Pale Dwarf Adventures by SinusQuell
A simple mining game featuring a pale dwarf. Second time joining in Ludum Dare :)
Play as a pale dwarf, struggling to dig deep into the earth, in search for the sacred truths it holds.
Upgrade you gear to get deeper and deeper!

Who knows, what might be down there...
| Link | https://sinusquell.itch.io/pale-dwarf-adventures |
| Link | https://sinusquell.itch.io/pale-dwarf-adventures |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/pale-dwarf-adventures |
Ratings
| Overall | 720th | 3.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 726th | 2.841⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 861th | 2.25⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 127th | 4.068⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 838th | 2.432⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 516th | 3⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 611th | 1.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 758th | 2.614⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
The gameplay and progression feels a bit like a clicker/idle game, that's actually satisfying. And digging strait down super fast after a while is really fun!
The art needs a lot of refining, obviously, but it gets to the point ^^
I feel like progression-wise some balancing could be done, I almost locked myself when I bought heat resistance before mining speed, and was stuck in a slow-mining hell where I couldn't suicide, and it would have took ages to get back up.
I was a bit dissapointed to reach the purple blocks after depth 1015, it's kinda a "can't go further" game end with the inneficient mining speed. The death message made me believe there would be a area with low visibility after =D
Overall, I enjoyed it!
Anyways, this is all balancing and you probably just hadn't enough time for that. Overall good job :thumbsup:

Going past 1000 depth seems to be too much for pale dwarf to handle, but I think he will gladly burn himself to death for shiny diamonds :smile:
@colisan @exewin @oadt
Originally, the plan was to have lava pockets below 1000 where the heat would rise more if you get too near. Also, the balancing does need some work, but I had to make a cut to finish the music and SFX :D
@lisyarus @smeljey
I actually realized that the selling part is a bit weird the deeper you get. I wanted to make an upgrade, lika a "mobile shop" or a teleport to the top so you wouldn't have to go up again, but as I mentioned above, I ran out of time too quickly.
Thank you all again, what an amazing community!

And that's as far as I go!

I enjoyed that! Though fairly unoriginal, it's exactly the kind of game I wanted to play when I saw the Deeper and Deeper theme ^_^.
Jumping mechanics were a little rough, going up 2 and over one through a small hole was always hard, but eventually I learned to just make smoother slopes to climb... having to climb all the way back up after mining my first obsidian was a *chore* though...
I think the levels would have been more interesting with some empty spaces, making it harder to make a good path, however my OCD compelled me to remove 100% of all ores (well, the first 3, anyway...), so I added that challenge myself, though had way too much money in the end ^_^.
Music was nice!
And yes, I agree that a teleport or a mobile shop or something like that would be very handy.
@jujuformatic Thanks for the tip, I'll keep it in mind for next time.
Also, once you get to the surface, I feel like the heat should always go down really fast, even without any heat protection.
Thank you! I am actually thinking about continuing this project. I have some pretty cool ideas for it :)
Not an amazing game by any means, but a relatively complete submission (except for the aforementioned lack of an ending!). I think I'd have enjoyed it more with the numbers tweaked a bit to be a bit less grindy...I'm not sure the game as-is really needed to cap out at a depth of 1000, so shooting for a round number probably hurt you a bit there.
A few additions, particularly to make movement a little bit more interesting and either number tweaks or other tricks to make it feel like less of a grind would make this pretty solid.
@lex @skoobydoo Yes, I agree that some sort of ending is definitely missing. I didn't have time for that, unfortunately.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1008781774?t=00h33m40s