going on at the same time, i didn't quite grasp it entirely, but still had quite a bit of fun, the drill kept breaking without i even knowing why, took me a while to figure out to whack the moles but it feels nice, overall it's very fun and pretty, i liked it a lot, it's also unlike pretty much everything i played so that's a nice bonus!

@vitor-milioni Thanks so much for the DEEP feedback! ;)

We did our best in our second LD jam and all us feel good with the game result :D

Hope you enjoyed as much as we did making it!

Fantastic entry. The art is great and that audio was nice as well. The game was a little tough to figure out but I was primarily in awe of the product that was made in only 72 hours!

Fun gameplay with amazing visuals and music. Great game

Wow! The sprites and animations look so polished. I'm not sure I fully understood the gameplay mechanics, but really impressive stuff!

@somnolentpumpkin hahaha, yeah, I understand that it can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning... Basically you are digging and you need to keep the machine alive and the walls in good state until the end to be able to get a diamond from the bottom!

Thanks for the rating :)

@somnolentpumpkin thanks! I can go sleep now... no wait, I have to go to work!

My friend had issues seeing the walls when in 4:3 aspect ratio. Info on why you died would be stellar. Awesome job!

Beautiful pixel art and particle effects, love it! I needed some time to figure out what to do, and I'm not sure if I totally understand it rn, so a tutorial would be nice. Very polished, good job!

the pixel art graphics was really wonderful. Loved the game play, the music and sound fx was all put together very well. you're going to do good in this jam. good lucK!

Thanks for the kind comments!!

Incredible ! this is such a good idea !

This game was incredible! It's very stressful and panic inducing in such fun way. lol
Graphic is super polished, mechanic is great, and overall gameplay was smooth as heck. Fantastic, I had a lot of fun!

Damn near perfect! Some points of feedback:
- All the mechanics were fun and exciting to switch between rapidly.
- The graphical style and audio were <3 <3 <3
- The character was a bit too slippery for my liking / ease of control.
- My watergun requires too much times to cool the engine :/
- Refilling oil needs a more tactile response (the audio cue is too subtle).
- I had no idea I could repair the crumbling walls until reading carefully in this page. Maybe a note on that in the homescreen would help.
- The time to retry playing is too long! Let players replay immediately (1 second turnaround) instead of going through the homescreen again and waiting ~8 seconds each time.
- Game difficulty goes all-in hard mode immediately (too quickly).
- I had a hard time knowing the "health" of my drill. There were so many meters, audio, and visual cues that I had a hard time understanding what to even try fixing! I suppose the chaos is part of the fun... but my hope was that the chaos should be the player frantically making decisions instead of spending brain cycles on deciphering the many UI meters.

Great work by all you!!

Wow, you guys are well coordinated.

Well, even tho it has been said, this is a really wonderfull entry. Loved every aspect of it, but no one was honest on this CHALLENGE - So I'll start - I bet you can't beat me:


P.S: This game is so much fun! Great work everyone!

Talk about sensory overload! There is a lot to keep track of here right away... I wish you would slowly introduce the different mechanics one by one. I had to look at the instructions like 10 times before I got a decent run going. Also, a quick restart would have been really nice, not having to go through the (incredibly awesome looking) intro animation.
Now, negatives aside this is a really awesome game! Everything fits, the graphics, the music, the sounds and the gameplay! It is super colorful and fast paced just really fun!
Really well done!

Cool graphics. The game is interesting. Great job.

Very fun to play and very good job on the art! I'm surprised by the amount of content of this game. Congratulations!

Super nice graphics, and I am a big fan of the idea of managing a machine like this. There are a number of things to do at any one time, and you have to judge which to do, good design. It was a little confusing what was happening sometimes-- when you cool down the machine for instance, the only indication was that the small meter in the top left was going down-- some steam would go a long way to communicating what is happening. Grat feeling and aesthetic, and effective sound.

Not that bad :sunglasses: Need me time to understand that the hammer can fix the walls and keep them breaking apart. The only problem I got.

It was really funny and hard to dig really deeper ^^ Good work on the assets, on the gamefeel and on the art, it was good :smile:


@microchasm That is actually a great idea that would have been relatively quick to implement and we didn't think about

Incredible game! Great graphics, polish and content; excellent work!

Thank you all! we're thrilled to see so good feedback! on our little game! :raised_hands: thanks!!!!

Well:

First: Beautiful a lot!
Second: Too challenging! It is necessary to have ninja skills to play.
I couldn't go very deep due to lack of motor coordination.
I will play it until I get a decent score!

Congratulations!

@sum we wanted to capture the stress you get while playing certain other game that starts with "over" and ends with "ed". Thank you!

@euler-moises maybe we need to tweak it a bit. The only reason the dev team (myself included) were able to finish it is because we played over and over and got really good. A shame cause I think the ending animations are really rewarding. We are looking into it. Thanks a bunch!

This slaps.

@wisedawn I'm glad it shows! I personally expent some unreasonable ammount of time on some animations. Worth it! Thank you for playing!

@curtis-pelissier Yes, we wanted to do a simple secuence at the start of the game to introduce the mechanics one by one. That kept being pushed ~~deeper and deeper~~ further and further and here we are. We tried to do the big bad explanation screen on this page to make up for it, but I guess it's not enough for a game with this many mechanics. Thank you for your feedback!

Not much I could say here that at this point wouldn't be something you either already knew or a retread of the above comments (I would really mirror some of @the-neon-shark's ideas)

I'm having a blast, and the mechanics speak for themselves once you get the hang of the controls. I would wonder if there wasn't a way to make the controls more contextual to simplify that part of the experience. Obviously I would love to play an expanded version of this. More stuff to see down lower, and maybe you kind-of add on to your platform over time. Anyway, very cool experience!

@bernardex I know right? It was hard to let go of playing it and go back to work during development. I'm up for the challenge! Thank you!

@ohmikron, @valid, @vmrx It started like this:


I'm glad we could surprise you. Thank you!

Awesome game! Love this idea, this is really fun. Good graphics and gameplay.

Very fun and interesting game! It took my a while to figure out what I should even be doing but when I did is is pretty fun! I love how it quickly descends into chaos while you try to keep on top of everything although I would say it is slightly too hard. Also the pixel art and music is really good! Overall I like this game a lot!

@microchasm I was thinking on resizing the meters. On the other hand, the steam thing is a really good (and better) idea rather than _"when it stops doing this, it means it got colder":_


Thank you for your feedback!

The graphics are soooooo amazing, wow!

Nice idea, but very hard at first. Hectic and nice gameplay nonetheless :)

@andidebob The initial intention was to make an initial secuence in wich you refill the machine, then gets attacked my a mole that you have to repel, that damages the machine and starts overheating and you have to douse it with the water gun, and THEN start playing for real. Sadly we ran out of time to put it in there, sorry bout that. If we ever do a 1.1 we will definetly fix the restart button thing. Thank you for your feedback!

@almighty-games thank you mate! I hope you are right, the response has been amazing so far. Did not catch you live sadly, I would have loved to see your reaction. Gonna start testing games soon, I'll have a look at yours. Cheers!

I still don't understand how to deal with a rat that chews on a computer)

@azakharov bash it with the hammer. Middle click on the mouse or Q key!

Nice game! At first it was hard for me to remember all the buttons and controls, but then I figured out how to play. Well done guys!

°bows her head to such a fantastic pixel art° u.u
AWESOME!

Great Game! There are a few bugs, but overall I really enjoyed juggling all the different tasks desperately trying to keep my drill alive. I couldn't make It past level 48 and it was a little hard and confusing at first, but once I got the hang of it, it became really fun.

I agree with @the-neon-shark 's points. The sound track and visuals are incredible.

It took me a while to notice the limit to the amount of fuel and water at the top right. I didn't realize A lot of the time I was collecting water or oil without it actually filling the amount of water/oil I had. Some indicator that my water/oil was full might've been helpful. I had a great time playing this and I'd love to see a full version of this game. Keep up the good work!

its fun and has amazing pixel art :heart: !!

Love the pixel art! Great entry!

you guys did a good job with this game. having dirt particles explode when the machine goes down into the next layer would add a bit more cool factor to it in my opinion.

Incredible work! I would like to have more time to enjoy it. As usual, great job for the art and the mechanics.
Cheers guys!

What a perfect game into jam ? 2d pixel art is amazing, idea and concept match with the theme, simple and simple and understandable concept score base. Amazing work team !

i like this game, good job :)

The graphics and polish are great and as a spin many plates type of deal really fun - some of the mechanics are not that well explained, but for 72 hours fantastic work

nice game and huge polish, gg

Amazing artstyle and cool animations, absolutely loved the visuals. But for the gameplay, I think the game mechanics should be introduced to the player before jumping right into the action (maybe some kind of mini-level for tutorial?). There are lots of things to handle in a given gameplay time (which is hard to learn from text), and that caused some confusion. I had a hard time even figuring out if the robot is enemy or ally. I also believe that putting some particle effects while digging would improve the overall game feel. Overall, nice concept and amazing visuals, keep up the good work <3

Great little game. I wish that there were maybe one or two fewer things to maintain, as I think the mechanic would be a little cleaner that way. It's gorgeous and wonderful, all things considered, just a bit more difficult than I feel like it should be. Great!

If I were to hire a pixel artist and animator. I would hire you. Wild work! Well done guys <3

Very polished. Nice. Saw you on twitter, hope you're getting some sleep.

@ezgoodnight Thank you! We are going to fix the difficulty, specially with the heat mechanic, We wanted to introduce mechanics little by little, but we ran out of time. Would have loved to catch you live testing it but I had to go to sleep (I live in Spain) Thank you for your kind words, cheers!

@cornflowerblue This is a message from Bicheste's unconscious body. He is slowly but surely getting some sleep, thank you for your kind words!

Great pixel art, loving it.Concept and gameplay is great. Unfortunately it took lomg time for me to understand that you can hammer walls to repair them, also didnt quite understand the purpose of water ... Still great game for jam

An interesting mechanic and one of the most gorgeous palettes I've seen. Overall very enjoyable, even if your goal is a little confusing at first. Congrats!

Solid gameplay, cute art and music. Was a bit too hectic for me at the beginning, maybe would have helped to introduce the mechanics one after another to get used to the controls. Other than that, no complains :)

The graphics look gorgeous. Definitely needs a tutorial. Took me a while to realize that I had to mine the ground for resources on my own. And most of the time that I died, I'm still not sure what caused it. Also maybe I was supposed to be spraying the bottom of the drill and not the top? Or maybe that made no difference.

Impressive work! Graphic, Sounds and Gameplay are amazing!!!

Ah! This is so epic! Great work from the entire team

Wow, this looks, sounds and plays wonderfully already. If you guys are going to publish it as a full game, there’s a few things it needs fixed. First is to teach the players how to play, as it can get overwhelming if they didn’t read the instructions. Second, the replay can be faster, so we get that “just one more time!” feeling. Maybe some global highscores? Congrats on your work on such a short time!

A very interesting game, with a very beautiful art and a well-made music, but I found the game a bit complicated in terms of mechanics, it has a lot to do and the character's movement is very fast, it ended up disturbing me a little, but congratulations to the team

Really impressed by the level of detail and animation on the mech, as well as the visual polish in general. The gameplay was just the right amount of stress-inducing once I got the hang of it, but I was definitely a little confused about what to do at first. I think this has been said before, but larger meters would be a huge help, and maybe a little tutorial if you guys ever take this further. This is a dang great game!

@quite-good funny that you mention it, because I was doing just that:


We are pondering if we wanna publish a full version. Thank you for your time!

Cool game but it's really hard to understand what exactly killed you this time :)

@ariorick is on the list of updates of things we wanted to include but we ran out of time to implement. Thanks a bunch!

Very nice music and graphics - an increasing difficulty level would be nice - also it seems like the machine dies when there are still 4 points left on heat.

But awesome entry, it just has so much style ^^ Everything fits well together. ^^

@leorid maybe is dying from the lack of fuel, or a wall breaking (we should comunicate that better) Thank you!

very well drawn and also so polished, great game. For me it is very difficult, too much stuff going on at the same time)

Amazing entry! I love the graphic, catchy music and the frantic mechanics. 5/5 for me. As many people mentioned, it's really difficult but who doesn't love a little challenge? I'll try to beat it later, not sure if I'd succeed tho xD

@corporation @dane-tesla Thank you! We are kinda overwhelmed by the reception of the game. We want to patch the difficulty, hopefully soon

@bicheste Yes it was the walls breaking, didn't know it is possible to repair them ^^

Love the pixel art/sprites and music. Gameplay was a little hectic/confusing but I guess that's the point right? Great work!

Great graphics and sound, really nicely polished. However incredibly difficult learning curve haha, good stuff

Love it, really stressful tho <3

Wow, you look really professionals. This game is a perfectly crafted gem. Dat soundtrack is so damn catchy. Thank you for let people play this awesome entry!

@leggy this means a lot, really, cause I've been working retail all my life and I would love to live making games. Thank you!

Super cool game! ilike the concept and the artstyle is great.
Awesome entry!

Wow. This game is hands down my favorite for this LD, let's get that out of the way. Absolutely adorable graphics and animations, creative and extremely addictive gameplay, catchy and fitting music.

It lacks a bit in polish though. These are the problems I have noticed.

* Way too many controls. Fixing walls and refueling should be imo triggered by left click.
* Space does not always cause jump.
* Mole sometimes glitches into digger, out of reach of Johnny's hammer. Game breaking and really frustrating.
* When digger lands, Johnny changes direction when repairing walls, so he stops repairing.
* There is always only one of the 3 sound effects for the digger playing, so when it needs both fuel and water, it sounds like it only needs fuel.
* No sound of crumbling walls: incosistent with sound of the digger
* Fuel / overheat warning triggers when there is still a lot of time to deal with it.
* Sometimes, resources hover above Johnny's head. I feel like resources should not collide with Johnny.
* Johnny sometimes gets stuck just near the bottom of the drill and becomes completely unresponsive, breaking the game.

With that out of the way, I am proud to announce that (after much longer that I am willing to admit) I won and demand that sweet spot in the leaderboards. The score is not great, but at least I won.


@boltkey you got it! Thank you for your feedback! If we ever fully release this, we will get rid of the jank (there were too many cooks on the kitchen)

Edit: there you go, hope you like your well earned spot!

Very cool game overall ! Graphics and audio are awesome, game mechanics are pretty cool also. Found it a bit too much to juggle right out the gate, maybe a slower introduction to all the mechanics would feel nicer. Nonetheless awesome game, well done!

There's nothing to dislike about this awesome game. I would definitely buy it on Steam for days that I'd be feeling like a casual player. I wish this had a in-game tutorial though because it has too much mechanics and buttons and I only learned them after several runs. Right when I started the game, it was too frenetic and I died many times trying to remember all of the actions available. Maybe a slow learning curve would be a nice touch to it. Thanks for the game, it has a great future.

@villanelle yes, we were aware during development that it might be too complex, but we did not have enough time to implement a tutorial or change the level design. On the topic on continuing the game, we are actually pondering if we want to continue it, so comments like this helps us decide. Thank you for passing by, I hope you enjoyed it!

@boltkey Congratulations!! We made it a bit less difficult but still challenging! Glad that you did it.

@ALL Thank you for the kind words... We are overwhelmed by the amount of good reviews, even though it is that difficult haha

Hoo boy, I have a LOT to say about this game. Alright, here we go.

I'll start with the presentation. Both the pixel art aesthetic and the sound design were pretty good in my opinion. What especially struck out to me, however, is its animation quality, which is INSANELY good, let alone for a jam game. Seriously, it's really, really impressive.

In regards to gameplay, I found the game loop extremely satisfying. It's a really engaging micromanaging puzzle which manages to interlock all its mechanics in a very satisfying way.

Let's take mining, for example - there are three types of ores (gold, water and fuel), which all contribute to the objective in different ways and are better collected at different points in time. The screen is also divided in two halves by the giant drill, and this divide can be traversed by either jumping over the machine (which wastes precious time) or waiting for the drill to "jump" (which might not be ideal). And then there's the fact that you can strategically see the next two ore rows ahead of time, giving you the chance to strategically plan your actions.

And then there are the game over conditions, or "hazards", as I like to call them - the crumbling walls, the overheating, the fuel and the squirrel. All of them have different solutions but may be more or less urgent at different stages of play. The walls, for example, are also positioned at either side of the screen, making it a good choice to repair them before crossing the middle even when they're not so damaged, as you don't know when you're going to come back, and coming back *just* to repair them might be too costly.

Or the temperature and fuel reserves, which both depend on collected resources to solve. Keeping track of them to prioritize which ore to mine is another interesting second-to-second choice.

I can almost describe this game as a dance, darting over different positions, juggling different resources and keeping track of different hazards. My only and single gripe with this is that this entire dance is really overwhelming for the player at first, and while the gifs present in the LD screen are great, I'd have appreciated if they were also present in the game itself. I understand that there's only so much time for implementing all of this, however, so this is really mostly a nitpick.

All in all, one of the best entries I've seen so far.

**@masterproject You completely got it!**

All of those were desing choices. We wanted the player to **manage their time** properly (do I have time to mine the big ore that takes 3 strikes before the drill destroys this level? or should I go for the small one and then try to pass under the drill to mine the big chunk of water on the left). On that note, the moment we released I realized we overcharged the left side both with refilling fuel and the incoming moles, or squirrels. In hindsight one of those should go to the right side for balance. A hidden bar that you also have to manage is player's stress. We are so glad you completely understood the game.

We had a whole script for how the **mechanics would be introduced**, with _flashy pointy arrows_ like this one:


The player would start the game on the surface and the drill would be empty, this way we would teach how to refill. The moment you start drilling, walls would start to crumble, so we would teach the player how to fix the walls. All this crumbling causes the moles to attack the drill, we would teach the player how to wack a mole. Finally, the mole would have damaged the machine, overheating it, so we would teach the player how to douse the machine with the water gun (on the drill, not from the top, wich I have seen people do and it doesn't work as well. This way we also divide top screen to refill, bottom screen to cool down). Sadly, we ran out of time and could not be done.

On the **animation** department (wich I personally worked on), early on we decided to make small cartoony sprites, wich helped me animate better and go ***deeper*** adding more frames, but I have expent some unreasonable ammount of time making them. So far everybody seems to like the graphics, so I'm glad the hard work paid off.

And there were also a ton of **mechanics that could not be implemented in time**, like different types of terrain that would impact your movement, or special items to collect that would be shown as your treasures that you take with you at the end of the level, or how we would use gold after X number of floors on a "shop fase" were you would buy power ups both for Johnny or the drill. Maybe I will make a blog about it.


**Thank you** for your comment and your time, we really apreciate it! Did you manage to beat it? I wanted to reward the player with some unique animations at the end!

@bicheste yep, it took a lot of tries (and a bit of luck), but I beat it.


@masterproject That review could have been from the guy running the GMTK channel! Awesome to read this about our game!

Wow that’s a lot to think about all at the time. After playing a few times I was able to keep track of where all the buttons were, but that wasn’t enough to keep my one track mind on top of all the things it needed to be. the art is great. the sound helps the feeling of urgency. The music is Grooovin’. Very nice all around. Sorry I’m not very good at it.
Thank you so much from bringing this by my stream. Here's a link to the VOD:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006750294?t=6h33m0s

@ramble-house-games Thank you! I was not able to catch it live. I hope you enjoyed it, even tho we gave you all that trouble, the game is indeed stressful and chanllenging. Thank you for checking it out!

funny funny game ; although it is very hand :smile:
I cant hold even two minutes and the michine crushed ;

To make it quick: What @the-neon-shark said. Very fun and stressful game that needs a few tweaks here and there!

Nice manic action game! It was pretty difficult and initially I mostly died very quickly, but that's perhaps part of the charm.

This was really tough, but also addicting! I think it's already been acknowledged, but there's a bug where moles can get stuck under the digger, and leaving them alone lets you ignore moles for the rest of the game! :D I think the side walls seemed to degrade a bit too fast, and it lacks some sort of difficulty curve to ease the player into the chaos. If you can get over that initial difficulty hurdle, it's a really great entry. :)

After many frustrating attempts, and some amazing mole RNG to get it stuck at the very start, I managed to finish it! :D


This Game is just awesome. Even when I couldn't finish the game, it was just great.
The Audio was great and the Graphics are phantastic.
The Mechanics are very overhelmed in the beginning and the controlls sound odd, but after you understand which button does what it was kinda OK.

There happens so much on the screen and sometimes its just too much. Especially the Walls crumbling was not clear in the beginning also you need to much water to cool down the miner and what bothered me the most, was that when you refill your tank with oil, it just deplete your whole storage instead just the amount which was missing.

Next to that, just polish a bit more and maybe put some kind of Rogue Lite Mechanics with Upgrades on Top and you can sell it.

Great GAme well Done.

This game is very good, really!
Nice polish and VFX, feels so smooth.
Well, nice everything

The only con I can find is that the end is unreachable for me and I know it has one :P
But even with that, its pretty nice

Good job guys, and outstanding game!

@shoc Thank you for your words!! We know its challenging, but we wanted a stressful and hectic experience. I think we made it, but I understand that its not for everyone haha

@everedx I was about to play your game on stream and you left haha! I still played it for a while and had a lot of fun even though a little stressful for my taste xD I get overwhelmed with a lot of things happening at once, but I understand that's the point! The farthest I could get was I think 54 meters i big noob :P

The art and sound was fantastic and everything was communicated very clearly to the player and the lil dude himself was very easy to control too. All of this is really important in games like this and you guys nailed it!

@itsboats Hahaha damn, I couldnt stay longer. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, that's our main motivation!