LudumData

Mineshaft Muddle by Luther-1

[raw]
made by Luther-1 for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

A tower defense game based on Random Farm TD by Luther, Leepic, Jawdat, and Marcus Kim (Smoothie)

Made in GameMaker studio 2

Programming - Luther

Art - Leepic

Music - Jawdat

Consulting - Marcus Kim (Smoothie)

Title card:

Sprite-0018.png

Info

This is a tower defense game all about luck and extreme combos. You must apply skill and decision making to find the best towers to defend you against ever increasing waves of enemies! The game scales exponentially.

Each tower has a unique fire pattern and colour modifier. Each colour modifier applies a set effect to the tower no matter what it does. Some modifiers are better on other towers. (See below for guide)

You gain two gems for every wave you complete. You may choose to sell these gems at the store (press 1) or you may choose to hold on to them (press 2)

Controls

Click - shoot

WASD / arrow keys - move

Space - buy tower

Enter - sell tower

E - merge towers

1 and 2 - sell gems at shop / skip shop

Refresh the page to restart the game

Extra stuff:

For our fifth ludum dare we went back to our roots. The first game jam we ever did was a tower defense game, and it went terribly. But we're back and better than ever. Our team has grown in size by 2 and we have so much more experience. This was a super fun game jam to do even though we were a bit dead from university. Here's to many more Ludum Dares!

Explanation of some mechanics (skip if you want to go in blind):

The buying price of gems is randomized, but they occasionally are given value buffs.

Merging towers requires two of the same tower (colour effects do not matter) and it will combine into a random tower from the next tier. The colour effect of the new tower will always be the same as the tower that you pressed E on.

Colour effects give a random extra effect to the tower (as described below). Each tier of the tower will cause the colour buff to be stronger.

Selling a turret will give you 66% of the combined cost of the turret back. Selling is mostly used for finding the optimal colour for your build.

Tower list Sprite-000ddds1.png

Game is hosted on https://www.freewebhostingarea.com/

Alternatively, it is also hosted on itch.io

If you want to mess with the source code it is provided, you need gamemaker 2 to use it.

Link http://lts.ueuo.com/Gamemaker%20Tests/LudumDare48/index.html
Link http://lts.ueuo.com/Gamemaker%20Tests/LudumDare48/LudumDare48.yyz
Link https://luther1.itch.io/mineshaft-muddle
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/mineshaft-muddle

Ratings

Overall 1198th 3.35⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 977th 3.3⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 980th 3.15⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 908th 3.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 950th 3.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 968th 3.1⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1018th 2.526⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1388th 3.125⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 12🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

apaphy
27. Apr 2021 · 05:20 UTC
thought it was pretty cool to have a tower defense game with platformer controls! the graphics were cute, and the chaotic music added to the theme. this was a fun game!
LDJam user 0
27. Apr 2021 · 05:22 UTC
Really nice game with great controls, sounds and art! Well done
vsi-
27. Apr 2021 · 05:25 UTC
nice game, especially i liked your art and music, the idea is also interesting
Constantine Pallas
27. Apr 2021 · 05:37 UTC
The art style here is really nice! My favourite sprite in the game is the little creatures in the shop. I think this version of tower defense is a cool new idea, and I like how it consistently feels difficult. I feel like the game itself could use a little polish. For example, the text is black on a very dark background, the next wave starts right after you sell your diamonds, and the game only takes up the top left third-ish of my monitor, and the rest is just white. In a more general sense, the quickly scaling difficulty never lets you feel safe, but it also means you'll never last too long. How long you live is almost completely based on luck.

+1 bonus point for comic sans

Tldr: This is a cool new twist on tower defense, but it could use some balancing/quality of life improvements. Nice game!
BarelyEvenGames
28. Apr 2021 · 01:06 UTC
Loved this game! I would play the heck out of this on mobile. The controls are a bit weird in the menu and take some getting used to, but overall it is a great entry. Love the art, sound, and general design of it.
Theg
28. Apr 2021 · 01:14 UTC
This is some of the most interesting gameplay I've seen so far. Sometimes the gunfire would sync with the music and I have no idea if that was intentional.
spadekHemoglobiny
29. Apr 2021 · 12:24 UTC
The only thing i didn't like is that the ui was a bit confusing, other than that good job!
James Kusardi
29. Apr 2021 · 18:13 UTC
fun! some of the pixels are kinda chunky (probably as a result of scaling), but overall a good experience
Glv_p
01. May 2021 · 17:09 UTC
I was a bit confused at first but then I really enjoyed the game. Good job!
DS Nahogara
02. May 2021 · 05:14 UTC
Very nice game, at first it was insanely hard, possibly one of the hardest entries for the jam, then after upgrading some turrets and getting more money you slowly stripe them down, i survived 10 rounds by the way, i think the HP snowballing is a bit huge in the end making it impossible to win, even having tons of towers. Maybe that could be fixed in the future.

Fantastic Tower Defense here yes sir! :heart:
BoxedMeatRevolution
02. May 2021 · 05:28 UTC
I had a lot of fun with this one, made it to round 28 in my last run! Kind of like a TD and rogue-like hybrid. Mechanics of the game took some time to understand, but once I did it was fun trying to go deeper each time. I also enjoyed the music, it matched the setting of adventuring into the depths of the unknown. The floating mole animation was also really nice!

Some small things that I think would greatly improve the experience if quickly explained at some point:
- cost/benefit of holding onto diamonds
- cost/benefit of selling turrets
- how the merging mechanic works

Anyway, this game is definitely among the top games I've played this LD!
FlashViper
04. May 2021 · 21:32 UTC
Nice game! It took me a while to figure out that it was a tower defense, but once I did, it got a lot cooler!
xiyou
10. May 2021 · 14:05 UTC
It was so much fun!!!
Although the later levels are very similar
Nonetheless it was also very fun
I made a fortune on level 19, the two orange gatlings were very powerful
![im1.png](///raw/4f6/32/z/42559.png)

I ended up here. Really fun, the gatling does very high damage, far more than the other towers, I guess I should have added more towers that slow down the enemy. All in all a very fun game!
![im2.png](///raw/4f6/32/z/4255b.png)
VixenMink
12. May 2021 · 00:53 UTC
I thought this game was a very interesting take on a tower defense game. The endless descent into the deep cavern fit the theme quite well. The music made me feel like it was leading up to a jazzy version of the Christmas-like song of "God rest ye merry gentlemen" and instead it stayed true to itself.

I thought it was a funny thing to see moles umbrella-ing down to my cart because they too burrow down deep into the earth.

What I did not understand at first was what I was buying to begin with while walking the shop the first time. Maybe explaining that each arch on the descending platform stood for a place you could purchase a particular gun. Besides that, I really liked this game. Keep it up :)
Rialgar
13. May 2021 · 16:26 UTC
A little too much focus on luck for my taste, if you get crappy gem prices a couple times in a row there is nothing you can do. the gameplay itself felt snazzy once I figured out how to interact with everything.
PatrickRMC
13. May 2021 · 16:56 UTC
Maybe the music was a bit repetitive at times, I like the concept of having to hold ur gems, hoping for better prices or to sell and get better turrets, if there were more time in the jam, maybe not make it super rng, have some way to tell the player if its better to save or not. Idk, the interact text could also maybe be white, or any color that's easy to read over the dark background.

But the graphics and gameplay are pretty good with good polish like the gun smoothing.