Digging In by Fis
Hey everyone,
This is our third Ludum Dare entry and, fittingly, there are three of us this time ;) Our game is an endless faller in which you steer a rocket drill (including a super cool cat!) deeper and deeper through the earth. We're very proud of what we accomplished in the last few days, so please enjoy it for as long as you want!
Best regards @nivbeth, @peacememories & @Fis
Screenshots:


Ratings
| Overall | 470th | 3.794⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 477th | 3.647⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1031th | 3.118⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 212th | 4.157⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 262th | 4.265⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1033th | 3⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 459th | 3.287⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 805th | 3.573⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
All in all great entry!
The only thing I would like to see added is keyboard controls, but that's just me.
Really awesome game!
Great Job!!
One challenge with this type of game is when the cursor leaves the window you no longer have control happened to me in the beginning and wasn't a big deal once I realized what was going on

The only thing I had trouble with was when you hit something and the camera jerks really hard, it's difficult to figure out what's happening to your machine. I also noticed that you can get stuck in a circle of rocks where there is no way to escape because you keep bouncing off of them. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it is pretty frustrating when this happens, so maybe there is a way to control the spacing of the rocks from each other??? Anyways, really good job! Loved the cats and the graphics!
I went down 9138 m, which is about 1,4 times earth radius. The planet in which those cats inhabit must be really big and have a really low gravity so that the cat's vehicule can handle that much pressure.
Why are they diggin anyway ?
Only grievance was that you can't see forward enough to tactically use the dash. Now it's more up to luck if you manage to avoid one rock and not crash into another.
Otherwise neat little game that looks well polished!
I think the game is very well done either way, shoutout to the controls, they're soooo smooth, I loved it!
And also, nice instructions, both in-game and on the webpage. Congrats!
This was good fun. Great graphics and I like using the mouse for restricted movement, that gave it an interesting mechanic to get around.
I'd like to see a bit of progression as you get further in - even if it were just a speed increase the further down you get, because once you've got the hang of movement, it's really just luck of the draw in terms of fuel and health appearing, that dictates whether you can just keep playing forever.
I'd also like to see a respawn rather than being knocked back by boulders. It seemed quite easy to get caught between them so that one mistake ends up taking most of your health bar.
Still, great entry - I enjoyed it.
I really enjoyed the flow-y movement you get when controlling the player with your mouse! At first I was a bit confused about the dash, as I thought it was just a way of getting down faster but risking to get hit on the way down. When I realized it could go through rocks I saw it's true potential as a life saver.
I feel like the fuel was never a problem for me, it could have been nice having less fuel pickups around to make the player have to choose wether it's worth the risk picking it up. Now it just felt like I could skip it and then there would be another one in my path before the fuel situation was dire.
Maybe the game could speed up a bit , there could be less pickups or there could be more rocks when you get further down to make it a bit harder the longer you go.
Overall it was a really fun game and I loved the graphics! :D
The difficulty curve was a bit slow and the playthrough a bit long.
- nice artwork
- sfx are fitting to the game
- good feel to movement
- nice amouont of polish for a jam game
Improvements/suggestions:
- the way the camera is handled on collision is quite jarring and disorienting; put in a pan to the new position (can be a fast pan) so that doesn't just snap instantly to the new position
- I feel the difficulty should scale faster for better replayability. If the game is easy-going for 5+ minutes before you get back to a challenging level, you'll find players abandoning after one or two plays
- a scoreboard of depths would help the player stay engaged by trying to best is best run
- putting in an upgrade loop with a steep difficulty curve may make the game way more replayable
- have a shatter effect on the obstacles that get dashed through
bugs:
- I didn't encounter any
I'd say the only things missing here are a sense of progression/difficulty and some music to set the mood, and maybe the ability to smash through stuff with the dash.
Overall it's a great entry, you guys did a great job, and it feels like it could become a cool little mobile game :smile: