Hole Town by dob
Hole Town
By Dave Dobson
Platform: HTML5 (JavaScript, CraftyJS)
Genre: Puzzle
Levels: 7
In Hole Town, you play a top-hat wearing industrialist who is trying to recover gems from deep underground. Your only tool to collect these gems is the local rocks. In violation of any semblance of realism, these rocks can produce explosive bombs when you combine them the proper way, and you can use these bombs to dig deeper and deeper into the ground until you've recovered all the gems.
Gameplay and Rules: Move your industrialist back and forth using either the left and right arrow keys or A & D. Drop the rock you're carrying with either Space, the S key, or the down arrow. When you drop a rock, it will fall until it reaches the bottom of the hole or a rock larger than itself. Any smaller rocks it passes by will be moved up one space. If you create a horizontal row of three or more rocks, they will disappear, and the middle rock (or rocks, if your row is more than three long) will turn into bombs. Bombs fall down to the bottom of the hole where they form, and they blow up the bottom of the hole, making it one space deeper, and causing all rocks in the hole to drop down one space. There are five sizes of rocks. There are five colors of rocks (including symbols for colorblind players or for general convenience). Not all levels use all five colors. You win the level when you blast out all of the gems it contains. Later levels may start with some rocks in place, or you may get free bombs to use. To use a free bomb, hit the B key, and you'll drop a bomb in the hole where you're standing.
Tools:
This is an HTML5 game that uses the CraftyJS JavaScript library for games. For sound, I relied on my mouth plus GoldWave audio. For graphics, I relied on PowerPoint and GIMP. Yes, his legs actually are literal parentheses. Style points for that?
| Link | http://planktongames.com/ld48 |
| Link | http://planktongames.com/ld48/game.js |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hole-town |
Ratings
| Overall | 556th | 3.311⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 571th | 3.135⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 210th | 3.662⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 417th | 3.635⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 667th | 3.041⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 594th | 2.771⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 141th | 3.439⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 701th | 2.781⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
Very nicely done :smile: I liked the idea and the execution :thumbsup_tone1:
I hope you'll drop by mine and give it a spin :wink:
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
This comment was for [Soil Surfer](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/soil-surfer)
It's a pretty satisfying, short little experience that feels pretty complete for a compo game. You could probably do more with it, but it doesn't feel like anything is missing. My only complaint with the gameplay is it was really hard to tell which rocks were bigger than others, so I kind of gave up trying to figure out how to set up the perfect combo and just dropped more rocks until they lined up. Maybe if there were not as many sizes it would be easier to tell them apart.
The graphics are charming and functional, with no issues with contrast or anything like that (just the rock sizes). I'm OK with that.
Thanks for this. I hope you become as rich as your character with the dubious rock-dropping hobbies.
I'll second @doommustard comment that the different sizes are not easily compared, but that could be fixed in a post-jam game (make the difference more obvious, add a number on the gem, preview where the gem will go).
Very pleasant experience nonetheless and definitely style points for parentheses legs.
The rock sizes caught me out a lot. I think fewer distinct sizes with more obvious differences would be better. Quite often I dropped a rock in only to find it was bigger than I though, and everything got messed up.
Although I'm not colour blind myself, I really appreciate that you gave the rocks contrasting symbols as well as colours. That's such a nice consideration, and the kind of thing that often gets forgotten under time pressure.
For a compo it's successful, congrat!
The design is simple but efficient !
Thank you for your game !
The mechanics may be simple but they bring lots of depth.
2nd level was tough - i got lucky
I think the controls need to be righter - when your little character moves from left to right
good surprise over all
takes a while to get used to
but it's fun and original
well done :)
All in all, I love it. Brilliant!
Great work!
Reaching diamonds does feel good. What I like the most is graphics and choice of colors.
i think it took me to the final level until i realised that the blue rocks aren't the same as the green ones. They look similar to me when small and the smaller rocks seem to have less colour. But i still finished the levels in my first go.
I was (pleasantly) surprised the simple rules already have that much complexity!
I played all the way through. These puzzle mechanics are "ROCK" solid! A lot of these types of gamejam puzzle games either end up being mindless, or mostly dependent on random chance. I was forced to think out my moves and actually be careful, especially in the last stage. Great job!!
It makes sense, given you seem to be behind some well known puzzle games. I've never tried Snood but I saw someone tweeting about it just the other day, haha.
The mechanics were also pretty new to me, I've never seen anything like that. Sometimes the combos were quite satisfying. I feel like if you are planning to continue working on this, rewarding combos would be a good idea! :)