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DEEP MINER 64's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #46 | 3.443 | 3.583 |
| Graphics | #64 | 3.203 | 3.333 |
| Overall | #66 | 3.303 | 3.438 |
| Authenticity (or, Creativity in use of resolution) | #75 | 3.683 | 3.833 |
| Audio | #76 | 2.882 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Themes
The game doesn't go into detail about the player's backstory, however the game takes place off-world, on a different planet.
The finite resources amidst the hostile underground make the player feel strongly like a "Fugitive" in an unfamiliar space.
The limited fuel- constantly burning as you move and drill and fly around- practically tells the player they've "Gotta Go Fast".
And, of course, something terrible happens if you reach the bottom (of the world), as... "You're Not Allowed To Win".
Tooling
I used the same tools I'm already familiar with- DragonRuby for coding the project, GIMP for art assets, and Audacity (the beta version~) for cleaning up SFX generated in the online music-sketching tool Beepbox.co (delightful thing, really!)
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Comments
This was a nice, relaxing, and fun experience. I love games where I can just explore and find resources.
this was fun! i usually jump in, check mechanics and maybe play to the end of jam games if they can hold my attention long enough. i see my future self revisiting this game just to see how far i can get. great job!
Another very well done game :D. The mining reminds me of Terraria. Had me googling what Materiel means XD, never heard of it before :D. (not native english speaking) Multiple key bindings are user friendly, which i really liked.
Also, I have some recommendations on QOL improvements to make the game even better:
Had fun playing, good job!
What? Just “Game over”?
I read it that way, expecting some kind of cutscene. And the game kept getting deeper, strangely enough, the deeper I dug. Maybe it didn’t make it to the web version, or I translated it from English incorrectly.
The game is awesome, as I already noted, “deep.” The progression is nice — but I was close to quitting the game before I got to the worms: I thought mushrooms were the limit of difficulty in the mine (apart from gravity)... how wrong I was. At the point with the worms, I really felt the theme of “Fugitive”. And all because I couldn’t kill the worm at the very beginning and thought they were immortal. But as soon as I found out they were mortal, I realized the power I possessed. The worms died out.
Overall, the game is wonderfully made (Miner is drawn in a pleasantly detailed way), but it’s deceptive at the start, let’s say. It’s not that I know how it could be presented better, but personally, I was held back by the thought that the game has cutscenes.
Yes, unfortunately I am not proficient with cutscenes. I hemmed and hawed about what exactly to do once the boss was defeated... In an ideal world with another two or three weeks to work on it, I'd want something more cinematic for the intro (where one might be able to see the planet from orbit, and see the spaceship from which the shop and your drilling vehicle are initially deployed), and a much higher-effort ending cutscene better explaining why what happens at the end actually happens, and a lingering end screen from which you could either "recover" and continue mining away in some New Game Plus or something, or restart or something
I was also unsure exactly how much health to give the worms, and I suspect I've drastically under-healthed the worm and the boss. Your drill does "mining_strength" in damage to worms and bosses every frame- 60 times per second- which ranges from 0.3 at the start to 12.5 at maximum upgrade level, meaning you can chew through... "750" health per second with a max drill, which... indeed... outstrips the worms and the boss by far (worms have 160 to 260 health, the boss has 200 health per heart) (though in my defense I only did this math now, and the intended combat method is bombs, which do 30 damage, and 2.5x aka 75 damage on worm's mouths and boss's hearts). My first change would probably be to, like, 6x worm and boss health (and also boost bomb damage by a similar amount (without boosting bomb damage to the player)) so drilling to attack isn't unusable, but takes significant investment instead of just being "oops I accidentally killed the worm in the way". I also wish I figured out what sort of death graphics to have for the worm, simply poofing really really sucks.
With that said, I'm glad the progression seemed well-paced, with the mushrooms and the worms and such. I spent a lot of time thinking carefully on when to introduce each new element. Mostly just wish I had more to introduce!! More enemies, more interactions, more special cases! Without such, the mid-late game kinda goes stale, effectively nothing new happens on the stretch from depth ~120 (where worms start showing up) all the way to depth 320 (where the boss lives). That's fine up to maybe half that distance, but by THAT point the game really wants another obstacle to show up. Issue is I dunno what to put down there!!
...Thank you for checking out my game!!!
Cool game! There seems to be a lot of depth in the systems that can seem a bit esoteric to start. But the audiovisual presentation and gameplay loop are very strong. Good work!
Nice lowrez motherload. Did find the menus very hard to navigate.