Mana Delve by Alex Mulkerrin
A little base builder where you dig a base and build mana towers in order to open a portal to summon the Old Ones.

| Link | https://alexmulkerrin.itch.io/mana-delve |
| Link | https://alexmulkerrin.itch.io/mana-delve |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/mana-delve |
Ratings
| Overall | 257th | 3.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 265th | 3⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 225th | 3.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 308th | 2.795⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 273th | 2.913⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 255th | 2.587⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 295th | 1.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 276th | 2.886⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
After running out of various mana types and restarting a dozen times, I finally understood that the key is to look at the gauges. After that, it is pretty fun! More of a management game than an exploration game, I nonetheless really appreciate that the white crystals are a finite resource that you have to go looking for! Good design!
My suggestion would be to color the gauges. Grey if they are static, green if they are increasing, red if they are draining. That would have made me pay attention to them way earlier and not get as frustrated.
If it was made clearer what I was running out of/what I needed, or if there was a way to remove/pause some of the towers it would be a lot easier, but overall it was alright. I don't __really__ get what it had to do with summoning, but as a resource management game, it was relatively fun - just a rather steep learning curve.
That said this feels like it could be a really fun little puzzler game! The concept of balancing a bunch of different resources is really solid and even though it was a little tough this was a quality entry!
It would be nice to maybe have a delete option, or a number associated with the rate of depletion.
The UI and interactions in the game are nice and polished. I like the bright colorful graphics. Everything was snappy and responsive, so no issues there. I had fun digging and uncovering the map too!
Thank you all for taking the time to play my game and take the effort to give me feedback. I feel a lot better for making it now than I did on submitting it when I was quite unhappy with the quality of it.
I'm impressed that people took the time to complete it when I was worried that it was far too opaque and difficult for anyone other than myself to understand. I completely agree with the feedback that more information needs to be shared with the player about what the different buildings do and the economy.
Originally the economy was going to be for a factory building game but I switched it to mana to better fit the theme. I think this got rid of a lot of intuitiveness eg. purple was electricity, red and green were metal and electronics. If I go back to this concept I'll probably return to the factory framing.
I'm glad people were able to enjoy playing this and am again thankful that you took the time to leave feedback :)