Hollowspire by simex

Hollowspire
a chill, clicker-inspired game where you dig through blocks of dirt and stone, craft, and upgrade your abilities — all in pursuit of reaching the depths and uncovering its mysteries.
- Use mouse click to dig through the world.
Have fun

| Link | https://simex.itch.io/hollowspire |
| Link | https://simex.itch.io/hollowspire |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/hollowspire |
Ratings
| Overall | 23th | 4.343⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 25th | 4.28⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 206th | 3.665⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 19th | 4.445⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 23th | 4.642⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 147th | 3.629⭐ | 122🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 58th | 4.24⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
The only thing I wished for while playing was an easy way to manage and view miner's equipment. late game it was hard to tell who needed what and hard to give the right miner what was missing.
feedback from ui guy:
bit too much clicking in the beginning but with full mining operation its nice.
crafting ui could do some improvements (if you switch item during crafting it should restart crafting, crafted items shouldnt block crafting others or if its a mechanic - make the 'ready to pick' item more urgent / standing out. craft button could use some better color for enabled too). It wasnt clear how to apply items too at first so a hint about it would be nice. UI in general could use some more 'clicky'-meaty feeling of whats toggled whats not. And last small thing - replace words 'attack' 'hit' 'damage' with something else - its not a combat.
Thanks for playing!
Great clicker game, good job. Had a nice time :)
really nice work


The shift from peaceful and calm to dark and ominous in visuals and atmosphere is such a cool idea, and I loved the hand drawn artstyle everything has, it's super charming and gives the game a lot of personality. I also thought taking care of the little guys by giving each of them tools was really cute, it really felt like I had a team of goobers helping me.
it feels so satisfying to click because of the animations the pointer and the great sound design. I thought the length was just right, not too short and not too long, and the general presentation and feel of the interactive elements did a fantastic job keeping me hooked
It is a very good entry, I believe it will be among the top.
I ascended twice, than dropped on this moment.
I would suggest miners to mine the block somebody already mining if there is nothing else to do.
And also would love them to mine horizontally as they are quite bad at getting at the top of the block and sometimes they just standing just because they dom't know how to climb.
Anyway, it is very close to a game that can be released on the marketplace and if it sould be there - I would buy a copy.
All the best to you!
The only thing that disapointed me were the miners. They were pretty useless even after upgrading :( They are nice fellows but they are so weak that only thing that worth upgrading was power clicks and do everything myself. I tought I'll keep upgrading and adding miners and then just look the game to play itself at the end. But no, I had to do it manually anyway, and I don't like do things manually :D But I get it was kind of a purpose, it fits to the genre. So don't take it as a critique, it was awesome game!
It's still a very fresh artstyle for a clicker game, and the clicker mechanics with the upgrades and all were really cool too! overall great work!
As for the gameplay, one thing that frustrated me quite a bit is that my expectation for these types of games is to quickly start automating the processes and not having to click as much (only if I want to). However, for this game, that didn't happen. I felt like no matter what I did the miners were kind of useless and took forever to break a block. Even the auto attack was very inneficient compared to just clicking. Also, money and some of the resources took to much effort to go up - there wasn't much to do apart from clicking the blocks for a long time. Playing through some ascencions, this got a bit better but I was never able to fully automate and feel like the owner of an empire muahaha. So my feedback would be to balance it out so there's a bit more automationg since earlier in the game, or at least less of an imbalance between the automated options and just clicking (clicking is way too OP).
While playing I asked myself "How did he manage to do that art?" And I'll tell you that the music that increases the tension from step to step is the ideal sauce for his secret.
Congratulations on the excellent game.
This game is absolutely fantastic. From the evolution of the music through the layers, to the little animation. Everything is really, really good. It is a masterpiece for a clicker, and it was only made in such a short notice.
If you add other things to this games and published it on steam, I'm sure it will take of.
Congratulations ! Please continue to work on this game and I'm looking forward your next one !
I also loved the "ascend" option! I wish it was easier equipping my lil miners but otherwise this was fantastic 🧡
Probably my favourite game of the bunch I've played so far, only issue is equipping the miners is a little difficult because some of them will steal the item even if they have it equipped. Other bug I noticed was if you start crafting an item you can then switch to a different one and you can essentially make the best items for 4 stone (price of the sandals).
Keep up the great work :raised_hands:
Unfortunately there is a rendering bug when opening the game in Firefox :/ Opening it with Chrome works fine though.

Sometimes I hallucinated miners were sculpting or discovering treasures, or dirt looked like some blob with 2eyes ... I think I played too much. Great job, this is among the best ones I've played so far !
Having the little guys to equip is so cute. :P
Found a minor visual bug, in addition to the magenta triangle posted earlier: (this is the material list for second boots)

That game was a nice and curious experience.
It would be better if miners won't chase after dropped equipment that they already have. It was really tough to equip miners well because really fast miners prevent others to be that fast as well. Also, when there's only few blocks that already occupied by miners other won't pick up any equipment though they are free from digging.
That was all troubles that I had. Otherwise, I have only positive impressions. The style of the characters reminds me of the inhabitants of Stacklands. Final screen had some really cool effects :D Well done!!
The visuals are really nice. The UI is very clear and I like the crafting feature.
Although it's "just" a clicker-game, it was a nice twist you put into the genre by using this tower format.

best game in LD57 without doubt