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Digging Down Debt's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #150 | 4.247 | 4.247 |
| Narrative | #802 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
| Audio | #973 | 3.582 | 3.582 |
| Artwork | #1223 | 3.953 | 3.953 |
| Creativity | #1870 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
Ranked from 170 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
7 days ticking away to pay back your debt, 40 digs per day to find the money you need...
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Comments
Highly addictive! Really took me back to my Roblox Mining Simulator childhood lol. I loved the chill music and the sound design (breaking blocks felt like ASMR). Congrats!!
Thank youuu! The sound effects really did wonders for the polished feel. We had a place holder sound for most of development, so when we finally replaced it with individual sounds per block and per treasure type we all were like "...whoa, that makes a HUGE difference!" Lesson learned for me is don't ever skimp on sound design! haha
This is a fantastic entry! I love how you managed to make a cozy feeling game, whilst simultaneously hitting the theme on the head. A really well polished game, you should be very happy with how this one turned out
So kind :) Thank you so much!
Incredibly well polished, fantastic work! Had a lot of fun playing this, even if I lost a few houses along the way.
I love this game so much, I could just keep playing it for hours. For me, this wonderfully captures the idea of counting down and there's something about the setting and the allure of a possible cavern of riches underground that make the main fantasy of the game so appealing. The feeling of trying to remember to dig in spots to reach a huge stash of treasures was particularly satisfying when I reached them. You've really made something special!
Thank youuuuu! :D Such kind words. I'm glad the cozy vibe came through, in the first design we had a timer but we all felt it was too much stress and settled on the number of digs being your countdown instead. Getting to take your time and look around felt WAY better.
And yessss that's exactly what I was hoping for re: remembering you saw something interesting, buying power-ups that night, and going back to it the next morning to explore. :)
I quite enjoyed this! Very fun decision making. Sometimes I accidently dig when I don't want to but that's probably a skill issue
Thanks for playing! I'm glad the decision making tension came through, I expected a lot of players to just kinda bomb through things hehe.
We've heard the feedback about accidental digging a couple of times so it sounds like it's pretty annoying. We originally designed a few other possible ways of triggering digs (pressing spacebar, or double tapping the block) that might have worked better.
The general feel of the game is great and the art style is very charming.
All the endings are amazing and the .
Quality of Life Suggestions:
- It feels somewhat counter intuitive to move into tiles dig horizontally since it feels like two separate actions and the animation is twice as long has frequently made me assume that I wasn't going to move so I pressed a new input only to move to a new square and dig in the wrong place.
- Having a "retry day" option would be great since I found planning routes to be fun but it's quite hard when you have to redo the entire game every attempt. (Though it would make sense if that doesn't align with your vision)
- Having the background area around the player be lit up in yellow would be lovely as it would more clearly highlight which spaces can and can't be moved to (I have on more than one occasion tried to walk through dirt and wasted a dig)
- Probably more my fault but I did not realise the ladder was reusable. Additionally the ladder is slightly clunky since being able to place them infinitely means you might as well let the player just move up whenever so some kind of climbing claws may be more pleasant to use.
Some bugs:
- When I placed a ladder in a big room it went up through the terrain and continued all the way to the surface (I assume it's because the level above me wasn't loaded so the ladder didn't detect it and just went straight through).
- I also managed to dig below the map, you should probably add a barrier there because it is a bit jarring.
Amazing, thank you for the detailed feedback! Much appreciated. <3
We've heard from a bunch of people that the dig is a little unintuitive. We considered a dedicated dig button instead of movement based, perhaps that would help with the jarring feeling of digging/moving horizontal. I think we could tighten up the movement in general, the animations sort of give it a lag that doesn't feel great.
Good to know that the route planning was compelling. I think we envisioned that playing out over the course of the multiple days, and the minimap is there to help remind you of where you've gone and think "oh yeah that long tunnel into that big cave, I saw treasure in the ceiling there" and go back with a power-up the next day. Interesting thought about re-playing a day instead though, could be fun!
The way the tile distance shaders and the lighting in the caves works is, honestly, super busted. We tried a bunch of things and just didn't have time to really test all of our ideas and find the best one. I totally agree that the visibility needs a major overhaul.
The ladder mechanics were finished at the 11th hour and got almost no balancing, it's absolutely the clunkiest part of the game, apart from the distance shaders. Climbing claws or some sort of jump could have accomplished a similar thing, but you know how it is, running out of time in a game jam haha.
Thanks again for playing. :)
I'm a sucker for digging games and this was a really sweet little experience! The music and sfx really elevated it! I did struggle to figure out how to trigger the dynamite once purchasing it, I imagine others might find a tool-tip helpful!
Thank you! Yeah we totally had a "oh dang" moment when we replaced the single placeholder sound effect with multiple per tile type and treasure type. Honestly I think "polish" is like 50% sound design haha.
Thank you for playing. <3
Really well-executed idea. Didn't even get close to paying off my debt, but had fun trying.
Great little game, I loved the interface and thought the idea was well executed on.
Always love a digging game. I thought it was hopeless until I finally bought the TNT… what a cathartic experience lol. Well made! Had lots of fun playing it.
that was really fun, very nice intromenü to the game and the digging was so fun. nice decisions to make and good balance! the loose state was so funny lmao!
Really fun game, TNT flips the table like crazy and I had an absolute
blaststeamroll when I realised they didn't have a limit. Fantastic visuals and music too, and if you don't take dog with you then we're not friendsWho could possibly say no to such a good dog?
<3 Thanks for playing :)
Really fun concept, had a great time playing it :)
Thank you! :)
This would be a great incremental game (this is coming from an incremental game developer)!!! I need to see this as a full game. Good job overall, cool concept.
Thank you! :D We had no shortage of ideas for where we'd take it with more time, but incremental game is an interesting idea. Hmm...
At first I thought this was just gonna be a fun relaxing game. And it was. But there's also so much strategy which makes the game just feel so satisfying. Really fun game!
Thank you for playing <3 :)
TNT is ridiculously overpowered. I LOVE mining games and i loved this one as well. It’s places like this where you gather an insurmountable debt and must use your yearning for the mines to stay alive. Excellent game. ^w^
thank youuuuu :D Yes deep down we all yearn for the mines!! Mining games really scratch a particular itch for me too haha. Glad you liked it <3
I loved the game, but I think I might have read some amounts wrong or maybe the game is bugged because I got $80,000 and I still lost and I would accidentally break blocks very often, but other than that great game!
Thanks for playing. :)
I've noticed a couple of people have missed the ATM buttons next to the shop. You need to pay off your debt manually by clicking those buttons. My apologies, I think we could have made that a little more clear!
The accidental block breaking is another thing we could improve with a dedicated dig button, or maybe to break a block you have to move into it twice... hmmm.
What a great game. Loved the jazzy soundtrack to soothe thenerves while stressfully counting down the days. Didn’t get to win but I presume the TNT might be something to look into. Great job <3!
Thank you for playing! :D
Hey, this game is very nice. Nice interpretation of the theme and very simple and easy to learn. I liked that there were a small number of things you can buy so I didn't get overwhelmed, and also that the whole game is quite short. Very nice as a whole.
One thing that annoyed me a bit is that sometimes I spent a day accidentally digging when I didn't want to. So maybe you could be able to sheath your shovel to not dig by accident or highlight the diggable things a bit more. Some of the blocks were quite close to the background in color so I accidentally hit them.
Overall this game is very well done, nice job!
Thanks so much for the kind words :)
We went back and forth on how digging should be triggered and ultimately settled on automatically moving into the block, another option we considered was needing to press spacebar to dig the tile you're facing, along with a little visual indicator. Sheathing the shovel is an interesting idea too! The way the shaders handle hiding blocks you're distant from and the way the background blends over all was something I wasn't super happy with and felt like it needed some polish, but we didn't really have time to try other approaches.
Thanks sailingthepale for the quick reply!