STORY: You are a young miner who has just been given the opportunity to start his own independent mining business. Unfortunately, you don't have very much money so for now you'll have to fill some asteroids with artificial air inside and mine them manually. Be careful, though, these small asteroids are often very unstable so cave-ins may happen (and kill you, in case you stand in their way) if you mine too many adjacent walls. If you cause more than 10 cave-ins, the whole asteroid will collapse and the game is over...
GAME CONTROLS: arrow keys to move your character ('w','a','s','d' can scroll the map but there's no reason to do that since the map is limited to the window) hold 'ctrl' to mine/destroy walls '1' to go to main menu '2' to give up 'r' to start a new game
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS: - Windows (x64),Compo version: Download the .zip file and unpack everything to a folder of your choice, then click the .exe file to start the game. - Linux/MacOS/Windows(x86), Compo & post-LD version: I'll try to provide binaries eventually, but for now you'll need to install the love2D framework which you can get at http://love2d.org . After installing Love2D, download the '.zip' file provided as 'source/Love2D' and change its type from '.zip' to '.love'. Then, you can double-click on the file or open a terminal in the folder and write 'love [file name]' to start the game.
NEWS: 2014-04-28: The LD contest version has received fixes for a few small issues (see the commit text at the 'github' link below for more information on what was fixed) 2014-05-07: Work on a post-LD version of the game has begun. So far, it features a complete list of controls on the start screen and when the game is over it'll tell you why. More improvements will be added over time.
Hey, this is a neat game! I really like the premise, mining tiles and collecting minerals and stuff. I could see, if you had more time, you could add enemies or upgrades or whatnot to give it more depth, but the basic mechanics are pretty solid!
I definitely agree that in-game controls would be nice. I don't usually read the game descriptions before trying them out and you seemed to give some instructions on the title screen, but none of them mentioned the actual gameplay (especially because Ctrl wasn't very intuitive to me as the action button). I think it also might have helped to make the game's rules a little more clear, just so we know what causes cave ins and how our game over happened and what the differences in the tiles are. (Like the darker brown tiles or the tiles with little pebbles).
Oh the movement is pretty cool by the way! It's a little hard to control, but the way you accelerate and decelerate is pretty neat to watch! I think if you had more time, this could be a really addictive game! :D
It seems like there is no way to avoid losing. 10 cave ins will happen sooner or later. The game need some depth and is more a start of a game at the moment.
It needed a bit more work. The only end I could find was to cause 10 cave-ins. Maybe a target amount and then you could move to the next asteroid. And sound would have been nive.
As a sidenote, to run it on Linux I had to extract the zip to a folder and execute: $ love LD29-Indie-Space-Miner-LD29_Indie_Space_Miner_final_fixed/
Wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do after mining an asteroid for a bit. Managed to get about 2500 points but then the game restarted when I went back to my "hatch" on the level. I thought maybe I was supposed to return to my ship to upgrade some stuff. Seemed it restarted the game though. I guess it just feels like there isn't much of a challenge or focus to the game yet. Yes, I can collect the rocks, but it wasn't particularly difficult. I did like the concept/setup of the game.
It wasn't very clear what would cause a cave-in as I sometimes got killed on squares that were marked "harmless". The idea is nice, but the game would really benefit from more and clearer communication.
Comments18
I definitely agree that in-game controls would be nice. I don't usually read the game descriptions before trying them out and you seemed to give some instructions on the title screen, but none of them mentioned the actual gameplay (especially because Ctrl wasn't very intuitive to me as the action button). I think it also might have helped to make the game's rules a little more clear, just so we know what causes cave ins and how our game over happened and what the differences in the tiles are. (Like the darker brown tiles or the tiles with little pebbles).
Oh the movement is pretty cool by the way! It's a little hard to control, but the way you accelerate and decelerate is pretty neat to watch! I think if you had more time, this could be a really addictive game! :D
As a sidenote, to run it on Linux I had to extract the zip to a folder and execute:
$ love LD29-Indie-Space-Miner-LD29_Indie_Space_Miner_final_fixed/