LudumData

Decender of the Deep by Remco

[raw]
made by Remco for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Decender of the Deep

Can you find an emerald, and get back to the surface with 'hands' to spare and a bunch of points?

Try building a mine out of cards! Move the character around, select a card, and bam -- there's a ladder to climb on, a torch to light your way -- or a new hole to climb through.

Beware of the earthquakes though! A new turn starts with a rumble, every 3 cards played! You'll survive the impact,, but the ground around you might be rearranged.

screenie_start.png

(Note: Th blue 'diamond' pickups 'just' give extra points. You need a green emerald and return it to the surface to win.)

Link https://codeberg.org/bremco/ldjam57/
Link https://remco.itch.io/decender-of-the-deep
Link https://remco.itch.io/decender-of-the-deep
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/decender-of-the-deep

Ratings

Overall 546th 3.4⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 556th 3.2⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 299th 3.481⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 486th 3.615⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 697th 2.981⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 476th 3⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 568th 2.457⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 770th 2.904⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 31🗨️

Feedback

jester1454
08. Apr 2025 · 16:10 UTC
interesting concept of a card game about digging, I'm hooked! I scored a maximum of 13 thousand points. At first I didn't fully understand the rules, but then I understood the cyclical nature of the move and the issuance of cards, I liked it, cool!
LDJam user 282870
08. Apr 2025 · 18:10 UTC
I really liked the game. You took a simple card game and mad it about digging. It was really good. The music was good, sound effects.

I like the little earth quake every once in awhile.

The best thing was the ability to end the turn early and reshuffle the available tools.

You have the start of a really nice game.
Wolfier
08. Apr 2025 · 18:27 UTC
It is a decent idea. I think it would be nice to know what the earthquakes actually do. Sometimes they open up the floor and sometimes they close previous spaces and sometimes they do nothing at all. It's difficult to know how to play with them when they're not really consistent.
Stronf
08. Apr 2025 · 18:29 UTC
neat game, i enjoyed it
was not clear at start, but it was quite intuitive and clear, managed to beat the game with 5 turns to go
liked the unpredicatable nature of earthquakes, even though only understood that when i almost reached the green emerald
Keely-Brown
09. Apr 2025 · 15:55 UTC
The mechanics are pretty neat. I think there's some neat interactions with the movement being independent of the deck in terms of the timing. Mechanically I feel like there's a lot of neat stuff you could do with this as a base. Some of the onboarding was a little tricky to understand. It took some experimenting to get a hold of what was happening with the exclamation marks and how the flow of the game worked. But once it clicked - I had a pretty solid time trying to achieve the goal.
Transkuja
09. Apr 2025 · 19:07 UTC
I had a hard time understanding what was going on, but hey, got my emerald and managed to ran away :sunglasses:
LDJam user 179298
09. Apr 2025 · 20:09 UTC
I'm not sure I get the mechanics of the game, I just dug straight down to the emerald. I think it has great potential though.
🎤 Remco
11. Apr 2025 · 10:12 UTC
@vladimperator thanks!

> I just dug straight down to the emerald.

You have to get back to the surface (within the turn limit) to win though. (If you can also succeed at that: The main challenge is to get the point total up while doing that, by also collecting the diamonds.)
DevilXrom
11. Apr 2025 · 10:32 UTC
Interesting idea with cards and digging. Didn’t get it right away, but then it clicked. The earthquakes were a bit unexpected but made things more fun. Managed to grab the emerald and escape — had a good time!
K48UTO
11. Apr 2025 · 12:48 UTC
interesting combination of genres. mined diamonds, but then lost for unknown reasons, I'm sure I wasn't standing on the red cell.
🎤 Remco
11. Apr 2025 · 14:37 UTC
@k48uto There's a turn-limit '# hands before game-over' that shows in the lower left corner -- it'll turn red if below 5 turns and scale up if below 3. Maybe that's what happened?

(_Edit_: Also, you'll survive the red cells -- it's just the spots where there might be cave-ins of various sorts, closing and opening up some spaces -- sometimes with 'undiggable' spots. In order to make that work it never quite happens if you're also standing there.)
Eugenik
14. Apr 2025 · 03:06 UTC
In love with the atmosphere too! Good job :D.
YT-TY
14. Apr 2025 · 13:54 UTC
This is highly thematic and innovative in its gameplay.
Thorne Lee
15. Apr 2025 · 03:06 UTC
I love this type
LDJam user 243193
15. Apr 2025 · 07:43 UTC
Interesting combo of digging and deckbuilding game. I'm glad the earthquake didn't bury me alive allowing me to resume my progress. Speaking of which, my run was messy but despite of that, I've managed to find the green emerald and brought it to the surface.
Pegasus
15. Apr 2025 · 14:58 UTC
This is a cool use of a 'deck' type game. Everything about the game felt snappy and satisfying. My only critique was that I didn't really feel like I was ever in danger but perfectly tweaking difficulty in a jam is near impossible and better to be winnable than impossible. Really good entry guys
I_POTS
17. Apr 2025 · 11:23 UTC
Cute game! I like this gameplay!
JAMESDEV
19. Apr 2025 · 22:49 UTC
Super interesting concept! The scaling was off when I maximized the window but apart from that the game felt snappy!
Joror
23. Apr 2025 · 21:38 UTC
Neat lil mining game! The cards were pretty clear with their intent, but the exclamation marks were a bit harder to understand, since they don't hurt; I guess they're there to make it harder to get up? The lighting works as a nice visual effect. :fire:
I kind of expected a bit more pressure, or some additional card drafting / rotation going on.
Music is grindy an mining appropriate!