Excapade by Ch48
Embark on an escapade into the earth's crust in this bite-sized proof of concept!


About:
You are a hard-working employee of CRET ( the Crust Resource Excavation Team ). Your overseers over at TNL ( the Terra Navigators League ) are a demanding bunch to say the least. They're expecting record high earnings, and they're expecting them NOW. Collect as much Moolah as your little paws can carry, while fending off supernatural threats of eons past!
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-> Play it riiiiight here! <-
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Features:
- Blocks of varied durability
- Placeable bombs ( boom ! )
- THREE unique enemies to battle
- Treasure for you to seek out
- Dig strength upgrade shop
Controls:
- Arrow Keys - movement
- Space - select / defend
- Enter - use bomb
Credits:
Made in approximately 48 hours using GameMaker and MS Paint / Paint.net !
| Latest version | https://clinkerton.itch.io/excapade |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/excapade |
Ratings
| Overall | 379th | 3.63⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 273th | 3.62⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 435th | 3.25⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 331th | 3.859⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 386th | 3.787⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 399th | 2.905⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 441th | 3.556⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 102🗳️ | 93🗨️ |
Thanks for the game :)
Combat was a nice touch too! With some sounds and a moody soundtrack, game would rock! Great work!
Breaking the blocks feels nice and hoovering up coins was fun. Getting to upgrade your tool and then speeding through things felt wonderful.
I did wonder: is there any point in engaging the enemies or is it always better to run?
And in one level I couldn't find the shop. Is there always a shop and my dumbass just missed it, or is there sometimes no shop? If the latter, it might be nice to telegraph that to players. I enjoyed finding the shops, it made me explore the level fully rather than blasting towards the exit. Also, the shop felt like a relief (chance to heal and get stronger). It could add some nice tension if I know in advance there's no shop in a level. And it would change my approach to the leve, which you could design for.
There's a lot of potential for adding gameplay depth to this. I enjoyed the proof of concept. Good luck building on it!
I thought it was funny when I could see an enemy out of bounds, presumably as they walked out of the exit tile. I liked how this game let me just dig as fast as I could, and the turn based nature of enemy movement meant I could reasonably plan out where I could go to avoid them. Some more upgrades with impact, enemy behavior, and an end to reach is all I could ask for. Excellent work!
Fun and relaxing game :)
By the way, you can also hold down a key and the game will skip turns at crazy speed. I'm not sure if that's something you want to fix, but I thought I'd report it just in case:)
The fast digging is a quirk of the GameMaker HTML5 export. We're planning to keep developing the game after the jam ends, as a standalone thing and not a browser game - so this issue will essentially fix itself!
That *is* a skill issue (no shade though)
In this build of the game there really isn't much point in engaging in combat, other than to appreciate @clink's enemy designs *(which IMO is a really good reason in and of itself, wink wink)*
In the post-jam build there will be proper rewards for fighting enemies, though!
Really _digging_ (😜) the close ups/portraits and the style overall. Do the enemies move 100% random? Had a couple of unlucky movements haha. The progression is cool and fast (which is good for a jam game). Overall good job! i have to say, next time try to throw in a couple of sounds and animations like fade-ins and fade-outs. It REAAALLY makes the same game feel better! In any case, nice job!
Sound's coming in the full game, too!
(And cheers from you-know-where!)
Wish we had some more time to juice it up, I was *this* close to adding fade-ins and fade-outs. Alas, pizzazz has to wait for the post-jam release..
And yep, in the jam build the enemies all move at random. Honestly, I'm just glad there's 3 types of monsters and not just Pottergeist
Or… did I stop right before the diamonds?
Anyway, nice game! That first power upgrade made me wanna dig up every gold tile I saw for the next 3 or 4 levels.
Also, the monsters and the battle screen look really cool.
We didn't even implement a death screen, "u died lol" was an attempt to implement *some semblance* of a loss state with like 10 minutes to go lmao
I will say, I found the Chrome pop-up looking death message a little rude!