Good game about digging a hole...cave

Cool meditative game! All that distracted was the music on the radio and the game music at the same time. I liked music on the radio more!

This is quite impressive for a solo dev project! That said, the game isn’t really in a playable state at the moment, even as a prototype. It might’ve helped to get a few people you know to playtest it.

It seems the trees are bugged... for me, the oxygen zone appeared in the middle of the trees instead of around each one.

The money balancing is pretty harsh. You dig slowly just to find items that aren’t worth much. On my second playthrough, I invested everything into upgrading the shovel (which is very expensive), but the improvement wasn’t very noticeable.

The concept is interesting, but the gameplay became frustrating after a while because progression felt too slow. Honestly, it might’ve been better if the game was unbalanced in the other direction, giving the player too much, just to make testing the core idea more enjoyable.

Still, great job! Maybe next time, try to deliver something more playable, even if that means reducing the game’s scope. Playtesting and making sure the experience is fun are important parts of development too.

Note: for those who wonder, you press the F key to put items down.

To make a game like this for 3 days is just unbelievable! It's insanely cool! Very enjoyable gameplay, even though some of the mechanics didn't work for me for some reason, such as planting trees and I didn't quite understand why you need to throw coins to the pipe, anyway if you really did it solo it's GREAT!

@fullbuff I barely managed to finish the project, so there may be questions about the balance) but I decided to follow your advice and tweaked the data a little to make it easier to play, thank you for advice

I am super impressed by what's here. Amazing to see this pulled off in a game jam. I saw a game like this on steam and I just assumed it would take a long time to make a digging system. Nice work!

(Oh and mouse sensitivity is too small!)

WHOA! This is an impressive project. I would play it a bit more, but my sxxxtty laptop is way too old for it. I'm on a vaccation trip so i saved the link to my "want to take a closer look" list.
Cool Game for what I've seen so far!

@psychomonster I'm glad you appreciated my work.

impressive game! 3d models and textures look very cool

Good job for making a game, you know what needs to be fixed, btw anvil menu bugged on me and didnt allow me to close so i had to quit

@d-demetori thanks for you feedback i upload new build, i fixed that bug )

Really cool concept and mood! It just needs a bit more polish and balancing. With some tweaks and playtesting, this could be a super fun experience. Great work for a jam game!

impressive for a short game, doesn't run very well on my laptop, but awesome graphics!

Good interpretation of the theme.

An awesome game with beautiful graphics and pleasant music. The gameplay is addictive, though the somewhat clunky movement system holds back full enjoyment. The character keeps getting stuck, and it's often tricky to hit the right spot with your shovel - you want to progress without accidentally destroying your makeshift ladder.

I didn't finish the game because it felt like the upgrades weren't enough to get a good output of resources. But other than that it is a cool idea. You would think its kinda classic at first to make a game about digging with the depths theme, but I liked that you had to be careful where and how to dig to make your platform to simplify your work afterwards. With some polishing it could be great !

Great game, very impressive for a Jam! I felt like the oxygen limit, stamina limit and light range were a bit too constraining...

Really great entry! I only stopped because I soft locked myself and couldn't move, else I'd still be digging :laughing:
Loved the humor when trying to exit :eyes:
Would have been cool to allow digging by holding the mouse down, and to empty your backpack in one go if you maintain E (or at least speed it up)
Really liked it, great job :pick:

Музыка наложилась друг-на-друга, прикольная механика копания и в целом приятный медитативный геймплей!
Иногда подфрижевает, мб из-за прогрузки музыки, хз 🤔 Прикольная игра!

Played on latest update so I didn't leave a rating here, but did rate it on itch! Loved the game, felt very (and strangely) addictive.
I thought I had softlocked myself as well, but then realized you made stamina come back slowly while standing still, very clever workaround!
Also, don't know if bug or intended, but I managed to pay off the debt because the counting seemed to be funny. I remember putting in ~450 gold to get to 1k once and jumping up to 1700 instead, and it just seemed to ramp from there. Still, I very much appreciated it because I could beat the game in one sitting and it doesn't look like it has a save system yet.
Otherwise, I agree that the stamina felt too limited to start, and bought two upgrades and didn't notice any significant difference. Oxygen was also a bit limited but that is kind of the point around that mechanic, and I never felt like it hampered me as much as stamina, just made me dart in and out and choose areas that weren't no oxygen zones.
Loved how open ended the game was with all the different dig areas, I felt like I was going my own way, not just along a predefined route you had set, and I liked finding the little secret area past the first room!

@oter thank you very much, this really motivates me to continue making the game, comments like these really help make the game better

A very addictive and fun simulator! All the mechanics are well thought out and interconnected. I felt like a child, feeling happy with every beautiful and not so beautiful stone I found. And how inspiring was to found new rooms behind the excavated walls, I wanted to dig deeper and deeper!

I agree with other comments about the high difficulty, but this can be corrected by playtests and time, which is simply not enough on the jam. In any case, I really liked the game!

The joke with the exit pleasantly stunned and made me laugh :D Thank you very much for the game!

The starting area's models are great for setting the tone and I could understand all of the tools. Restarting to try every tool at the start would have saved me some time. Refilling air faster would be nice, I just rested instead since it was faster. On day 80 I got stuck behind a tree and 2 crates by jumping behind it.

I started this game in a bad mood so my comments towards the beginning are fairly negative, but if you look ahead in the VOD you'll see I played this game for an hour and 46 minutes, which is easily longer than I've played any game in one sitting this jam. I wasn't able to beat it but the freeform digging ignites my sense of exploration like no other game has this jam. PLEASE keep working on this and add more structures to be found, more materials to dig through and collect, and more tools to dig with in the future. This game has me more excited about the possibility of expansion than 90% of games I've played thus far, there is some serious serious potential here and I was glued to the game for every second. I've played a lot of games where you dig in a cave. None of them are as cool as this one. Fantastic work. Change the name though lol

https://www.youtube.com/live/7r97dJUIDyk?si=6ng8c2X1JpZOrixH&t=7200

https://youtu.be/tOkmb7fJyv8

Thank you for submitting your game to my stream. I'm sorry you didn't catch me there, but I did play it off the stream and made a video for you :slight_smile:

Great experience with very polished and addictive gameplay. I wonder how many secrets you hid in the mines! It feels like I barely scratched the surface yet I did beat the game.

Well done!

https://youtu.be/tOkmb7fJyv8

*For some reason site doesn't allows to post link from that account so making a double comment.

~Xp

@xpmonster @empyreans thanks to your video review i understood what needs to be fixed in the game

A very well polished and large game, but the game loop felt a bit monotonous. Mine until oxygen runs out, sell, sleep, check for upgrades. It gets a bit stale after a while and while I appreciate that you added a lot of cool things around the map, it still doesn't change the main activity that you perform

Aside from gameplay, art was nice, there was good ambient and I am rather impressed with how much you've managed to pack. It's rare to see people create a game like this in just 3 days. I can see you have quite the experience in quickly putting together projects

@dock-frankenstein Thank you for playing my game, it's very nice to read this, and yes, I agree that the main problem of the game is monotony, if you have ideas on how to diversify the game, that would be great in future updates I will take this into account

Thanks for sharing the link on stream. Just got to it. Framerate tanked during play so I'll give it a try offstream.
Unfortunately I don't feel like it would be fair to rate a post jam update. But first impression is it looks nice and has a great atmosphere.