The gameplay felt unique and the menu had a cool retro feel. I wasn’t totally sure what the core goal or fun hook was, but maybe that’s just me. Keep going!

Menu was a bit cluttered for the first thing the player sees but once I got past that, the game was fun. I love the graphical style!

@mega-marlon Indeed, I had originally planned to place the shop in an intermediate screen between the menu where you select the speleologist and the game screen; but due to lack of time, I put everything back on the same screen.

I like minimalism and this style is cool well done
Too little gameplay i think?
All I realized is that I press forward and sometimes I can stop to fill up some stamina.
I unfortunately didn't understand anything else, neither what the point is nor how to play.

@tugaryn After a successful run (when you decide to stop on level ground with the REST button), and assuming you have earned discovery points, you can buy more rope and food, upgrade it, or unlock new spelunkers. On your first run, you are provided with one rope and one ration of food. Using a rope reduces the stamina lost on a steep slope. Eating earns you one or more stamina levels.

Very cool game! I like the mechanics :)

like the visual style. the game pace could be faster or tweakable by player.
need sth time to understand the slope limits the actions you can do. after that it provide kinds of fun.
and some times after i stop and eat, no actions are allowed to do, not sure if it's a bug

Took a little bit of playing to figure out how to kind of think about what actions to use when. Eventually found a nice rhythm to it and had a lot of fun! The aesthetic is also super up my street - minimalism with vector graphic-y lines and a few sparse particle effects and everything's got a cool neon-y glow? Incredible!

I think I could've done with a bit more hinting on the UI about what levels of slope I could eat and rest on, but I managed to figure it out well enough in the end!

Didn't quite understand the main goal in the game. but really liked the calming effect of controlling the character

Very nice UI. Game design is interesting. The pace is too slow from me. Inputs feels clunky

@kryakikrya Thank you.

@resty It is always possible to move forward or stop.

Spoiler ;-)
* using rope needs a slope >= 45°
* eating needs a slope <= 30°
* activating rest (saving discovery points and returning to menu) needs a slope <= 5°

@jhax Thank you. It is true that the inactive state of the action buttons is almost indistinguishable from their active state (the gray part is just a little darker).

@Seiko The goal of the game is whatever you want to achieve :
* for example, unlock all upgrades and unlocks
* aiming to reach a certain number of discovery points in one run
* aiming to reach a certain depth
* etc.

@roxxorxx I understand ; i just had two friends test the game:
* One took a little interest in it to please me, but I don't think he'll want to play it again.
* The other stopped playing Path of Exile 2 to play it for over an hour and a half.

Very good looking, interesting idea. It lacks some tutorial and events imo and I wish there was a sound. Great UI, I like it.

I had some difficulties figuring out everything at first, I feel like having so many text elements at the start can be discouraging for some players. I enjoyed the unique navigation and the challenge of managing stamina.

I agree with @roxxorxx - the pace is a bit too slow. Otherwise, it’s quite an enjoyable game! It could benefit from adding some sounds and music. The graphics are kind of cool, though maybe something a bit less abstract could work better - but I’m not entirely sure about that.

I agree with you, @roxxorxx and @yancharkin, about user interface : i should replace some text elements by icons (and add tooltip on it). With more times, i should add some sounds : cave ambiance + sounds as feedback on actions or events.

I think the first level could be shorter, even though you accumulated a lot of points you cannot spend them for a while.
Rest doesn't seem to do anything, probably i didn't get to the stage where it can be used.

I didn't understand everything about how to play and why I lost, but I really liked the visual style, it's a pity there was no music

I love the look of this entry. The pacing is slow and methodical, and could be very meditative if it had some audio atmosphere. Definitely would have played longer if it included sound. Did two runs and unlocked some stuff.

Turning cave exploration into a UI-based experience is super creative. The minimalistic design really works here, and it somehow manages to be super engaging despite (or maybe because of) its simplicity.
I definitely spent a while poking around before realizing... oh, there’s a manual. Should’ve read that first =)
Adding some music would help as well.
Really cool idea, and great execution overall. Nice work!

Hello there! Interesting concept you came up with for the theme. I liked the random generation of the cave itself. I just wish the UI bar wouldn't have been in the bottom right corner, because this way it was blocking the view of what is coming up ahead. Overall, nice entry, and as many others have mentioned before me, some simple music would've made a big difference in terms of game atmosphere. Nice one:)

There's a kernel of something terrific here. It's a game I wish I could grab onto for a month and just work on myself. Without graphics or sound wasn't the worst thing in the world as it activated my imagination and there was a definite tension in that I really wanted to get more wonders but a palpable relief when I found a flat area with a single bar left. I wasn't sure what would happen if I dropped to 0 and didn't want to find out.

I think my main criticism that should have been within the budget was to improve the presentation of information, explanation of some key mechanics (more slope = more drain), etc, considering there was already a giant wall of text anyway (itself a crit). Button feedbacks at least would've been great. Literally any sound would have done.

Hey there, nice entry :)

First up I think you have some really polished UI. I also did not uncover any bugs (at least that I know of), so it's clear you really polished what you released. The visuals, whilst simple, are clean.

The first menu is a lot of text. Now while I did read it to understand the game to the best of my abilities, I know many people will skim over it and you might loose them then and there (I've struggled watching live streamers do that for some of our games). You probably know this yourself, but I just wanted to mention a tutorial-style introduction to your mechanics would be very beneficial.

One thing I was severely missing in the game was some sort of *feedback*. Be it audio, visual, or otherwise, I was missing some sort of reaction to what is happening on screen. I pressed rope and was wondering if anything happened at all (it did decrease the stock). I was mashing the action buttons to see if anything would react (Be it a "you can't use that here"). You mentioned in the comments here the requirements for the actions. Why not attach that to the buttons in the game? A simple popup "The slope is too steep to rest here..." would have gone a long way. Perhaps you had this planned and ran out of time, which of course is something that can happen.

Audio in general would have been nice, even just small blips and bloops, but I get that when finishing the game it is of lower priority. But the UI seems very polished, so perhaps you can allocate a little of that time to add little effects or feedback for the player :)

In summary I think you had a nice idea of an iterative-exploration-game with an upgrade loop, and I think you have UI Design and general game loop design nailed, if you now add a little more feedback and immersion for the player in future games it will go even further beyond to the next level :)

This is a unique idea, I like it, exploring is always fun! But the initial UI screen has such an overload of information, it was really hard to process. I wish the UI was a bit bigger in game, but well done!