Polyomino Prospector by David-Liddelow
You're a miner, employed by a company who provides you with some mysteriously-shaped digging machines. How deep can you dig? How much money can you make? How much can you spend on increasing your repertoire of digging machines?
Windows Download
You are tasked with positioning polyominoes as they move down the screen. Rather than fill up rows (the usual fare for such shapes), the pieces excavate the area in which they are placed. Mine for coal, gold, and diamonds, while avoiding rocks. Visit the shop, buy bigger and better machines, put them in your deck, draw them, use them, profit.
It's not all playing with excavation though, this company needs results - results that can only be measured by digging deeper and deeper. There are limits on how many pieces of equipment you are allowed to use, and if you exceed the limit, the dig is over. Luckily, you get a generous top-up the further down you dig.
Controls: * Move piece - Arrow keys * Rotate piece - Up arrow, and Z and X * Pause/Menu - Space * Navigate shop - Arrow keys * Make purchase - Enter/Return
Piece tiles: * Bomb - Explodes rocks (good) and valuable resources (bad). * Nuke - A bigger and better bomb (and more expensive). * Diamond Drill - Cuts through rock in a controlled manner. * Gold Pick - Triples resource yield (that means profits). * Vortex - Creates a swirling vortex. If a piece touches this it will be trashed (removed from your deck).
| Windows | https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD48/releases/download/v1.1/Polyomino.Prospector-win64.zip |
| macOS (untested) | https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD48/releases/download/v1.1/Polyomino.Prospector.app.zip |
| .love / Linux (run with LÖVE from https://love2d.org/) | https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD48/releases/download/v1.1/Polyomino.Prospector.app.zip |
| Source Code | https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD48/archive/refs/tags/v1.1.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/polyomino-prospector |
Ratings
| Overall | 478th | 3.786⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 316th | 3.786⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 94th | 4.114⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 86th | 4.318⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1110th | 3.5⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 440th | 3.69⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 745th | 2.889⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1076th | 3.368⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 43🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
Ye old medieval remix of the Tetris theme was a perfect fit and the interface is solid even though you had to crap in a lot more than a normal Tetris game. I liked how you went all in on the theme, from the texture on the background to the nice serif font you chose.
The upgrades certainly kept me going a few more rounds so I'm glad you threw that in. Some of the pieces were fun to play with and really changed my approach. Neat game!
- It has no tiles poking out into open space, or
- It hits a rock (and doesn't have enough diamond drills), or
- It is about to fall off resources by itself (ie no player input), and would fall onto fewer resources than it is on at the moment.
I'm happy to hear that it is mostly reading your mind (doing what you intend to do) and agree that it is a bit opaque. I tried removing the resource-dig rule and making Enter force-dig the piece, but it felt a bit clunky at the time so I dropped the idea. Resource combos seemed like a central satisfying part of the game so we wanted something that made them a bit easier to get.
I really like being able to play the non-shop part of the game with just the arrow keys. It's a tradeoff though, and the straightfowardness of a force-dig key may have been worth the extra controls. Having your piece die to a stray bit of coal is a bit annoying.