Nice game, very polished! From the screenshots it looked very complicated, but it is in fact really simple and catchy. I played it for quite a while.

@loig Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, it definitely _looks_ complicated, and there's a lot of UI, but I guess the underlying gameplay is actually pretty simple =).

I agree that it looked rather scary at first and it took me a while to understand how to tweak the different settings to maximize possibility of getting the coolest / most expensive exotic. Honestly though, I promptly forgot about the part about which settings affected value and was mostly focused on achieving full understanding of optimal settings for all compounds. And I needed about all probes there were to get there. So I never really got to the true $$$ optimizations. I guess that felt like a more reasonable first step. And maybe, instead of the lower part affecting prizes, it could affect dynamics of the fishing game? I was also, since I forgot what drives the prize wondering if the relative value of what I got up depended on how perfect I did the fishing / how damaged the probe got.

I really liked the graphics of the probe sinking through the gas giant, but even though i never lost a single probe, i was very much staring at the gauges. it would have been nice to be able to look more at the beautiful effects... and of course a bit more variation and or challenge to the fishing game.

Music and sound effects were also really nice.

@local-minimum Thanks for playing! Yeah, that all sounds about right =). I first had 24 probes per planet, but frankly I got a little bored getting through that many probes, so decreased it (perhaps too much ^\_^, I also got the survey bonus on about my final probe when I was doing my first true full playthrough... but that was after the compo ended ^\_^). This is very much a collection of mechanics that I want to use in a game of a bigger scope and I was kinda fumbling about trying to fit them into a compo-sized experience... Nothing in the minigame affects the value, although that maybe would have made it interesting - I kinda think a "no fail" minigame would work pretty well here (especially since, even if you play fine, you may "fail" and not get the resource you were hoping for), and just having "damage taken" directly related to how much value of the resource you bring back...

And, yeah, I heard you about the staring at the bars and the visuals! I spent a bunch of time on them, did some fun stuff with the shadow reducing visibility 1 palette entry at a time... and then when I was playing I was just so _absolutely_ focused on the bars I don't see any of it. I'm almost glad that I ran out of time before going through my list of things I was going to add to those visuals (some big leviathans in the background or something to make you feel more like a "tiny creature", but probably no one would have seen them!).

I am on the same boat as the others, it really gave the impression of being hard at first sight. It turned out that it's actually a simple and quite addictive game. I have been enjoying it and the gameboy graphics is quite fitting.

Just like @local-minimum I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to get the perfect combination for all the different materials and kinda forgot about making money :smile:

Thanks for playing and nice feedback. Maybe the planet goal should just have been "discover everything" and I should have just completely dropped the "money" part... =)

So I'm potentially going to go against the grain here, but my eyes were glued to the fat stacks my DWARFS were making, I guess it's swings and roundabouts with this sort of game.

I would have loved to be able to buy some upgrades for the probes, but I suppose the 'company' wouldn't have wanted that to eat into their margins.

Overall, it's extremely polished, but I have come to expect that from you now so no surprises there. It is consistent throughout, has a satisyfing and engaging loop. Thank you.

Music is cool!

@slippers Thanks for playing, and glad someone was engaged by the fat $tacks!

@sdcorpse Thanks! Music's not really a strong point of mine, and I was trying out a new tool (Trackerboy, using the Gameboy sound engine), so it's nice to hear someone liked it =).

Very cool, very interesting. I *loved* the visual aesthetic and the audio. I really felt like a game I want to lose tons and tons of time in.

Gameplay mechanics were easy to learn, it only took a few probes to figure out how to optimize for minerals. Thing is it seemed like I would send a probe, it would survive, and my $$ score would not go up. I had previously elected to "sell for research" instead of "sell for $$$" but is that a permanent decision? I'm honestly not sure what happened there.

I think the game has an awesome core but I'm not sure I'll go back to it. I feel like it's "almost there" for a really awesome game, I'm just not sure what the tradeoff is. Like, I don't have a target amount of $$$ to get and I try to keep the dwarfs alive, so maybe if I have a clearer motivation to get a particular material or reach a certain depth or something it would really land for me? Dunno.

Overall I really like it. Your games are always really good Jimbly.

@david-york Each time you get something back you should get to Study once, and then a choice to Dismantle (for 1 extra bit of knowledge) or Ship (for money), though it will auto-Ship if you already had max knowledge for a given exotic. If you don't click "Ship", you'll never get money (except the Survey Bonus), but if you were either full up on knowledge or SHIPing, you should have been getting money... possibly there's a bug there, but it's hard to say for sure if I was just being too confusing =).

And, yeah, definitely needs some more interesting trade-offs and direction (admittedly I built this trying to test out some mechanics that I may want to use inside of a bigger game, and that perhaps shows, though I did try to wrap it up as best I could ^\_^).

I really like the graphics and sounds, although the text can be a bit hard to read sometimes. The gameplay was nice and simple.

Great game! 🌟 At first glance it seems complicated, but in fact it is very simple and addictive. I liked the graphics and atmosphere - they create a unique mood! 😍 The music and sound effects are also very cool, they complement the game perfectly! 🎶 I am sure that this is just the beginning, and with new mechanics the game will become even more interesting! Keep up the good work! 👏

I was also a bit scared by all the texts in the screenshots, but the gameplay was not that hard. I found the mini-game quite boring quite soon though. I reached the end of the first planet.
I really like the graphics/effects!

I love this game's visual aesthetic! I've always been interested in seeing what's actually on there and this is a really cool simulation into it!

The visual and overall mood are amazing, not to mention the music, huge props for that!

The game seemed a little complex at start with all the info text but the loop was super easy to understand, and fun. The "fishing-like" gameplay was interesting at first, but over time I was definitely more engaged by the outcomes and trying to get good resources and also claim the survey bonus. Maybe some variance on the minigame would've helped, though the discovery of the exotics was captivating enough to keep me going until the end.

I'm very curious about the dithering effect during the probes expedition. Is it a shader that converts luminosity into dithered patterns?

Great job!

@conradoclark The basics of it is just comparing a 1-channel image against a texture, which encodes a dither pattern. The (3-line) shader that does this for screen transitions is [here](https://github.com/Jimbly/LD56-dwarfs/blob/compo/src/client/shaders/dither_transition.fp) though that shader is using a constant `dither_param` instead of looking at a 1-channel texture. Dither pattern texture looks like this:


For the actual background, there's a few things going on, first there's the noise background, then I run it through the dithered conversion basically piece-wise for the 4 colors (seen [here](https://github.com/Jimbly/LD56-dwarfs/blob/compo/src/client/shaders/test.fp#L94-L104) - `f` is my 1-channel image, `tex0` is the dither pattern) - that's the same at the menu and during the expedition. Additionally during the expedition I do a circular fade around you (maybe that's specifically what you were asking about), and for that effect it's just applying a `min()` operation of the final color from the above logic against one of the 4 colors in the palette (code [here](https://github.com/Jimbly/LD56-dwarfs/blob/compo/src/client/shaders/test.fp#L115-L123)).

Haha ty for the explanation. (I love that the function is called doMagic :laughing: )

I think I got it, c0 through c3 are the palette colors, and based on both the value of f (that comes from the noise) and the dither texture you return let's say either c0 or c1. So for certain values, it'll always be c0, for some values, it will keep oscillating between c0 and c1, and for some values, it'll always be c1 (until f gets to the point that you use c1/c2 instead of c0/c1)

Pretty interesting, today I learned

The pixel stretching and dithering for this game are awesome, and I love the 4-color palette. The music really put me in the mood for an adventure.

The gameplay itself was neat, if a little random at times. The best strategy I could come up with was --

- Always ship, because the extra research doesn't seem likely to pay off by the end of the survey.

- If an affinity for the most expensive category is known, choose that affinity.

- If an affinity is known for other categories, and those affinities lean towards one side, then choose the opposite side (to decrease the chance of drawing those categories in favor for the more expensive category).

- If an affinity is known for other categories, and those affinities lean equally in both directions, then choose the affinity for the more expensive category.

The only real critique I have is that the mini-game could have been more challenging, or more dynamic than a boolean outcome, since it took up a lot of the gameplay time. Otherwise, it was a cool vibe seeing the dwarf descend into the depths while the light slowly faded around it.

Only got #5 on the leaderboard. I didn't know how to get the second survey bonus ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯


@sudocoffee Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback! My strategy was similar, except I always dismantle on the first pull of a new exotic, and as soon as I identified one exotic that seemed more valuable than the others, I then focus on shipping that, but always dismantle the others, until they were completely known. On both planets I managed to get the survey bonus on the last or second to last probe (with 0-1 failed probes along the way, and giving up on the expensive exotic and focusing on what was missing if needed at the end), so it was tight (and, had I done my playthrough _before_ the end of the compo, I probably would have changed the balance a bit ^_^). Also, playthroughs aren't _quite_ identical (the base value for each of the 4 exotics use a fixed seed, but their affinities are pure random, so it's _possible_ your run was more difficult if it happened to put all of the exotics on very similar affinities or something along those lines...). I didn't want someone to be able to play a second time and know exactly what affinities to focus in on to get a high score, but in practice no one has wanted to play a second time, so perhaps that was wasted effort :sweat_smile:.

If you're interested, I'd love your feedback on the current post-jam version if you get a chance =).

# Post-jam update

After reading the feedback here, and some other discussions, I've made some tweaks to the balance and how the inner game and outer game tie together. If you're interested in checking it out and giving your feedback, take a look [here](http://www.dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD56/). **IMPORTANT: DO NOT PLAY THIS if you have not yet rated the compo entry - please play using the links above instead first. It's still a reasonably fun game, I promise :pray: **

The general changes are:
* Progress is saved between sessions
* You now get bonus cash for completing the minigame well (4x for being nearly perfect, 2x for being good), which will hopefully encourage playing aggressively / make it more interesting
* Cash is now the stated primary goal (instead of just "18 probes launched" to finish a planet), so doing better at the minigame should feel even more rewarding
* Greatly increased the match weighting for which exotic is found and their value (higher weight for DW/ARFS for which/value, and now the square of the match is used for the weight instead of just the raw match), so your configuration tweaks should have a more direct impact
* The pattern of danger now loops (about 2 times if you're doing well) when doing the minigame, so if you're paying attention you can use that to your advantage
* The pattern of danger is now pre-determined for each Exotic, so you can probably notice which exotic is "on the line" as well and use that to your advantage when hunting a specific one
* The Survey Bonus is now given per-Exotic when it gets to 100% knowledge

@jimbly -- No problem! I tried the new version, and I think it's an improvement all around! It's a challenge to get the 4x bonus, and the minigame is a lot more tense when I'm always right on the line between death and a 4x bonus. The weights having more influence did give a stronger feeling of control over the outcome (which is great, if that's what you were going for).

The swap of goals (between money and dwarves) is interesting, and probably an improvement, because it makes destroying the exotics more important. The $4500 goal makes the game a lot longer than it was before, and maybe too long for the amount of content in the game, since each round is pretty similar.

Ran into a weird bug on the second planet, where it occasionally set the safety to zero for an instant loss. It mostly only happened while I was straddling the safety line, which meant I sometimes couldn't safely get the bonuses.

Very nice graphics and sound! Gameplay-wise I found it a bit repetitive after the first planet. Nonetheless, great job.

@sudocoffee Thanks for testing the new version! Clearly I never tested the second planet, sure enough it's danger schedule's got some bug in it that goes to negative values :laughing:. On my test, and one other tester's playing, on the first planet, it took us each 19-20 probes to beat it (which is pretty similar to the original 18 probe content length), but it looks like you took quite a while longer. There are a few things that (currently) aren't using the level seed to make each playthrough different, and maybe one of them caused you to have a particularly difficult time - specifically the affinities are pure random - did you get stuck with the high value exotic having very similar affinities to a low value one, so had trouble getting it reliably, or have trouble finding all of the survey bonuses, or lost a lot of probes? Sounds like you reliably got at least a 2x bonus (which is what I usually get), so I'm not sure what else would slow things (looks like you took about 40 probes for the first planet, which does sound past the point where it would get boring :sweat_smile:).

@euske Thanks for playing and glad you liked it! Yep, I also found it a bit boring after the first planet :laughing:, hopefully my post-jam version will address that with some smallish tweaks.

@jimbly -- First planet I had (roughly) one $10 exotic and three $30 exotics. I got all four survey bonuses, and a 2x bonus most of the time, and a 4x bonus occasionally. I only lost one or two probes. I started with an all-ship strategy, and then used a few dismantles towards the end. I don't remember the affinities, so I'm not sure why it took that many rounds ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

Tried a second time, this time doing an all-dismantle strategy (seemed better to know the affinities early, since I'll need the survey bonuses anyway). Lost one dwarf, and mostly got 2x, plus a few 4x. I hadn't realized before that the average values go up, does that happen whenever you get that particular exotic?

Still took 27 dwarfs, but I have a screenshot this time --


@sudocoffee The base values are from a fixed seed (I believe they were $16, $41, $43, $57 on the two post-jam versions you played), but the value you _get_ is based (mostly) on the *ARFS* affinity matching, which will give 100%-200% (plus a 10% chance to "crit") if you have a perfect match, but only 10%-50% if you have a very poor match. So, as you learn more, and make better matches your actual value and recorded avg value goes up. I'm not _completely_ sure this is a good design as, even knowing exactly how it works, I 100% believed the first level had 1 Exotic that was worth twice what the next most valuable exotic was worth based on my playthoughs, but in practice 3 of them are pretty similar and probably whichever one happened to best match my probe config at the time I thought was the most valuable.

Maybe it should just show the internal/base value as soon as you've gained all knowledge (Intergalactic Fishing actually just has one of the "knowledge" points you gain unlock showing the base value, and _also_ shows you your max value, but I thought that was too much info to try to cram in here ^_^).

Anyway, I've made some updates again and just pushed a new version live right about the time you finished your second playthough ^_^. Don't feel obligated to play again, but I've appreciated your feedback so far (also @local-minimum's over on Discord =).

With the latest update (you'll need to start a new game, not resume, as some of this is saved):
* Fixed the bad danger schedule that caused an instant lose and also put a limit on the "slope" it generates so there should be fewer "guaranteed to take damage" situations
* Slightly increased the 4x multiplier range (possibly when combined with the slope change, it's too easy now, I'll playtest again in a bit... ^_^)
* Moved affinities to the seeded random, so everyone should have the same difficulty (only the positive/negatives are flipped in a way that doesn't change the distribution), and ensured a better spread (should generally be at least 1 of each pos/neutral/negative for each affinity somewhere, and the closest two Exotics will never be very close)
* If you start mining by clicking, time doesn't start passing until you actually hold down space/mouse again
* Survey bonuses start smaller and end bigger as you get all 4

@jimbly -- Glad I could help! I think it's fun picking apart mechanics and seeing a game develop like this.

I must have missed the tutorial, or the language it used didn't make sense to me when I first read it, so I didn't understand the split between DW and AFRS until just now. That makes things a lot easier (and probably why the other playthrough took me 40 probes).

The new 4x mechanics also made it fairly easy to 4x almost every time. New pic in 15 probes (and even overshot by a bit) --


@sudocoffee Thanks for playing yet again =). Yeah, I pushed that build live, and then started playing myself and got 4x almost every time, and then got distracted with other things before I could fix it =)... I _think_ I've now done my final tweak of the danger/safety pattern generation and tweaked the bonus times to match so that on most of the Exotics it should still be at least a little challenge, if not very challenging, but still possible, to get 4X.

Totally understandable to miss that bit of the tutorial, it was in the middle of a giant info/lore dump before you had any idea what any of the terms meant :laughing:. I should probably add that info to the tooltips for later perusal...

Just so you know, the HTML5 link (on the proper submission links field) is pointing to the post-jam version:


(but I did play the compo version, linked in the middle of the description)

It took me a while to grasp the DWARFS system but I liked it. The risk-and-reward situation of having to choose between dismantling and shipping was interesting.

One thing I didn't quite get is the endless mode. I mean, endless modes usually end anyway when the player loses the game, but here there isn't a lose condition is there? Other than closing the game (which I did after I finished the 3rd planet), does it really never ends? Or was I just impatient and it's possible to lose at it? (sorry if that was the case 😅)

@wendel-scardua Ack, I forgot that was a thing =). The link at the top would get people to the Compo version (and, luckily, basically no one has played since I released the post-jam version :laughing: since I was distracted and not rating other people). Fixed now, though, thanks!

The endless mode is simply endless, if you're enjoying it and want to play more content / chase a higher score (of which you now have the highest =), there's no loss condition. In hindsight, even 2 planets was more than enough for the jam submission I should have left that out ^\_^.

Thanks for playing and glad you liked the DWARFS system!

Impressive entry. cool art and nice music, I thought I'm going into an FTL style game but it was more like a fishing game combined with guess the number game. I actually liked how those mini games fit together and it's a nice idea for a jam. Perhaps I'll try to mix and match two mechanics in a future jam as well.

I still love the art and music, it's really interesting. A bit hard to understand and a bit repetitive but still fun.