Ludum Dare #48compo

Dwarven Mines: Hunt for the Evergreen

by mrtnldm

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.72

Fun★★★★★★★★★★1.58

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.00

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.42

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.45

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.50

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Dwarven Mines: Hunt for the Evergreen

Deep in the ancient mines of your forefathers lies the biggest emerald a dwarf has ever seen. Venture down the randomly generated mineshaft and go get it!

You must remember - once you set on this mission, you can only go deeper. The tunnels are dark. Torches and shiny gems on the floor help guide your way. The powerful gems on your Hammer and your Staff provide you with light. They do however fade, if you dont replenish their magic with the gems.

Instructions:

* Walk with A and D
* Switch between your Hammer and your Staff with Q and E
* Jump with Space
* Whatever little audio this project has, is best enjoyed with headphones.

Have fun and see how deep you can go in this endless walker, adventure, rougelike dungeon crawler mix of a game.

Ideal World:

The game has a great deep soundtrack with lots of vibrant ambient noises. There are cobwebs, remnants of mining equipment and skeltons all scattered around the floors and the walls. The mines are full of spiders and traps, avoiding of which requires planning your gems to not get stuck in the darkness.

I could go on, but overall I am really happy with how it turned out. This is my first _serious_ compo submission where I felt I knew sort of what I was doing and I wasn't just googling on how to move characters in Unity. The goal for this JAM was to learn about 2D lights. I know I had fun building this game. I hope you had fun as well! Thanks for sticking around if you read all this! :)

Built with:

* Unity 2020 LTS
* Art in Photoshop
* Audio in Waveform FREE, composed with Spitfire LABS

Web build will follow after some sleep.

LD48!

Comments20

brian-mayberry26 Apr 2021, 12:54

The excellent music and graphics really sell the mood. I didn't run into any baddies or other obstacles during my play (Windows Build), so it was just walking collecting and glowing for me. I think there's a great foundation for a fun action-puzzle scroller here!

DragonsBeardGames26 Apr 2021, 16:27

Loved the way your game looks. Atmosphere, character, and music was great. Didn't encounter anything other than just gems though. I feel like if you added more content this would be great.

mrtnldmauthor26 Apr 2021, 17:24

@brian-mayberry @dragonsbeardgames thanks a lot for kind words! I really wanted to add more world content and action in the game, but sadly ran out of time.

VikingLord200026 Apr 2021, 19:05

It's pretty, definitely stood out among the other Compo submission with just the 2D art. I was hoping to run into just one type of enemy to fight. Other then that, great job on your first submission! It takes some serious gut to put your art/work out there for the world to criticize.

Lajbert26 Apr 2021, 19:19

I loved the visuals, although the gameplay is a bit flat, as nothing happens :) I liked it, a great base for a game, if you are to carry on developing this.

mrtnldmauthor26 Apr 2021, 19:36

@vikinglord2000 @lajbert thanks a lot good feedback! I think I will continue building this game, add the missing action and polish up some other pieces!

Pierre.F26 Apr 2021, 22:02

Nice concept, grat art, with more time and interactions this could evolve into a great game, unfortunately as you said it, you ran out of time so there is nothing much to do. I'm sure you'll finish it next time tho !

Nick Rafalski28 Apr 2021, 01:40

Walking simulator for sure, but a beautiful immersive walking simulator at least!

Jason Wilson28 Apr 2021, 02:10

Art and lighting effects were awesome. Music was well suited to the visuals and atmosphere. I didn't see the value in holding the hammer as I didn't encounter any enemies or obstacles, but it seems like they may have not made the deadline. Great work nonetheless. The visuals were well worth the time spent.

mDuo1328 Apr 2021, 02:20

Yeah, this game looks like a great start but could certainly use a little more something to do. As best I can tell, there's no difference between the hammer and the staff except the staff has a cool glowy effect? I'm certainly into the pixel art with modern lighting style. (It's reminiscent of the HD-2D games like Octopath Traveler.) And the music has a great, ominous opening chord... which periodically loops. Ah well, such is the nature of compo games.

mrtnldmauthor28 Apr 2021, 09:35

@pierre-f @nick-rafalski @jason-wilson thanks for the feedback! I am also quite happy with how the art turned out.

@mduo13 you are right, there is not much difference. Both of them glow, but the staff is much brighter at full capacity (when you collect 100 gems). I really wish I had more time to make music than to put together just one chord progression though. Next time I guess. :)

saintchristopher77728 Apr 2021, 23:47

Agree with everyone else - as is the game _looks_ great, but gameplay is just "hold D to walk." Also, I started getting some lag/choppiness around -300m and on (got worse the deeper I went) - might check to see if there's a memory leak or something in there?

mrtnldmauthor29 Apr 2021, 14:42

@saintchristopher777 yeah, a walking simulator as said by the others, and fair enough :) Thanks for reporting it. I suspect perhaps it's all the 2D lights? The tunnel is randomly generated, but nothing after you despawns ;)

NoCymer30 Apr 2021, 06:44

Others already told you about the fact that it is a bit of a walking simulator so i won't restate. Your pixel art was fantastic aswell as the music that the fits well with the general atmosphere, i think you should maybe try to expand it in the future, it could become a nice little endless runner. Anyway good work!

Studio Gomp30 Apr 2021, 17:14

It may have just been me, but I was always jumping. Also, there wasn't really antyhing to do. I liked the art!

Kovi30 Apr 2021, 17:35

What you managed to get in looks great! It's easy to tell there were bigger aspirations with this one that there just wasn't enough time for, which I can totally sympathize with, but there's clearly a lot of potential to do cool things with it.

You have a solid base to work off of if you decided to expand it further, but at the very least you definitely nailed your goal of learning to use 2D lighting.

mrtnldmauthor30 Apr 2021, 18:31

@nocymer @kovi thanks for the nice words! I do think I will put some additional time in the game to add more content and polish.

@studio-gomp I have no idea why you were always jumping. Is your Space key stuck? :D Thanks for the compliment. I am pretty happy myself how the art turned out.

Echo GameWorks3 May 2021, 01:58

Art, music, and ambience was great. Didn't run into anything challenging though - just moving right. The lighting was great. Awesome work!

bentglasstube3 May 2021, 16:07

I really enjoyed the lighting and the mood set with the graphics and music. Great job getting the feeling you wanted down.

diabolical-sloth3 May 2021, 16:54

atmosphere is really nice with some nice lighting but it did feel like it was missing something to do. I kinda just held right the whole time and occasionally went left to grab some gems

Other games by @mrtnldm

★2.94

★3.31

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