Nightmare Digger by OnnGD

You play as a miner who tries to dig up as much gold as possible in the mine over and over again. And even death will not stop him from setting a new record.
Every death will be accompanied by comments...
Movement - WASD / Arrow keys on the keyboard
Move your mouse to light your way!
Collect energy to replenish the supply of light and hearts to replenish health.
To dig ore, click on it with the left mouse button.
Avoid mushrooms:
*Green mushroom deals damage
*Blue mushroom teleports to a random part of the cave
*Purple mushroom inverts controls
To get to the lower level of the cave, you can find a ladder under the stone, which you need to click on with the left mouse button or space while on it.
Avoid zombies!
This is my first game, which I made specifically for the game jam Ludum Dare 57.
I'd love to hear your comments!
Ratings
| Overall | 225th | 3.169⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 174th | 3.191⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 257th | 2.699⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 145th | 3.588⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 232th | 3.022⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 132th | 3.327⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 117th | 2.939⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 225th | 3.037⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 70🗳️ | 77🗨️ |
Music really adds to the feel.
I will be watching you.)
@badpinkchicken when I added music and sound effects, I was surprised at how the game was transformed)
@dnp yes, you are right, the energy balance is very bad. As well as the fact that there is simply no difficulty progression, I did not have time to make it. Thanks for the feedback)
@dstoc when I let a girl play the game without much explanation of the gameplay, she also figured it out with interest, it seems I didn't make it too complicated
@k1n thank you, I think so too)
There are many ideas that will complement the game, but which I did not have time to implement in 48 hours. I will try to bring the game to mind)
@cherrybcake while I was testing the game, I myself panicked and swore at the inverted controls many times. It seems the idea worked)
I think you game fits the theme very well, the "mine" is a good scenario for "depths". Also, the design of darkness adds some taste.
However, I got to say there are still some work to do before the game meets the metric of fun and innovation.
Considering it's your first game, very good work! Looking forward to your next game!
I'm not sure if it's got an end state or if it's just last as long as you can - I think some sort of progress indicator like a floor number would help here.
@argensis There is no final level in the game and it was not planned, but there was an idea to make a difficulty progression depending on the floor. Unfortunately, I did not have time to implement it
in general, I wanted to add dynamite, which could kill them and blow up large rocks, but I didn't have time to do it)
@psychomonster nice words, bro)
The music was nice, the pixelart too, and I had fun playing :grin: I went up to 245 before dying :thumbsup:
Maybe add some feedbacks everywhere : difference in the ground texture to see when moving, animation when hurt, when taking the ladder, when getting shroomed, when zombies attacks, etc... and it'll be a very nice litte game! :clap:
I was confused when the character said something about buttons?? :joy:
After the character dies, random humorous, caustic phrases are displayed on the screen, I took this idea as an analogy from the game "I Wanna Be The Boshy", where after death the game kind of laughs. I'm glad that someone paid attention to this:D
thanks for the kind words<3
when I finish this game, I might adopt a feature to spawn broken stairs (this will be visible visually), maybe this will give the player false hope and increase the feeling of difficulty of the game
The music is a blast! The game matches the vibe, it has a cool arcade non-stop feel to it. One thing that could help making the enemies a bit more fair would've been some kind of sillhouette or an arrow showing where the enemy is coming from, because the low visibility can make them very tough to evade. Other than that, nice entry, good job! I kept trying to build a highscore but only got to 116 I think!
Классно! Можно было бы добавить ещё счётчик этажей ^_^
Для первой игры - очень здорово, молодец ^_^
Nice game, i little stressfull from my point of view but like it, very nice to play.
Congrats for this entry!
@flying-butter-studio I tried really hard to get that stress effect while playing and was afraid I wouldn't be able to get the right feeling. But I think I did it)
Thanks for the feedback<3
@cinar Ideally, each floor should be completed quickly, it would be difficult to remember the procedural generation of the level each time in such darkness. But there really is a lack of variety in the art of the ground and some decorations
@enad96 we are on the same wavelength, bro
that's exactly what I was thinking about when I was making this game:D
@r8teful you are absolutely right, the game needs a tutorial for some things. But at the same time, I would not like to describe to people in advance what, for example, mushrooms do, so that each effect is unexpected for them and creates an additional challenge in a difficult situation. I think it is worth explaining the basic controls and the goal. Thanks for the feedback!
I liked that occasionally (or when you pick up energy?) all the nearby rocks and pickups get illuminated, and I liked the blue mushroom especially to run away from enemies if I was getting swarmed!
I also think the different mushroom hazards are very cool. It is a solid bases for a fun, interesting, randomized game.
The music is very nice, and I love that droning metallic bass sound throughout. The sounds aren't bad either especially for using bfxr. Cool looking character, zombies look good. All very cohesive
So my main issue with this is the UI is quite hard to read. The thin black text in front of bold colors is difficult to decipher, and it takes a lot of focus off the game. Replacing, for example, the health numbers with 5 heart icons would have been huge.
When it comes to the time and other things displayed, it made it really hard to tell what was going on overall. Did I just die? Did I reset? How much time do I have? How far did I get this time? Eventually I realized that the goal is simply points, and it shows your high score. However the initial impression of the game is a bit of "I feel like I'm running around doing stuff for no reason".
A simple "You died, you got this many points, and survived this long" screen would have really helped especially on those first impressions. Not to sacrifice the sassy judgement, I loved that part :)
Also last nitpick here, I wish the actual descent into deeper floors was a more important aspect to the game given the theme. There really isn't much different between each floor, and even a simple "you made it 10 floors" would give that sense of depth. In its current state, it does feel like it could tie into the theme a bit more.
I really didn't have issues with the gameplay itself, it was pretty tight with the zombie speed. Sometimes it's a bit unresponsive to enter the next floor, but just a nitpick, I think that aspect was well polished.
Overall very good job,! You put in enough features and tuning to make some solid dynamic gameplay with interesting obstacles. The randomness is used effectively, and it's quite entertaining. I think the UI, while it didn't make the game more challenging, it made it a bit harder to get engaged with what's going on. Well done!
After the game jam, I will fix everything mentioned above. Just today I was thinking about how to improve the interface and came to the same conclusion that replacing health with hearts is a great idea. And if you also place them above the character's head, then it's just gorgeous.
Now I am writing down in a notebook everything that I need to improve and it seems to me that the game will become much better after such detailed criticism. Once again, thank you very much)
Thanks for this game!