:heavy_check_mark: Man this is great! I'm personally a great fan of lofi music so it was really pleasant playing with that soundtrack in the background. Could you share the song's title please? :relaxed:

It took me a bit to figure it out, but once I got the hang of it, playing **it was really a blast**. The gameplay loop is great, so much so that I think I'll probably keep playing for a bit longer :grin:. This one is definitely a candidate of mine to be on the top games this jam (for me, at least).

I don't know exactly what it is, but playing it there's just something that... "clicks" in your brain, then you disconnect and start going at it pretty much by instinct, just chillin' & drillin'...

The art is **simple but elegant**, with a reduced color palette and simple shapes. Great idea, great design, and great execution!


:x: It took me a couple of failed "runs" to **understand** how do the ship's mechanics work (particularly its health and fuel attributes). The game's description both here in its LDJam page and in itch.io is very lackluster, I think it could be improved.

The first few times I kept dying because I thought drilling through certain blocks was achieved by matching the color of the ship's drill to the color of the block. If it serves only a cosmetic purpose consider informing about it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:.

Awesome game! one of the greatest submissions I seen so far! The chill potential of this game is huge! And I love this!

@voxel-forest Thank you! With the simple mechanics of the game, I was able to focus more time on the atmosphere than I usually do and I'm so happy with how it turned out

@train27 Chillin' and Drillin'! I like that xD Thank you for all the input! The health part is the only thing that really changed from my original design plans and I knew it was still going to be less clear than other mechanics (that's why I ended up using a jarring damage sound that probably feels a little out of place haha). With that said, I updated the pages to explain some of the mechanics better. I was just too sleepy last night haha

The music is just something I came across on Adobe Stock:
https://stock.adobe.com/search/audio?k=331832405

Flipping beautiful!! Calm and cheerful, and super satisfying! The graphics are that exact fine balance between simplicity and character, it's all jumpy and bright, but also relaxed.

The instructions page got me worried thinking it was a complicated puzzle game but it's really self-explanatory once you start. :p

Very difficult but I can see myself trying for hours, this is super fun! Can't see a single thing wrong with it.

Seriously one of my favorites so far. This game's got it all. I am HOOKED! What an impressive game from just 72 hours. Love the whole dang thing!

Very chill to say the least. Music is so relaxing I just kind of left the game running for a bit and bopped along to it.

The gameplay is just so smooth, and I caught on the mechanics fairly quickly through some trial and error. Really delightful little Jam game.

What can I say except I played this for like an hour. I just kept going for one more run repeatedly. I'm gonna keep playing this later.

Your handling of a simple aesthetic is flawless and I wanna see you just fully release this. Clean up what you didn't have time to finish and just get it out there. Put it on Newgrounds. 100% chance it'll get frontpaged. GET THIS IN FRONT OF PEOPLE'S EYES BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING AND MORE PEOPLE NEED TO SEE IT.

OMG!! I could play this for hours!! Very well done . One of my favorites so far!

I'm in love with the game concept, to game loop is so nicely done, it's impressive ! The music, the sound and visual effects are really great too ! This game is chill and addictiv (but in a nice way). Well done !

There's just something that makes it very satisfying to dig deeper. The game loop is addictive. The particles are great too.

really nice game! I got all 10 relics. (I almost forgot that I needed to leave, and nearly missed that nice animation!) I love the graphics and sounds: clean and minimal, but still doing exactly what they need to.

I think there's a bug with the hull; I was able to move upwards basically any amount of tiles without taking damage (moving up, but not directly to the surface), but moving sideways would still damage me.

I have some questions about the design of the game's systems... I was surprised that you could dig upwards; is this just an easier Motherload? Ah, but then I realized you zoomed through already-dug hallways, taking damage -- neat! I wonder how this affects the gameplay! but... moving through hallways takes the same amount of gas as digging through dirt? That seems odd, and also it doesn't encourage digging careful tunnels. It seems to me that the zooming mechanic is the main difference between this and motherload, so it's a shame that mechanic doesn't change the gameplay very much.

Is there any point to upgrading your drill? the ores are pretty worthless, compared to the gold that's everywhere.

I hope this doesn't sound to negative! I really enjoyed the game as-is, you did some great work. I suspect I just prioritize mechanics over chill atmosphere. (The atmosphere _was_ very chill!) great game!

@pancelor Thanks for all the input! I plan on doing a post-mortem this week explaining some of my design choices, but I'll try to answer all your questions here too. Good job getting all the artifacts btw! No one else has commented about the ending yet so I don't think a lot of people are making it that far xD

Onto design choices:
**Digging upward**: if you didn't keep backtracking in mind as you descended, you could easily get stuck trying to make your way back. Also I haven't played Motherload in years so I forgot you couldn't even dig upwards haha. I also wanted to kinda have a fresh mind when I started working on this. I think when you are using another game as inspiration, it's easy to just make an unoriginal clone and I wanted to do something different. I have a couple ideas for making it so you can't get stuck, but I think overall I still want the player to be able to dig upwards. (probably not while you are over max capacity like it currently is right now)

**Moving through tunnels uses the same amount of fuel**: I plan on making it use less fuel when I start doing updates. Right now fuel is stored as an int and it was just easier than changing it to use a float to make moving each tile use less than 1 fuel. I definitely still want moving through tunnels to cost fuel though

**Upgrading drill**: you can easily finish the game without upgrading your drill or hull, but both can help a lot depending on your playstyle. The drill will definitely be more worth the purchase in the future (level gen isn't really where I want it to be in its current state). The hull upgrade probably won't be changed, but it's nice to have to be able to make long tunnels for faster travel and will work well with the reduced fuel cost

Bug:
**Moving Upward doesn't deal damage**: ~~Moving to the surface from any distance doesn't damage you, but that doesn't seem to be your problem. I haven't been able to reproduce taking no damage when moving upwards into another block though！ :shrug:~~
I misunderstood what you meant! I thought the vertical part was the problem but it was the horizontal one! I found the issue and I'm working on the update now

Thanks for playing! It didn't come off as negative, I definitely have a little bit more work to do on it, but everyone's feedback is what will shape the updates so I appreciate all the comments xD

@ everyone: Thanks for playing and all the comments/feedback

@squidly Thanks for playing my game on stream! It was awesome finally watching someone play it <3! I'm looking into some of my options, but I think I'm going for a steam release. Open to hearing arguments for posting on Newgrounds instead though if you have objections

@fupi Fun fact: One of the first things I programmed was the head bobbing and blinking for Beepo :P
I for sure need to update the instructions page again though xD it's hard to find a good balance

@teenythanos @lordsylvestrion This was my first game jam and I was really nervous coming into it, but I got into a good rhythm and this turned out way better than I could have expected (this is probably the most complete game I've made haha)!

@gazal @shin0nome @bauke-regnerus Glad you guys like it! I was able to finish most of the game mechanics on Saturday so most of Sunday was spent on polish, the ending, and the random (but still important) drums + meditation tree

Good job on this game. I liked the overall playstyle and I really liked the puzzle type of way you had to get out. I don't really know what I would suggest to make it better, I think it stood really well on it's own. Maybe some art variation as you get lower.

Super fun, thanks for submitting it for us to play!

Super fun, I love this type of a game a lot! Very well done. You could honestly expand this to be almost endless with more upgrades and more things, like maybe you could drill three at once to move faster or something, etc. Awesome job! Also, even though you didn't make the music, the music you found works really well, so props on that as well.

Hey, kanguru here! The game is incredibly tight both mechanically and visually. There are some design choices in the mechanics that feel really good. Like if you plan out the paths you leave in the ground, and count the blocks to avoid damage, you can save money on both the drill and the plating upgrade to progress farther. 10/10 game, 11/10 marketing.

I really, really like it! It's so polished! It is not immediately clear which is the fuel gauge and which of life, maybe adding an little icon or a label would help. Great job!

One of my favorite entries from this jam! I played it for about 30 minutes and enjoyed every second of it, although I AM a sucker for any kind of Motherloadlike game. (can that be a new genre??) Love the upgrade system, I really appreciate when games make you feel substantially more powerful after each upgrade, and you nailed it with this! My only complaint is that in the later stages of the game, I spent a lot of time just digging through dirt to get to the bottom (because it's more efficient than quickly following your old paths). Fantastic entry man, would love to see it expanded on! :smile:

DRUMS! Your game was good fun, so sorry that I am about to say this - but the drums was a highlight for me! Glad I completed the game, I had not played the game it was inspired by - but yeah - felt nice having to balance going deeper with the ability to return to the surface. Would be good if there was a benefit to planning tunnels strategically.

What an absolute banger of an entry. You really utilised the theme of the dare to what I think is one of the most on point entries!

Love the minimalistic artstyle, very clean, very readable and very charming. The movement feels snappy, responsive and I always knew how my little drill friend would move. The HUD was very nice and simple and told me exactly what I needed to know, along with the shops UI, to the point!

Really fun loop of digging deeper, getting more money and then making your way speedily up to the surface. I think if there's one thing that you do so well that I've seen other games struggle with, it's the movement back to a shop. A lot of games will use the same movement type for all forms of travel, so it's nice that the fact our little drill throttles it on straight lines, means it works SO well for upward travel, and then when it digs, its block by block. So top marks for that.

With only a bit more polishing and it possibly being expanded upon I could really see this on the Nintendo Switch or Steam!

Really really solid entry and great job on making such a polished and fun game :D.

A great idea, and very well executed too. I like the chill music and the drums were a really cool addition. This has a really high replayability because of the upgrades.

Game is clean, I love it, I would pay money for a full version!

I really like the aesthetics and implementation of this version of the "dig a bunch" formula that is really common for this theme.

I lost a few very deep runs to what I *think* was some sort of bug that makes you consume extra fuel (no recording cant confirm for sure, but it happened multiple times to me where I had significantly more fuel than I was deep, and ran out of fuel partway to the surface going up one of my ladders (up, left, up, right, up, left, etc) I sort of suspect that quick inputs might somehow lead to erroneous fuel consumption. That or I'm somehow really bad at comparing which number is bigger than the other number.

@skoobydoo Thanks for playing! I definitely wasn't very original with the theme itself, but I tried taking other things in a different direction xD

The depth at the top is just your distance from the surface. It doesn't take your tunnels into account and moving left and right also consumes fuel. It sounds like maybe you weren't taking horizontal movement into account but I also just did bug fixes today so I could have introduced more bugs haha! Gotta go to bed, but I'll look into it more tomorrow!

Also, I was doing stuff on and off while DragonTheoryGames was streaming your game so I missed out but he seemed like he was having a lot of fun on yours! I'll be streaming a lot tomorrow if you want me to stream yours. I'll be playing/rating/commenting it for sure either way!

I absolutely love this one. Very addictive. I wish there was more! The art was great. And even though you didn't make the music and sound effects, they were a very good selection for the mood. Thanks for making the game!

I really like the chill music, helped to add a fun atmosphere to the game. Didn't feel like I was rushing to accomplish anything, just like, I'll get my ship upgraded when I get around to it :)

I also really like the art style and the subtle things like the shop keeper's head bob animation. Yeah, I saw your post about some of the little tweaks and tips you had and that's what brought me here in the first place lol

Lots of fun, and I could see this turning into a fun game with a bit more polish and balancing.

Wow such a great game, I love it. Motherload was one of my favorite childhood games, so of course, I like this one :smile:

I had so much fun playing, the graphics are great and the music fits perfectly.

After I saw that the ore doesn't give more gold than the gold patches, I didn't bother taking them anymore.
I would have liked to get money only on ores. It's great that there are more types of ores and each gives more gold, but are not as good as gold patches.

Overall fantastic game, great job.

Just wow - not only do you hit the theme in the "drill deeper" sense, the mechanics themselves are also a lot deeper than on the surface! This is a great mix of strategy/puzzle - as going in blindly will end up dead in a short time.

Sounds and Music are on point, and give a nice relaxing mood to the game, while the stress of managing both your fuel, health, and time/moves keeps you on the edge.

Feedback:
- (Minor) I didn't understand the damage mechanic until now. I read it as "you will be damaged every 10 tiles" not "you will be damaged if you move > 10 tiles in a move"
- I had an issue where I couldn't collect any ore - I'm assuming this was the Cargo getting full? (I didn't read all the notes before playing). Maybe having the window fill as the cargo does would be a good indicator to the player?

I do hope you continue working on this, will be one to keep an eye on :)

Beepo's Shop https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/$250427

Overall:5.0
Fun:5.0
Innovation:5.0
Theme:5.0
Graphics:5.0
Humor:5.0
Mood:5.0

This game is superb!

The user input is super quick and responsive- feels very good. I really love your upgrade loop and item-hunt pattern... very good design here! Very beautiful simplistic artwork that is very thematic and aesthetic- I felt like I was in this world. Superb game!!

I will definitely recommend this to my fellow devs! :)

Awesome game, enjoyed it a lot. Very fun to play.

Congratulations on the game, very beautiful minimalist art game, the mechanics mixed with puzzle style is very fun, having the real feeling of depth, a suggestion would be to put some animations because everything looks static, and fix the issue regarding the damage that was not clear even more for those who are playing a frantic game, big hug, and I await your feedback on my game.

Hello! Your game was played on stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on 5/05 (Day 3 of LDJAM streams).

You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa

Love the satisfying little details (like the particle effects when you break things), and the instant breaking, and the quick jump across open areas - makes the game very satisfying to play :)

It took me a good while, but I won :D


I really enjoyed your game and paid tribute in voxel.

Wow really cool concept! I can say if this was a large scale game I would have it open 24/7, I didn't want to stop playing XD. One thing is that it wasn't easy to tell why I couldn't pick up loot sometimes? I could see I was low on fuel but is there another mechanic I missed? Still love it really great job!

Interesting and catchy gameplay! Pleasant graphics. Nice and juicy sound effects.

Some remark: it was confusing that ship moves all the empty blocks under ground because ship moves only 1 empty block in the opposite direction to the shop on the surface.

Nice entry!

I think this is already ready for a mobile release. If you wanted to monetize it, you could have people buy a revival after death or maybe just watch an ad or something. Or don't, either way is respectable. Seriously well polished, and I always love the sleek, minimalist art style. The movement twist on motherload is super clean and mentally engaging and requires the player to plan their routes in a stimulating and satisfying way. Superb job, sir!

Here's where we played it on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1018587431 starting at about 2:34:00ish.

The art is elegant and music fitting. Gameplay is fun and fits the theme perfectly. Good work!

The art is really nice and the music makes the mood relaxing but the gameplay is so well made. It is designed perfectly to encourage many runs. The health mechanic is nice and encourages variety in gameplay by discouraging making only one straight down hole and the way the drill goes fast and glides to the end of already drilled blocks feels incredible.

However, I find myself getting a bit tired when spamming the arrowkeys so much. Maybe making it so you can both use WASD and the arrowkeys so you can use 2 hands? Or maybe if you can hold shift or something to toggle holding to drill? I found the game got into a higher difficulty curve once you have acquired 2 upgrades since fuel and money get very scarce since you have to dig so deep to get big earnings. Maybe introducing another currency or being able to use the artifacts to upgrade your ship would solve this gameplay switch?

Being able to revive would be nice but it might fundamentally change the game if you could. Resetting your progress feels bad but since the game is fun to play, it doesn't last long until you end up digging again. My only problem with the gameplay is how the drill uses fuel on the surface. I feel like the surface should be a place to relax and plan your next move compared to the fast-paced and quick-thinking of the underground.

Great game! Good work!

@polkoii Thanks for playing my game and giving all these suggestions! I really appreciate these kinds of comments that try to find improvements and give the developers different ideas to think about ❤ I already plan to address a lot of these issues in a post jam update/commercial release, but I'll respond to each part here individually in case you're interested!

**WASD + Arrow Keys**: you can already use both at the same time! It wasn't really by design, I was just trying to give a couple different options for controls but I watched a streamer go through it pretty quickly with the double input strategy xD. I also plan on having an "Auto Drill" upgrade so you can hold the keys down late game and clear paths pretty quick, but this will probably just be in the commercial release, not the post jam version

**Fuel/Money gets scarce**: The resources you can get after you upgrade the drill don't reward a lot of gold so the drill upgrade isn't worth it in this version. I plan on spawning in more ores and increasing their reward and I think that will help solve the money issue. I might also make fuel cheaper, but I need to see where it fits with my other updates!

**Revive**: I plan on making 4 worlds and having them a lot larger so completely resetting all of the players progress would be REALLY punishing. I still plan on resetting their upgrades and any gold they were carrying, but they can retrieve their previous body to get most of their previous net worth back (kinda like dark souls, but their body will persist even through multiple deaths so they always have a chance to get it back). There's also gonna be a simple bank system where you can store your gold so that it's not lost on death and also frees up more space for your next run

**Using Fuel on Surface**: This was my biggest failure in making my game D':
One of my main design goals was to make the surface feel like an inviting, safe place to just chill, but using fuel (and especially dying because you have none) on the surface seems like a huge betrayal to that design goal.
I also noticed a couple streamers dove down immediately after realizing they were using fuel and never got a chance to see the Meditation Tree I spent too long on xD

Thanks for coming to my TED talk! Let me know if you have any other ideas! :D

@itsboats Oh my! Love the detailed response! I hope I was able to convey my thoughts well because around the time I played your game, I loved it but was absolutely not there enough to render my ideas in the best manner but thank you for responding! I'll address you back the same way!

**WASD + Arrow Keys**: I'M SO SORRY I MISSED THIS and I am glad that it was in the game in the first place. I will definitely try the game out again using this! Also, the "Auto Drill" upgrade sounds great!

**Fuel/Money gets scarce**: Yeah! I like the idea of adding more ores and differing their rewards! Making fuel cheaper also sounds interesting! Maybe another could be to have fuel tanks you can pick up throughout the underground so you can last longer! Maybe adding a warning noise to indicate low fuel could ward off the likelihood of running out of fuel as well!

**Revive**: Those sound like great additions! I play a lot of games where that dark souls mechanic is implemented so I may be a bit biased but it seems like it would work well with this game's playstyle! Also, the bank system sounds good as well!

**Using Fuel on Surface**: Yeah! I noticed the surface looks and feels like it was made to be a place to chill (you can choose where to mine next by being able to move one block at a time and the Meditation Tree looked so relaxing). I really liked what you were going for!

I did have one idea I was thinking of. Not sure if you would ever go this way, but usually with games like these where you are pressing a 4-direction pad a lot, I tend to feel a rhythm-like feel to it. So, maybe, making sound and music have a bigger role in the game would make it have more flair! Things like what Crypt of the Necrodancer does or just something as simple as the drill making a song note by note for every step you take. Or you could make the glide (when you just go fast) to have a nice boost sound! I just like sounds a lot :)

Again, thank you for replying! Will be looking forward to what you do with this project no matter what direction you take! :D

Great game! For a game with simple rules and no enemies it is very engaging. At the beginning I found it hard to progress but it was addictive enough to keep me going. At some point it became easier, and it was very satisfying to dig deeper and collect larger amounts of gold. Despite being simple geometric shapes, the graphics look polished with great attention to detail.

@itsboats Thanks for submitting your game to my stream! I saw your comment above about adding a DS-like ability to retrieve your lost upgrades, but I would think very carefully about this. Perhaps the player only loses their money (with the ability to retrieve it) but not their upgrades?
I'll put it this way; I am the sort of person who used a mod manager to remove the loss of souls on death in Dark Souls and enjoyed the game SO MUCH MORE as a result. So maybe instead, you could have a "hardcore" mode where you do lose everything, but otherwise you only lose money? Just a suggestion. Looking forward to trying the game again when you're ready for more feedback : )

Had a lot of fun playing this on-stream:

https://youtu.be/aHUsWQeZHns?t=7155

There's a bit of a learning curve with this game, but thanks to its turn-based gameplay and chill presentation, failure never felt too punishing. I really like that the path you create has serious consequences on the drill's health. It really forces the player to carefully think over the path they're taking, and making measured decisions on using their limited resources.

Perhaps my favorite aspect was that it encouraged the player to discover for themselves the many intricacies of the game. Through experimentation alone, learning how straight paths could be treacherous, there are more gold deeper underground, digging tiles gives more money than zooming through tunnels, which upgrades help optimize gold collection process, etc. was all very, very satisfying, even if it lead me to death. It's quite extraordinary how through relatively minimal means, you've found ways to convey such critical details efficiently to the player, all without a tutorial.

This was a grand a time. Looking forward to more projects from you!

Really nice game! Managed to beat it on my first attempt. I really like the mechanics here.

The drilling upgrades didn't feel very useful - I only bought the first one, but I don't think I ever used it. Materials that are tough to drill through are so rare that there is very little cost to just ignoring them.

The hull upgrades seemed skippable with careful play - though I was careless and ended up with a pretty long main tunnel right from the starting hole which forced me to pick up some hull upgrades so I didn't accrue big damages on every expedition.

(Didn't mean to be anonymous)

I really liked this game. My only feedback is that there should be significantly less cost to moving through open areas. Also it's balanced such that I don't think most people will every unlock the top rewards. I don't think there is enough money there.

Honestly 5/5 fun, I was having a lot of money and was bummed I had to leave before I could max out my ship. You could expand this with a little more balance into a decent 2 dollar game. Maybe 3 worlds where the power ups carry over. Idk. Anyway really liked it. Very good in all categories. My second favorite game of LD48!

[Thanks for submitting your game to our stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1023138450?t=00h06m11s)

I really enjoyed the charm of this one! There a lot of tiny bits of polish in this one that really come together to make the game feel super enjoyable to play. Maybe if I was a little less dumb I could have beaten the game in a much more efficient manner, but I ended up surviving anyway! :sunglasses:

Very well done! The dash mechanic is a welcome twist on the genre, because it solves 2 problems of similar digging games at once: you can no longer just make a boring (no pun intended) infinite straight shaft to go deeper, and at the same time it also decreases "dead time" when you're trying to back out of already dug tunnels. Very elegant! The rest of the game is still a bit too familiar from all the other 2D mining entries (and Motherload variations of yore), but the overall feel is one of the nicest here.

Cool minimalist UI, and the drums are a great touch too, along with the music they make for a fun atmosphere.

This was a very nice game! I managed to fly into the sun.

The quick travel is a smart idea, it removes the slow travel back that Motherload and similar games have, where it takes longer and longer to get to the bottom and up. And at the same time it forces you to be cautious, to not dig too far straight down.

The positional audio of the shop's music also really added to the atmosphere of the game, like coming up to the peaceful surface after journeying far down into the depths. In a way it reminded me of the save rooms in Resident Evil. It would be cool if when the music fades out, more eerie ambient cave background noises would fade in.

The progression felt balanced. You could buy upgrades almost every time you got up to the surface, and there was always a blue point to dig towards.

One thing that would make playing feel a bit smoother would be to be able to hold down arrow keys to dig in a direction, instead of having to press every time.

Super well done for a first LDjam game! Sadly I didn't see this until now after the competition, but I rate it very good :)