The Bottom Dweller by alphapolygon
Rogue-like endless descent game. Collect perks to help get to the deepest depths of the earth.
https://youtu.be/hENOvp__-hA
Ratings
| Overall | 1358th | 3.262⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1153th | 3.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1561th | 2.714⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1014th | 3.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1301th | 3.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 729th | 2.905⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1579th | 2.881⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 52🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
The upgrades are a bit standard, but you still get a +1 for including things like achievements (and saving/loading, which was a surprise)
The game seems to have a lot of perks and stats to unlock, so I want to try more!
- Every stat is pretty self explanatory but I had trouble understanding the hang time? I mean, I didn't see the effect of it
- The hitbox of crystals are very approximative and therefore can be frustrating sometimes
- I liked the alternative path when you can jump very far from the cliff
Nice jam game, pleasant visually!
I guess this is good enough for me

So yeah, the visuals were really pixelated and because of that the achievement texts were an eye strain to even try to read. In the end these were the only ones I was missing, whatever they are...

A quite classic endless runner even. The achievements and the upgrades give it a nice amount of replay incentive but the small amount of different level sections makes the game get old kinda quick. Majority of the sections were pretty much trap setups for the early game and even after getting some upgrades, some other sections became traps. So pretty much the whole game progress is gated behind the double jump upgrade which can be unluckily missed for quite some time due to random choices and not affording it when it happens to appear. After getting the double jump, all the other upgrades felt meaningless.
And the double jump brings me to my biggest issue with the game. And that is actually probably the only reason one couldn't go on forever. That is the wonky (double) jump mechanic. It doesn't kill the existing momentum so it can be either a huge height boost if hitting the key twice quickly or just a slight speed decrease when falling from great heights. And this same behaviour also happens when just falling from a ledge without hitting jump. So if you hit the jump a fraction of a second too early before touching the ground, you will most likely just faceplant yourself towards some conveniently placed spikes.
The game would need some kind of actual difficulty curve. I think the classic and the easiest way would be to do a speed increase the further you got. And I guess it should also increase the reward the further you got.
And seems like it's already been mentioned but a classic jam game issue of too big hitboxes. Makes it super unfair and hard to estimate things.
The spikes also hurled the player in this uncontrollable and unpredictable arcs which really diminished the value of the armor upgrades. More often than not after the first hit it hurled me straight to another set of spikes. I mean, I got to this height by just ramming the spikes with no jumping at all.

The visuals were pretty nice with a pleasant to look at color palette. Music was ok and got the job done but it was very quiet compared to that blaring coin sound which (being the almost only sound effect) got old fast! A slight variation for that sound would have been welcome addition. A random 10% pitch variation in either direction is my goto. And of course having more sound effects besides just the jump/hurt/coin and better volume balance would have made them feel less repetitive.
Another thing I really kinda was annoyed about was the double menu thing between tries. That was an unnecessary step and should have been merged to one only.
Nice rope physics by the way! :sweat_smile:
But yeah, good job! :thumbsup: