Dwarf Life by arvis

[raw]
made by arvis for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

You are a dwarf living an average life. Your whole mission is to mine, process, sell, mine, process, sell. You have a limited amount of living space ( underground ) and you have a limited amount of dynamite to throw ( space bar ) Ekrānuzņēmums 2023-09-30 162900.png

Have been learning how to make games for 2 weeks ( not counting random motivation I had 2 years ago ) now and this is my second game made as as well as my first ludumdare ever :D.. I know its a piece of garbage, but its my piece of garbage and definitely a learning experience. If I had to make this again, I think I could make it in one day and better than it currently is :D

anyways.. good luck to everyone playing this.. try to beat my highscore ( 560 ) :v:

FunBaseAlpha ( Twitch ) score - 1039

Ratings

Overall 986th 3.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 875th 3.025⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1068th 2.5⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1047th 2.775⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 920th 2.775⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 656th 2.675⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 754th 2.5⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1011th 2.7⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 34🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

Tkap1
03. Oct 2023 · 09:52 UTC
Kinda fun, it would be nice if the 2 types of explosives you buy showed their range before you use them!
livinamuk
03. Oct 2023 · 16:29 UTC
The ladder mechanic is cool, the shop too. Some more levels would have been nice. Super impressive for your second game after only two weeks of dev life. Keep it up!
livinamuk
03. Oct 2023 · 16:29 UTC
The ladder mechanic is cool, the shop too. Some more levels would have been nice. Super impressive for your second game after only two weeks of dev life. Keep it up!
LDJam user 371030
03. Oct 2023 · 16:59 UTC
Pretty fun little game. Pleasant surprise! : )) It has the *addictive game* vibe with the selection of different means to destroy ground! This makes you build strategy! Good job. And it's cute! If this is (one of) your first games, trust me, it's great!!

A few feedback points / thoughts:
- having just 10 red dynamites and no way to acquire more / this felt like *wait.. why not?*
- it was not apparent that you point the direction of throw via the mouse - this was not in the tutorial screen / some players may never get it :D (trust me)
- just an idea - why not give the player *some* bonus from time to time? I don't know what; but to give them a free goody or sth either after a timer Or when they fulfill some condition
- I didn't get how to *sell* - I was able to only buy.. ?
- what about a *minimap*? This would be Awesome to not get lost and know where to go back :D
- sure, more levels would be cool, or more types of blocks Or stuff to buy (I know, time constraints)

![Screenshot 2023-10-03 195744.png](///raw/659/a5/z/5f4f9.png)

My score : )) I really had fun, thank you!

I am sure you if/when you get back to developing this again you will make it even more fun. Pretty much, very very nice!! : )
🎤 arvis
03. Oct 2023 · 17:56 UTC
@aweskybear Hey! Thank you for your review and for taking your time to play the game!
All the feedback you gave is very appreciated, when I decide to revisit this project and rebuild it, I will definitely take into account all of the things you said with the dynamites, bonuses and having a better toturial for the players.

For now though, this was a fun learning experience and I doubt I will come back to it any time soon, at least not until I gain more game dev experience ( in like a year or something :D ).

Anyways,
thank you for your review, it made me smile and have a great day! :D
LDJam user 371030
04. Oct 2023 · 02:37 UTC
@arvis You are very much welcome! For me it *also* was my 1st (competitive) LD :D so i believe we should take good care when feedbacking each other. You could feedback/take a look back at your first-timer buddy XD if you want .. though I believe my game is a bit more unnerving than yous :S ... heavily unnerving it seems :Ddd
🎤 arvis
04. Oct 2023 · 15:45 UTC
I challenge anyone to try and beat my current high score :D ![hscore.png](///raw/21a/b5/z/5f980.png)
Notinatal
05. Oct 2023 · 17:44 UTC
Nice little game and I enjoyed playing it and getting used to the mechanics. I like really the unrestricted nature of ladder placement and being able to develop a certain strategy.

However I think the game could maybe be more balanced, which - in this scenario - I understand is really hard to achieve because there are only four items to buy. At one moment i just kept spamming blue dynamite to get more blue dynamite (basically unlimited) and only failed because there might be a bug when buying stuff - sometimes it automatically places and uses it on the door. But that was something I would personally not care that much about I think.
But there was other more important thing I mentioned on stream - I wished there was a healthbar so you would have to be careful when using your dynamite. I doubt it would be hard to implement and it is my only more serious critique.

Other than that - great game! (for your second game jam - certainly)
Moebius
08. Oct 2023 · 11:28 UTC
Very impressive considering you're only into gamedev for two weeks! As other have mentioned already I think the game needs some polish but all in all a solid entry. Also the art style is already quite consistent, which is, in my experience, something that takes most people quite some time to get right, when they start with gamedev.
Tommy
10. Oct 2023 · 07:18 UTC
Nice little game, wasn't expecting it to also contain a crafting mechanic. I think I may have encountered a bug (the game froze after I bought the pickaxe and mined one cell), but other than that the game was pretty smooth.
🎤 arvis
11. Oct 2023 · 12:42 UTC
@tommy Hello! Thank you for trying my little game :D Yeah, I know what causes the pickaxe freezing issue, but unfortunately the jam is over so I can't change it. Essentially I have made it so that whenever the pickaxe destroys something, it checks for the tile it clicked on, always assuming there is a tile with no failsafe. So essentially when you click on a pixel of something that isn't a tile in the game, it essentially does this - click -> check_tile_frame -> tile_frame doesn't exist panic -> crash.
Frank Gevaerts
11. Oct 2023 · 19:19 UTC
A nice little game! It works well, looks good, and sounds good. One thing I didn't find is if you can get out of the buying screen without buying anything, I wasted some resources that way.
LDJam user 262525
14. Oct 2023 · 13:25 UTC
Pretty neat! It gets a bit slow and consfusing once you run out of explosions, but it was a pretty good time anyway.

FYI this game (and other Godot games) works on Mac. You just have to use Safari and right click and open the game in a new tab. Kind of annoying, but it does work, and I played it on a Mac without issues.
Satyre
17. Oct 2023 · 18:33 UTC
Great idea, also with the strategy behind spending the resources you have and trying to figure out the best way to use tools.