Dwammings by Eden Shazar
In Dwammings you get to manage a team of busy dwarves looking to mine the mountains for some sweet booze. Keep in mind, however, that powers the entire dwarven economy: it's spent to entice them to perform jobs, and to hire (read: kick out) new dwarves from your wagon, all while making sure each of them has time for a drinking break — or they'll poof out of existence. See how deep you can dig, and accumulate as much booze you can!
Gameplay
At its core, Dwammings is about hectic management; jobs are distributed in real time, and planning ahead is crucial if you want to find your way deeper into the mountain. Dwarves are not ones to perform a job without boozy compensation, eating away quickly at your stock (and score!) should you not manage your resources efficiently.
Controls
- Mouse click on a dwarf to assign or remove a job.
- Mouse click on the wagon to hire another dwarf.
- Mouse click on bell icon to call the final booze break and end the game.
- Number keys [1 - 6] to select a job.
- Escape key to deselect job (job removal only mode).
- Space or P keys to pause game.
Jobs
Pressing the number keys [1 - 6] selects a job to be assigned to a dwarf.
- Digging: Dig down vertically.
- Mining: Dig horizontally in the dwarf's facing direction.
- Stop sign: Stop other dwarves from walking past and turn them back.
- Rope: Drop a rope down the next encountered vertical shaft.
- Break: Attempt to return back up, climbing ropes along the way, to take a drinking break at a nearby keg.
- Keg: Build a keg, allowing closer access to booze for dwarves taking a break.
Once selected, the booze cost for the job will be displayed. Click on a dwarf to assign them the selected job, and click them again to remove their current task. Be mindful: some jobs have a one-time cost associated with them, while others have a cost per repeated action.
Hazards
In Dwammings, just as in real life, dwarves die in only one way: not getting a break to drink booze. Dwarves drink in order to exist, or exist in order to drink, one or the other. Hmm. Anyway, common symptoms of dwarven sobriety are turning red, flashing red, and in severe cases, poofing into nonexistence. Be sure to provide them with a break to drink at the nearest keg, but plan accordingly: player built kegs are finite, and will run dry after some uses.
End Shift
You can always end the dwarves shift by clicking on the bell button in the bottom right corner. All dwarves will make their way up (if they can!), and your score will be tallied. Try your best to beat your previous scores!
Screenshots and gameplay
https://youtu.be/iUHIl4SSQDY
The team
This game was created for Ludum Dare 48 by a team of 4 individuals:
@eden-shazar : Lead programming and design
@michaelhaughian : Programming, audio and design
@defilerzero : Art and design
@Bonesteeler : Programming and design
Changelog
Small post-jam bug fixes
- Fixed dwarves climbing wrong side of tile with rope, possibly getting them stuck in the ground.
Ratings
| Overall | 166th | 4.05⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 281th | 3.824⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 279th | 3.821⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 62th | 4.38⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 162th | 4.373⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 378th | 3.761⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 310th | 3.543⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 391th | 3.906⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 66🗳️ | 86🗨️ |
@kingofnova @cryptomnesic @kleinzach Thank you all as well for the kind words! Animations are all by the legendary @defilerzero
An ingame explanation or a pause button would make it a lot easier.
Great job on the concept, fits the theme perfectly. Has enough strategy in terms of how/where to dig and planning return and such, that it keeps it interesting.
Some bugs, but don't let that discourage you!
Amazing work!
@rawb @foopy @tentaclemax @vsi @neowhoru Thank you all for the kind words!
@predominant Nice to hear we managed to create the need, and opportunity, for strategy. It was a real effort to balance the game in such a short time, but @michaelhaughian did fantastic work on that!
@sam-machell Thanks for the review! I'd like to encourage you to give it another go, and frantically lay down some rope (job number 4!). Getting stuck in a shaft is pretty much obstacle number 0 in this game :)
A bit hard at first, I had to go back to the game page to look at the different jobs. The game is very deep (duh) for a jam game, and definitely looks well rounded. Great job!
Minor complaint: I wish you could click on the tools in the UI, I kept doing it (even though I knew the number keys were they correct way) and then causing hijinks by assigning the wrong tool to a dwarf.
Anyway, I hope you'll continue to work on it. Great stuff!
@threeli @habibirb @upcharlie @ancient-pixel Thank you so much for the kind words, it means so much to us!
@pikatchum That was a planned little feature that was left out to leave more time to squash bugs and polish features that needed that love a bit more. We'll likely have a post-jam version with fixes such as that. Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback :)
I actually really like the gameplay, despite not being particularly great at managing it yet. I absolutely love the concept of what the gameplay could grow if careful enough, making a sprawling cave system of dutiful little dwarves digging for their booze.
I had a couple little glitches with dwarves sticking themselves into physical walls, but beyond those minor hiccups it was a joy to play throughout.
I would have liked being able to select job with the mouse so the game could be playable with only the mouse.
I feel like the rope mechanic is a bit tough too, maybe the dward needs to be able to jump one square up to protect the player from small mistakes?
Anyway this was really fun overall, really well done!
Could have kept going but I decided to try some things that didn't work out and my dwarves ended up in a hole in the ground.
Some things that I would like to see:
- Mouse wheel for choosing job
- Speed up during gameplay
Some things I enjoyed:
- Everything else.
Here is the youtube Playthrough
https://youtu.be/TJ00kOWcPGU
Enjoy :)
@shaunjs Big fan of your YT tutorials. Glad you got to play our game, and had some fun with it. Feedback was great as well, and will keep in mind for the future.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1004858368
I liked the rope mechanic but failing to execute it properly meant all my dwarves would get stuck. It might be nice to have someway to get them out of a hole (like a ladder) so your run doesn't end too early.
I can tell I've played my own game too much since mine doesn't use the number keys to do things. So I'll ask the same thing that I'll be doing in my own game eventually: combine hotkeys with the mouse.
This game is quite good. I think that most of games problems could probably be fixed if you started with less dwarfs. They all start on top of each other so it really difficult to get use out of any more then 2 of them at. I'll also say you should lower the price of the beer cask, I find it a bit too expensive.
I'm gonna be trying a new strategy of saying "screw you" to all the grouped up dwarfs and kill them all off
New problem: they only go right if there are two ropes.
Unrelated Suggestion: make rope laying slower then digging
I streamed my playthrough on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1004793106?t=02h10m47s
I found it a bit hard to manage so many dwarves at the start but eventually got the hang of it when I realised you can cancel tasks by clicking on a dwarf even with another task selected. It is far too easy for everyone to just get stuck down a single hole though.
It seems odd you can't click on the task buttons.
Also escape exits full screen mode in the html5 version causing problems.
I managed to somehow get a dwarf stuck in a solid tile at one point.
I've not read any of the comments so I write my review as a pure first experience.
The game is an awesome take on the good ol' Lemmings game. Super cute overall aesthetics. The pixel art brings a nice retro feeling and the music is playful.
It's easy to see when the dwarfs are getting too "hot" and need a drink. Nice touch that the dwarfs can get back up via rope.
If there is something to improve with the game IMHO, it would be adding an extra layer to the economy so that the dwarfs would mine gold and other valuables and then convert those into beer. Mining these kinds of things would make more sense thematically and the conversion to beer could be automated not to burden the play away from the core game loop. Having more variety to things to mine would allow the player to prioritize a bit and that could lead to interesting tactical scenarios.
The jobs could also be selected by clicking in addition to number keys. I intuitively tried to click them multiple times.
Really good entry. My favorite so far!
You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa
What a lovely game idea for a game! I ran into a few bugs (like in some confusion my dwarves stopped digging no matter what I told them to do) but other than that, it was a lot fun to play! All: the idea, the graphic style and the music are really well made and well connect with each other. Great job!
[Ludum Dare 48 staff picks](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#dwammings) :slight_smile:
[](https://github.blog/2021-05-19-ludum-dare-48-staff-picks/#dwammings)