Dwarves & Goblins

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.74
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.59
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.77
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.86
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.34
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.60
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.12
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.35
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★73%
Well, that sure was a whopping first game jam ever!
The beginning went very smooth, ran into some difficulties later on but we didn't back down. The man with the hammer couldn't get to us! Haha. Oh, the irony.

Instead, we took the man with the hammer to our own game.
In Dwarves & Goblins you take the role of a little fella with a gigantic hammer. It's up to you to protect your precious miners -- your kin -- from the dangers that lurk beneath the surface. A well known dwarven enemy, the goblins, will do anything that it takes to get a tasty bite from your juicy fat dwarven mining belly. Tremors through the earth's surface are going to be your best best to smack these hideous creatures into a warm kiln, namely the center of the earth.

Controls:

Move: Arrow Keys
Attack: Q, W, E, R
Jump: Space

EDIT: Okay, we are aware some people don't really understand what the power-ups do because of minimal feedback.

Powerup 1: Regenerates health of your miners
Powerup 2: Makes your miners invulnerable
Powerup 3: Get 2 extra miners
Powerup 4: The stability meter won't decrease
Powerup 5: Increased damage

All powerups, except powerup #3 have a duration. When the duration ends, the powerup ends also. Have fun!

Try to reach the highest score! Want to share your score? Mention us on Twitter! That'll be all cool and stuff. Twitter @PrzewalskiPaard.

Stay legendary.

-Team Jamplifier

Music: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/494588

EDIT: Little hotfix, controls now display on the page.

screenshot

Comments52

Riko28 Apr 2014, 22:36
dis gayme is awesozmee!1!!
davidc.28 Apr 2014, 23:14
great game, loved it, keep it up, ad add more quippy quotes now and again, would of kept the humour up
syawqy
syawqy29 Apr 2014, 07:22
this look really solid
MSaul
MSaul29 Apr 2014, 07:24
Best game yet, really well done. Good Job.
nonentheless29 Apr 2014, 07:24
Nice idea, nice art, great job!
tiffi_gaming29 Apr 2014, 07:26
Great game, a little pause between the waves would have been nice. Looks amazing
thomz12
thomz1229 Apr 2014, 07:26
Great game! music and graphics are awesome!
rogberth
rogberth29 Apr 2014, 07:28
nice job, It was quite challenging, specially controlling the bar
SonnyBone
SonnyBone29 Apr 2014, 07:32
Oooh, this is a great start to something rad. Needs some obvious additions and fixes and stuff, but what you have here is really compelling. I love the 'balance/tilt' mechanic and the wave progression. I say keep working on this one.
DanEEStar29 Apr 2014, 07:36
Interesting and fun Game.
Very nice graphics and good music.

In the beginning I always destroyed my own mine because I did not understand that I affect the "health" of the mine with my own hammer.
Once I got this it was actually a bit to easy and a bit boring... Just waiting for the stability bar to go up before striking again.

I got to wave 17 until I accedently destroyed my mine again...

My suggestion:
The dwarf should not be able to destroy the mine. With the stability bar you could control how many times the dwarf could strike with the hammer.
The goblins should be more powerful against the miners. I still had about 8 miners at the end of wave 17 until my infamous self destruction.
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 07:53
@DanEEStar The growth is exponential, so it'll get more hectic and it is definitely difficult at some point. We have to make some compromises on balancing and finishing the game, but we sure had re-balancing in mind. Haha
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 07:54
Thanks for the amazing responses guys! They mean a lot to us!
Valandre
Valandre29 Apr 2014, 08:13
great concept, very fun!
HernanZh
HernanZh29 Apr 2014, 10:04
Cool! Great job guys!
Verspagen29 Apr 2014, 10:43
Yeah Awesome game ! I like it
Crowbeak
Crowbeak29 Apr 2014, 11:06
I saw a lot of black boxes instead of enemy sprites. Made it harder to tell what's going on.
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 11:44
We are aware of this black boxing issue. We are trying to fix this. But weirdly enough this issue did not appear to us a single time during the jam.. And it still does not. :p
Trying to fix it though, @Crowbeak :)
HernanZh
HernanZh29 Apr 2014, 12:00
FYI: I've seen the black box issue appear on people with Mac. Worked fine on my Windows machine.
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 12:03
It's a WebGL related thing with sprites that are not in a power of 2, atleast that can be one of the reasons. PIXI JS should be able to handle this, but seemingly that doesn't always work. We'll look into it!
jujule29 Apr 2014, 13:38
Wow. Excellent graphics, smooth controls and nice and original gameplay that perfectly fits the theme. Good job !
By the way, I'm on a Mac and I didn't have any black box problem.
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 13:42
Thank you so much jujule! We appreciate your kind words a lot :)
Robber
Robber29 Apr 2014, 13:45
very innovative! the music gets a bit repetetive, but it fits the goblins style i guess, some soundeffects for the special hammer moves with be the finishing touch..solid game..
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 14:14
We've been smashing on tables and throwing stuff on the ground but we couldn't really get to a good sound effect. Haha. Too bad we didn't have a sound designer :P Thanks!
Therrato29 Apr 2014, 14:31
Amazing looking game, it had some problems figuring out how the pickups worked, because i missed some when i jumped somehow. would recommend adding some sounds for the attacks
sP0CkEr229 Apr 2014, 15:18
this game is so awesome. highest rating for me so far and added to my favorites list. outstanding.
quill18
quill1829 Apr 2014, 15:19
I found that managing the stability bar to be a bit awkward, but otherwise this was a stupendously excellent game.
pythong29 Apr 2014, 15:23
got to level 14, but didn't hear any music? Firefox 12.0 on Mac.
This game has great potential! Was a bit strange at the beginning though, because I pressed W twice and lost 2 times before I understood who I was
PlasterPhantomauthor29 Apr 2014, 15:24
Haha, oh well. Firefox doesn't like standard HTML5 audio unless they're in an ogg format. The game plays best in Chrome.
donan
donan29 Apr 2014, 15:35
Wow. Really addictive and good game :D
Awesome work!
ilovepixel
ilovepixel29 Apr 2014, 16:53
Nice game!, really polished. You guys did a great job.
I had some issues with chrome on OSX. I could see some black squares, but that's only rendering issue, the game it self is pretty decent! good job
KooBazz29 Apr 2014, 23:26
Really great game! Interesting and original game mechanic.
calvinsm
calvinsm30 Apr 2014, 00:17
its a really fucking game!!!
congratulations!!!
but I confess to you, was very hard to understand I need to do in the first 10 fucking times. In beginner, all the things looked so confused, "what I need to do?!", "fuckkk", "what I do wrong, Why!!!"

ok its that. =)
oatsbarley30 Apr 2014, 11:06
Very nice! Could definitely do with some sound effects though.
GarethIW
GarethIW30 Apr 2014, 19:33
Wow, that's fun! Excellent graphics, great use of theme, nice music and solid gameplay. Made it to wave 23 before I accidentally collapsed my mine :[
ioboi30 Apr 2014, 19:52
Awesome sound, graphics and solid gameplay!
Really cool game, love it :)
pancakecity
pancakecity30 Apr 2014, 19:58
Looks very good! Wish there were some sound effects, but the visual appeal is very nice! Nice song too!
zdonkeyx
zdonkeyx30 Apr 2014, 20:22
Love this, felt really good to smash the goblins into a pulp xD
PlasterPhantomauthor1 May 2014, 08:39
Hahaha yeah it's awesome, if I may say so myself! :)
Kingtrez3 May 2014, 12:59
Very nice game, i really enjoyed playing it. The only thing I didn't like was the confusion of the left and right controls when the character was upside down xD but no worries. Great job!
TeamEagle3 May 2014, 13:49
black box issue, can't seem to play it :(
Kate Kligman4 May 2014, 04:48
Liked the music and the graphics. Nice game!
PlasterPhantomauthor4 May 2014, 15:40
We are aware of this issue and we'll attempt to fix it, but we're not exactly sure what might be causing it. I'll have some free time when I get home, so I'll google some stuff. Please stay tuned.
Thorig
Thorig4 May 2014, 19:56
Really good entry.. but no sound effects? Awesome game!
Cake&Code6 May 2014, 04:24
Damn, that is a really solid and polished game! It was pretty cool to be moving on the outer side of the world whilst the conflict within was going on. I think the death triggered by fatigue is a bit too unexpected, perhaps slowing the character down a little would make the effect feel more detrimental. As is I thought he would just need to take a little breather and then I'd be able to move again.

The powers were really cool and the enemies were varied enough to be exciting. Amazing amount of work you managed to get done, had a ton of fun playing it :)
Rednas6 May 2014, 10:37
A good and solid game, i just found it getting boring after a few minutes.
BadgerPriest
BadgerPriest6 May 2014, 23:40
Also getting the blackbox issue here. I know you're working it. If it helps though, the ones I got seemed to be stationary small ones - perhaps animated miners when they aren't running from goblins? I couldn't see them the whole time. Other than that some of the attack animations were black boxed but then went away afterwards (W attack I think). The most problematic was using R, which I assume to be 6 giant hammers all at once. Those blackboxes stayed the whole rest of the game, basically ruining the whole experience because they cover so much.
PlasterPhantomauthor7 May 2014, 11:33
It's because most of our textures aren't in a power of 2. So we'll have to do some really solid refactoring for that. Currently we're all at our internships and we don't have as much time to work on it, communication is a bit of a problem due to that. We'll see what we can do, thanks for the feedback!
PapyGaragos
PapyGaragos9 May 2014, 19:50
Hey congrats on your first LD!
The graphics are awesome and the controls are pretty solid: the game is nervous and you feel powerful with that hammer.
However, I think that the lack of actual game sounds is really hurting the experience.
PlasterPhantomauthor12 May 2014, 09:27
We hit up with a sound designer for the sounds. However, I do not think we may actually place the sounds in the entry as it's quite a huge change. Especially because you can rate sound.
pinkmonkeyhead16 May 2014, 16:32
I loved the music! Great entry overall

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