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Dwarves & Dynamite's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #8 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Graphics | #13 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #14 | 3.688 | 3.688 |
| Gameplay/Design | #15 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Fun | #26 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What would you like feedback on?
It would be great to see people actually playing, if they are able to make videos, so I can judge what people find fun or confusing.
I'm aware of what's unfinished, buggy and not yet optimized. I'm more interested in what people found fun, and what direction or extra features they'd like to see.
What did you update?
I've made a ton of changes this month, including:
Changes to the fortification, allowing the player to enter and leave towers and gatehouses.
Injured dwarven allies will now retreat from combat.
Visible cracks now appear on the minable blocks as the player mines and blasts them.
There is now a player KO and rescue system. If the player is knocked out, the game continues in fast-forward in the background until a new battle begins. If the dwarves win the battle, then they come to your rescue.
There's now a proper Game Over, if all your dwarven allies retreat.
New music has been added.
The resource gathering speed to now linked to the current tool upgrade. The better the tools, the faster the dwarves will gather wood, hardwood and stone.
A pause popup now appears at the top of the screen when needed.
Render culling was added to the three separate areas. (Unfortunately there's a bug with this which can make resources in the inventory pool look odd or disappear. To be fixed.)
The chests in the dungeon spawn their treasure over time and have a new sound effect.
Some elements of the fortifications now have scaffolding which bounces up before they are fully built.
If a build stage doesn't complete before battle begins, it will revert to the previous stage correctly.
Dwarven allies will now get ejected from towers correctly. (This can sometimes be a bit buggy, with a dwarf ending up with a dazed visual effect stuck to them.)
The skeleton enemy death animations now work correctly. They will no longer be able to damage the player from across the map.
Holy potions now act over a duration.
The ranged weapon upgrades now drive the max zoom of the camera.
Dwarves will make all kinds of interesting noises in their sleep!
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Comments
Really cool game, I played for something like 30 minutes (Sorry, no video), it was mostly fun, although I do think this game needs a tutorial of some sort. Initially it is really confusing what is what and why.
Regarding what's fun, for me personally the most fun aspect was mining and exploring the mines. The command/task system feels shallow.
And the combat sections were the least fun. Especially because of that damn inverted aiming, please make an option to aim by pulling the stick TOWARDS the target. Also the camera first zooms out as I'm aiming, then snaps back making me feel disoriented.
BTW, how do I heal my health? Couldn't find anything in the game to heal myself
Hi Limoka,
Thanks for playing. I’ve just come back from a break away, hence the late reply.
So, to heal, first you’ll need to buy at least the first dynamite upgrade. Now you’ll be able to blow up one of the bats in the mines. Press (B) on the controller when you’re in the mines to plant dynamite (gamepad East). You’ll start out only being able to plant one small dynamite at a time, and they renew after they blow up.
The Bats that wander the mines will drop a Holy Potion, which you can use by tapping (X) on the controller (gamepad West). You’ll see a healing effect show in a large radius, which will heal you and you’re dwarves. Currently, if a dwarf have already started to run, then its too late to heal them.
This Holy effect also kills off the undead. If you run into the horde and active it, then move around, with a little practice and good timing you should be able to take out most of the wave.
Also, for the zoom control, holding the Left and Right Bumper on the controller will set your camera zoom default, that way if you zoom out then use a weapon at its max range, the zoom won’t snap back again. The max zoom depends upon your weapon upgrade. I will add something to the main interface in the future as there’s nothing to show this in game as yet.
The combat part of the game is the least developed aspect. Its taken a ton of work just to get something to work at all, without breaking the game. I wanted to try something different from normal for aiming, the idea was to give the feeling of pulling back on a bow then clicking to release an arrow, but I did suspect people may find this irritating.
I’ll change aiming to push towards in a future iteration.
Again, thanks for taking the time to play!
I know you don't want too much feedback on optimization, but I think there ought to at least be some option to change the screen resolution and maybe play in windowed mode, especially if you want people to record their gameplay. I really didn't like needing to change my screen resolution just so the game wouldn't chug because it's forced into fullscreen.
Getting past that hurdle, I thought the resource management/development aspects were enjoyable and well-handled, from the dungeon-crawl mining to assigning men to different tasks , and even now I want to go back just to see if I can reach the objective of having stone barriers. The one part of the game I actively didn't want to engage with was the combat when waves of enemies approached at night. I often preferred to spend that time roaming the mines for materials, and even when I did get involved I lost my men anyway, making me feel like my presence wasn't making a difference.
Hi Iggy.
After replying here I'll put a warning up regarding optimization. I'm aware of a few areas which are resource heavy and require a pretty beefy machine to handle.
I probably have the combat difficulty turned up way too high. It's a bit rough for new players trying to learn the game the first time around.
If you did want to try the combat again, the holy potions you collect in the mines don't just heal, but also do big damage to the undead. If you activate one and run around you can take out a big chunk of the wave, while healing your allies.
Thanks for playing!