You're in a sub trapped at the bottom of a cavern, SUDDENLY LAVA!
Can you make it out before its too late? Oh look, shiny!
You can blow your way through the rocks with bombs, and you can spam them for bigger explosions!
I tried to balance the amount you can die with a quick respawn time, and I tried to make it always possible to get through with enough bomb spam. The layered challenge is trying to get as many baubles as possible on the way up.
I'm really proud of what I've got here, it evolved like 3 times due to me realizing I just couldn't do certain things in two days. :D
Instructions are in game, just hit the question mark button.
Web version is WASD only, arrow keys had a strange bug. Also, colors are off so you can't see when lava is coming. Windows executable works much better. ;)
Made in Game Maker Studio, with audio from FL Studio and Audacity. Graphics done in Photoshop with some Illustrator used for UI planning. :)
EDIT: People have mentioned some buggy movement at the surface, It seems to be in the HTML5 version only, and I'm not sure what it is yet. Try and play on windows if you can sorry! :(
Already working on a post LD version for mobile devices and web portals!
This was fun. It's good that your idea evolved because you ended up with something a bit unique; like a puzzle and action game combined. Little things like getting stuck in the seaweed was a nice touch, it gets you worried that you won't get out in time. Took me a few tries, but I finished it. Good work!
Very fun game. I like the sound effects and the screen shaking. Makes the game look very polished. When I reached the surface, the game frame rate dropped for a short moment.
Nice job! This was a solid game. I would have liked having a few more mechanics (maybe extra weapons or something), but everything that was there was solid and polished. The graphics where nice, too. Good job :)
Great concept -- forced me to choose going straight to the top to avoid the lava or spreading out to get more gems. I got a 25 on the second try, then died a lot of times after that from greed.
Had a lot of fun with this one! It was kinda buggy near the end where the ship gets stuck and you have to fidgit around a bit to get it to move again, but other then that pretty solid ;)
Very very playable game! Kept me playing until I met the surface :) I didn't get that you could a lay a bomb at first, and once it's placed, it's abit invissible. Other than that, very fine job. Thanks for making this! :)
One of the more straight-up fun / addictive games I've played from LD29. For some reason my sub gets caught on empty space at the very top, but I was eventually able to win.
It's a nice little game, and while the mechanics are familiar the way you put them together is unique. It feels complete and decently polished, though some music or at least ambience would be nice.
Don't pay attention to people complaining they didn't know there were bombs... it's their own fault for not reading the instructions. Some people (newbs) are bound to struggle anytime you make something more complex than Angry Birds or Bejeweled.
I thought the sound and the movement and the art were cool. I did find that I was hitting too many dead ends, though. Even with bombs, I'd hit a dead end, just blast through it quickly enough to not die and get to another group of walls.
I also wasn't exactly sure just how much the bombs blow up. Sometimes it would get all squares around it, sometimes it wouldn't.
It's a cool idea, but I wasn't able to get to the point where it felt like a fun challenge that I wanted overcome - just a statistically stacked challenge that always felt a little too against me.
Yeah, there really needed to be something about being able to use bombs, but after you figure that out, great game! Both the visuals and controls are nice and crisp. Best of all is the name.
The link to the web version is not working for me. Firefox says it cannot find the server. It looks pretty good though.
Just letting you know that my game Shadows Below has a Windows version available if you want to try it (you commented saying you wish there was, so I assume you do :D).
Sorry for plugging it here, but there was really no other way to contact you.
Made it out alive with 32 shiny baubles! Neat concept. It took me a few tries to realize I should read the instructions and then learned i had bombs! That made things more interesting. Nice work! :)
At first I thought that firing is somewhat glitchy but then I've got how it works and now I think it's a great game! You've managed to create a fine balance between easiness, challenge and greed. I've managed to get to the surface in like 20th go and I was really careful and got only 20 baubles that time. Then I decided to just make it to the top without thinking about them and managed to do that only on 4th or 5th try. Nevertheless, I never thought the game's too hard or imbalanced while I was playing. That's a great sign for a game - players losing at it constantly and not realizing it's hard at the same time.
The randomization was a little frustrating at times, but the randomness of it really adds to the "just one more try" mindset of it. The controls worked pretty well, and the graphics were pretty nice. Good job!
Fun game. Web version worked just fine for me. Seemed to hitch for a moment near the surface but just for a second and I was still able to win. Nice work :)
Nice, I love the feel of this game. Blowing things up feel satisfying with the screen shake, and the sound effects, the graphics are fairly consistent. If you want to get through though I found that you have to pretty much abandon bauble hunting making for your end score to be about at random as the levels themselves. Managed 18 though.
Hey buddy, You made a great game! It was pretty hard to control the bombs >< But I loved the idea!
BTW, you were curious about our cute little worm guy if you remember ;) We just updated the game now and you are welcome to check out what it've become!
Really fun concept, sort of like a vertical Bomberman! I would quite like to see this with everything sped up a little - player movement and the speed at which blocks fall. Nice work!
Made it out with 21 shiny baubles! Pretty fun game. Controls are decent but could use a little tuning I think. A bit floaty. The lava accelerates at a decent but challenging pace. Nice work overall.
I don't know why people complain about difficulty. I found it quite entertaining and even easy! I got 27 gems on my first try. I like the graphics and the concept, quite innovative. Good job!
The difficulty level rises a lot too fast for me to complete it, tried 4 time and the lava got me : < And the bombs aren't visible under the grass or mud, whatever the bronze block is, which is kinda dangerous for the player. But with some improvements the game would be really interesting.
It got a little frustrating when the random level generation left me with few/zero workable paths. I was playing the web version.