Holy Moly! by Thomas_Bringer

Moles are fighting back! Play as a mole and dig your way through the fields, but watch out—farmers are armed and ready to protect their land.
Play in browser or download for PC!

Dig holes and sneak into the farmer’s field!

Fight with your shovel and go underground to dodge bullets!

https://youtu.be/usJPECZd86c
Tips: - Prefer downloading over playing in browser to avoid lag - Prefer playing with a controller if possible - Alternate control schemes: - Move: Arrow keys / Dig: Space or Z / Attack: X - Move: WASD / Dig: Right click / Attack: Left click
P.-S.: liked Holy Moly? Then maybe wishlist my upcoming Steam game, Bleached!
| Link | https://thomas-bringer.itch.io/holy-moly |
| Link | https://github.com/ThomasBringer/LD57/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/holy-moly |
Ratings
| Overall | 69th | 3.743⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 43th | 3.776⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 124th | 3.44⭐ | 110🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 179th | 3.419⭐ | 107🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 50th | 4.051⭐ | 110🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 94th | 3.5⭐ | 106🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 35th | 3.593⭐ | 104🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 139th | 3.457⭐ | 107🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 65🗳️ | 100🗨️ |
Very nice game, it was very pleasurable to play and felt so dynamic !
For the web version, it looks like you have similar issues as I did (freezes when loading something at runtime).
I would advise you to try exporting the game with "Thread support" (+ enable "SharedArrayBuffer" on itch.io) and using preload() on the particules, sounds, or anything you instanciate during the gameplay, it should reduce greatly the freezes.
Great work !
It would be nice to have a charging animation for the farmer, to get a sense of when to duck, especially a to close range.
Very nice entry, good luck!
I also have created badges for the readme that you can use:
```


```
Consider using these **topics** to make your Ludum Dare entry more discoverable:
- `game`
- `game-development`
- `ludum-dare`
- `ludumdare`
- `ludumdare57`
- `ludum-dare-57`
- `ld57`
@yvanor Thanks that's some great help! I think i was able to fix it. In my specific case Thread support / SharedArrayBuffer was not required, i followed this tutorial and it worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbDj9V2MZvw
@dhim Thanks for playing! I added the topics to my github repo, That's cool to have a list of ludum dare repos!
However this game is really hard for me and I hope that there can be savepoints between levels. awawa All in all I like this game!
PS: Also thanks for sharing the godot lag fix :smile: Seems like a lot of people had issue there.
Charming to play as a ninja mole! It was satisfying to dig and I actually feel those poor farmers were pretty much defenseless. Some cues would be nice, maybe a close range attack for the farmers as well or a second kind of hazard. I like how you took into consideration emerging under objects and how the mole keeps underground in those instances, definitely a massive plus how those details were tackled.
Good work!
@flying-butter-studio thanks!
Altough sadly I did find the game hard to play. The control scheme with the X was quite uncomfortable and I couldn't managed to use the mouse to attack and dig (I played on itch).
Maybe some kind of animation cue when a farmer was about to shot would have been helpful because currently I feel like i just have to rely on luck not to get shot.
Ah and I almost forget but great work on the audio too !
Bien joué, toujours impressionant de voir ce qu'une seule personne peut faire en compo ! :)
Congratulations for your entry ! (and I saw you did the game with the snail I also liked a lot in the last Ludum).
It is a very well polished result for such a small amount of time and an interesting mechanic as well!
I love how actually you decided to implement the theme and how you did this cuttable grass.
Very well! Good job! :3
Speaking of visuals, this entry has simple but stunning graphics, I'm very curious about the mole's animation. Is the mole a 3D object? Or is it 2D but procedurally animated?
Controls are great. The game is super easy, because you can dive into the ground at any time to avoid the enemies, and the mole is fast, so it's not particularly challenging. Despite being a short game, it's technically impressive and incredibly polished. There are lots of details that pop up (the animation, the cutting of grass, destroying trees, etc). Music/audio matches the game very well. Great job!
I think the gameplay would be improved by something like a cooldown on tunneling, maybe combined with some other options, the combat got a little silly (but was a great base).
Too bad there is not some kind of development and more complexity I was upset when I saw the end of the game
Unusual mechanics, thank you very much!
There's seems the be a bug where the walls / fences are not lined up correctly in some cases, in 2 out of my 3 runs it basically soft-locked the game as I couldn't get to the last farmer and kill him.
Besides that I loved it
i suggest making maybe a cooldown to the dig mechabic- because it was too easy to exploit it!
loved it, congrats! hope to see more of it :)
The art looks nice and the character design of the main character is cute.
Having more impact if you get hit by a projectile would improve the gameplay even more. The character could be pushed away a little bit for example.
The controls feel super satisfying! I had a blast using the digging mechanic. I like that you can hit the bullets and make them disappear. Cool, little game! :)
Also, a great opening tutorial. Clean and effective way to tell players everything they need to know. Kudos.
And I love the title :D
I did find myself wanting more variety in the game play once I got past the first few farmers, but that's totally acceptable for a jam game.
Also i really appreciate that you can break the bullets with you shovel attack
I was like "How dare you forbid me from entering these lands?!" when jumping on those farmers with a shovel.
Loved the cute procedural (I'm guessing) animations, I certainly recognized the same style as your previous snail game :)
Short and fun, I wish it was a bit longer with maybe a huge combine harvester boss at the very end, but oh well, jam time is very limited.
Nice stealth-action! Almost like MGS ^_^
I also like the addition of destructible environment a lot
I can see this being expanded upon nd being turned into a really fun game
On a more serious note, I think one thing that would make this game even better is if enemies had a bit of a tell before they attacked. (Though my game has the same problem)
Good job.
Art is cute and goes super well with the game. I especially admire the animation when the mole turns, the way the snout and the eyes turn so smoothly, that's incredibly cool! Like I mentioned, sound design is super tight as well, both with the sound effects that make everything feel good and the bopping background music, I like that a lot, I think it fits well. Very well-done game, great job!
Gameplay is peak ngl!
Sound is good (sorry, not quite as breathtaking)
Innovation is peak ngl!
Your game is peak ngl!
I guess trying to melee guys with shootgun is not the smartest idea, but I did finish this :) Well done!
The only thing I could complain of is that I had to restart a new game because an enemy spawned on an obstacle, and it was impossible to hit him from any accessible point.
Good job, nice game!
I love it!
Continue the hard work !
When you perfectly timed burrowing to miss the bullets it felt really good!
Very interresting gameplay mechanics for this one ! Good beats ! Very fun to play !!

As mentioned in the comments section, maybe digging was a bit too powerful and could've been nerfed with a time limit that automatically forced you out of the ground so you can't basically camp underground. It was quite easy to avoid getting shot that way. It was difficult to exit the ground between the fence and the wall tho. Tight squeeze.
I really liked the not strictly necessary but satisfying ability to break signs, and it was fun to reach a really big one at the end of the game!
I think I would've preferred to be centred on the screen while digging; being at the top of it felt a bit uncomfortable and I think it made me a little motion sick 😅
On the whole quite slick, fun, and funny. Very cool!