Intro

Shelldon J. Shelley was a cool little fella. He loved his work as a hauler of crates. Day in, day out he would drag about, and selling the gems he had made. But then one day, Shelldon wailed and screamed, he had dropped his favorite rock, or so it seemed...

His pickaxe he took, the big driller shook and Shelldon would just continue to look and look... His rock had gone missing, this turtle was hissing and then just began beating his chest.

His protective vest was donned for the rest and suddenly Shelldon was smashing.

The driller did plummet, he could not outrun it, so into the crates he was bashing... Oh boy what a muck... He ran out of luck. Could you perhaps help him find his rock?

Concept

The game is a simple race against time. Try to get as far as you can before the drills catch up to you. You can find some powerups along the way to help you increase your score, but beware, knocking your head into a crate (or vice versa) WILL kill you !

• The cash out powerup provides you with an extra score boost
• The bomb blows up blocks in the vicinity, allowing you to move down quicker
• The chronometer temporarily slows down the drill
• The nuke will instantly kill you and end your run. This was added as spam-protection

Options

Game Mode Options

• Zen

In Zen mode, the driller will not drop. Feel free to dig around ! But don't plan on submitting a highscore in this mode...

• Training

Practice makes perfect! If you're done with the Zen baby mode, Training mode will add a layer of stress by making the drills drop... At about a quarter of the speed required to be able to submit a highscore...

• For Realzies

Oh yes, this is the real deal... The driller heads down at full speed. Who will crown themselves MASTER OF THE TURTLE DROP and earn a permanent spot on this very page? Go get those highscores !

Input Options

• Mouse

Play the game using your mouse. Shelldon will run towards your cursor's position. Click the blocks to destroy them !

• Keyboard

*Play the game using a keyboard. Shelldon will move using the arrow keys. Press against a block and hit spacebar/left control to destroy crates.

• Controller

Theoretically, controller support is available, but this has not been tested due to time constraints...

Audio Options - Music - SFX - Master

DISCLAIMER

I want to be fully open about this project. After I created a port to Android I decided I'd rather keep the source code hidden for now. If this is bothering you, feel free to ask me more about it on the condition you leave your details, just in case I get "scooped" ;) I just want to have a chance to make this happen and follow up on my dream : releasing a "real" game ! Either way, what follows is a list of changes that I did make post-compo, which are hopefully in accordance to the rules :)

• The dreamlo leaderboard is only working in the standalone version. The webplayer version works exactly the same, however highscores will not be stored. This is due to an SSL requirement which I could not fulfill within the time span of the COMPO submission.

• The options menu had a minor issue where settings were not being saved properly. Furthermore, some settings need to be disabled on Android (no sense having a "keyboard" option there). Similarly, I added a notification on the leaderboard placeholder that in WEBGL, the scores are not available... (To prevent expectations that data will come post the "fetching..." message)

• In order for the game to work on Android, I had to reduce the width of the playing field, otherwise players could not click blocks easily (fat finger syndrome). I also had to add a little thickness to the outlines of the shapes to make them more visible. So spritework was not really "updated", it was "thickened".

• Some people (including my son) complained that they couldn't really experience the game because the drill was too fast for them. I added two "easier" game modes on top (ZEN mode and Training mode), where the only thing changing is the speed of the drill, so they at least can also get a play! On top of the fact that I actually had these modes in my codebase anyway for testing purposes... If you want to experience the game AS WAS intended in Compo, consider the "for realzies" mode, which is the

• The generation of pseudo-random sections induced a typical problem in my algorithm : sometimes an in-escapable situation occurred where the player got stuck in a U shape between 2 tetrominoes... I added a very rudimentary HP system for the blocks so players can now break free when the keep clicking the metal. This may not be the most elegant solution but it's not really a new feature, in reality the player is still doomed as the drill keeps coming... but it will feel more "fair" I suppose. I hope you agree this is a midway solution between "avoiding a game breaking bug" and "introducing a feature"

• As on mobile the blocks were simply to small to reliably tap, I made the decision to link together blocks of the same color. Eventually this would have a minor impact in the gameloop, but it would make the game a lot more playable on mobile (as was intended)

• As I had a few people really playing the competition to get the highscores, I was confronted with people using auto-clickers and what not to "cheat" their way up. Granted, I had not really considered that but for the sake of having a "fair" way of doing this, I added a "spam-protection" nuke. Basically if you keep digging down without moving horizontally for 7 seconds, a nuke will spawn in your path to kill you if you keep digging.