To The Planet Core

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.83
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.65
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.85
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.38
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.71
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.31
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.10

Reach bottom of the map untill all your blocks are frozen!

(game lacks sounds and tutorial because of bad time management)

Controls:

Select block to place in bottom left and click near existing block to attach. Use mouse scroll to move camera.

How to play:

Game goal is to reach the bottom of the map where you can find lava.
As time passes top blocks will become frozen, so you need to hurry.
Your building blocks cost iron, so you need to mine ore to sustain construction. Additional ores will allow you to buy upgrades.
Main game mechanic is blocks physics - each block will compute overall upper presure and load of it's side's mounts. If any block can't be held - it will destroy.
If you found yourself stuck without resources - restart. Changing difficulty level will make game easier)

Step by step guide:

Start with single block


Look for Iron ore and place miner in 2 blocks range from it


Expand to mine more ore to be able to build more blocks in downward direction


Use drill to remove 4 tiles and move to your goal


Hurry before all your blocks get frozen and you lose


Reach bottom of the map and place block near lava to win


If you got unlucky with your map just restart)



Credits:

Game created using my own fresh and unfinished engine (https://github.com/filscorporation/Steel).
All art created using Aseprite.

Known bugs: your upgrades effects will keep after restart, need to relaunch the game(
Post Jam fix: I've uploaded post jam version where fixed game breaking bugs (negative resources, wrong block info, spawning outside the map, unwinnable starts)
Tools: Aseprite

Comments32

Chensu26 Apr 2021, 06:14
Love the graphic, it is perfect, keep up the good work !
The126 Apr 2021, 12:01
I agree that graphics are perfect! Overall it was fun game. Good job!
Lajbert
Lajbert26 Apr 2021, 16:10
Great aesthetics here!
ipodtouch0218
ipodtouch021826 Apr 2021, 16:54
Very map dependent imo, if you get a bad map with little iron it's impossible. Fun game nonetheless!
Corporation
Corporationauthor26 Apr 2021, 17:05
@ipodtouch0218 this is very much true! Just hit restart in that case, thats the specific of procedural map generation though)
ville26 Apr 2021, 18:46
Gameplay is fun and the graphics are good, but as other commenters said, I feel the progression based more on luck (with the map generation) than skill. But that could probably be tweaked with more time, overall I liked it!
BinaryPrinciple
BinaryPrinciple27 Apr 2021, 05:09
I like how the mechanics expand and sets itself to a resource puzzle.
True that resources balance is quite tricky, and within the limited time setting up scaled difficulty is almost impossible. Nonethless, great game!
Corporation
Corporationauthor27 Apr 2021, 06:31
@ville @binaryprinciple you are right that some starts can be much more favourable and some can even be unwinnable at start. But overall game won't be luck dependant as after descent start you still need to go to the bottom, at that's where randomness is smoothed by map size. Thank you for your feedback)
mrtnldm27 Apr 2021, 23:00
Cool concept with placing the mining blocks. I love the color palette and art in general. Some audio would have been cool, but a very solid entry. And built in your own engine?! Cool!
Craig
Craig28 Apr 2021, 01:04
Really enjoyed this one, fairly unique and could definitely see the idea being expanded upon to make a larger puzzle/strategy game. One bit of feedback, I kept getting tripped up by the buttons only being clickable on the names, kept clicking on the button icon and then confused why it hadn't changed what I was building. It's also easy to forget about the upgrades, might have been good to have them flashing when available to make them more noticeable.
Corporation
Corporationauthor28 Apr 2021, 05:32
@mrtnldm thanks for the kind words) I think that the color palette was so fitting here too. And yes, it's sad had no time to finish audio, probably gonna add it later just for myself
@craig appreciate detailed review, glad you felt uniqueness of the game, that's something I'm always aiming) With clicking in building icon is actually funny part - my engine don't support kinda "ignore raycast" flag, so I couldn't make a button with image inside)) gonna be fixed soon ofc
Goutye
Goutye28 Apr 2021, 11:05
And we reached lava o/ The beginning is hard but as you get more resources, the mining get more powerful and it just make it so easy and satisfying as you progress more and more! :smile: I had a lot of fun with the game, thank you a lot! Congratulations :v:
Corporation
Corporationauthor28 Apr 2021, 18:23
@goutye amazing to hear someone finished my game and enjoyed it) I wonder what difficulty it was. Thanks for feedback)
Ariorick
Ariorick28 Apr 2021, 22:05
You own engine, wow, crazy
sonicpixelation
sonicpixelation29 Apr 2021, 04:26
I enjoyed this game a lot. It was a little bit to get my head around at first but as the patterns started to form in mind I started to get really sucked in. Very nice job.
NinjaCatz
NinjaCatz29 Apr 2021, 14:57
Looks pretty good. It was interesting to play, although I was very unlucky. Also, the text is very small in some places, in fact, not readable at all.
LDJam user 240168
LDJam user 24016829 Apr 2021, 17:18
An incredible game! Very nice & engaging mechanics, loved it. The graphics could be a bit better, and music & sounds would definitely improve the experience. Nevertheless, great job!
Corporation
Corporationauthor29 Apr 2021, 18:26
@ariorick thanks)
@sonicpixelation glad to hear you got so engaged, thank you for feedback)
@ninjacatz thanks on your thoughts about UI, you probably have some massive resolution monitor like 4k, coz on my 2k 34' it looked ok, but maybe not that comfotable. I'll look into it because thought that this size is perfect for common UI text in my next projects.
@lisyarus thanks for sharing your win, i'm happy to hear someone enjoing mechanics because thats something i'm really trying to explore in every jam)
Brainloaf Studio
Brainloaf Studio29 Apr 2021, 23:01
Niiice! The concept here is really fun and I love tile-based puzzles like this. Having to figure out the best placements of my miners/drills in relation to the position of ores was an interesting mechanic, especially having to work with what the terrain generation gave me. I couldn't find a good way to remove placed blocks, as sometimes I would misclick, but I understand that might be another purpose of the drill. Nice work!
William Rizzi29 Apr 2021, 23:03
Nice game, i really like it, fun.
Corporation
Corporationauthor30 Apr 2021, 05:44
@brainloaf-studio Thanks for playing my game! Yes, I didn't add removing intentionally, that's part of the puzzle, so you can block yourself by mistake when digging down. Thanks interesting how the game was planned as construction puzzle, but turned out more like a resource management and planning)
@william-rizzi Glad you liked it)
phoenix-gi30 Apr 2021, 11:11
Interesting game! Good idea!
Graphics is good (but background is very simple..).
As I see there is no any sounds.
Is there any way to stop (switch off, for example if you don't want drill iron blocks) miner or drill? Or move blocks (or replace drill for miner)?
Deepak kr30 Apr 2021, 13:16
nice game and graphics, if the objects can be replaced with the other it will be more fun.
Jimbly
Jimbly30 Apr 2021, 15:27
Pretty neat! I made it to the bottom. I liked the balance of where to put things so I could still drill, mine, and not break apart. I think being unable to break the existing objects is cool.

I would have liked some hotkeys or easier way to select tools (and see which one I had selected), I sometimes got confused ^_^.

Really fun when the mine range gets huge, even though I know I didn't really need the ores at that point =).
Corporation
Corporationauthor30 Apr 2021, 19:01
@phoenix-gi Thanks for feedback. No, you can't change placed block intentionally so you can trap yourself.
@deepak-kr Thanks for review) Don't really know what you meant by replaced by other.
@jimbly Glad you liked my game and finished it! True, I also felt howkeys was very much needed after release. Selected object is highlighted with black, just not that noticable. And I very much agree on end game balance - there too much ore when miner radius goes through the roof, probably something to look at in terms of balance. Thanks for sharing this!
Sandra Jasionowska
Sandra Jasionowska2 May 2021, 12:41
I like the logic side of the game. Didn't reach the lava, I tried a few times.: I'm not the best at this kind of games haha :smile: Cool idea and totally fits the theme!
Prof.Suarez
Prof.Suarez6 May 2021, 05:07
This game has solid gameplay and mechanics. You should put together some nice ambiance music to put my drill together. Definitely see a polished version on Steam or something.
zimny11
zimny116 May 2021, 15:11
An extremely great game! It's a solid concept. It was a lot of fun to play!

In my opinion, there are a few things that could be improved:
- maybe R button as restart and ability to move up and down with arrows or W/S buttons,
- it would be useful to visually indicate the range of the drills and miners,
- an indication of where the player is on the visualization with ice and magma (one on the left side of the screen),
- I was constantly clicking on the image of the building instead of the name/button below, so maybe pressing the image could also select the building,
- maybe assign buttons 1, 2 and 3 to buildings for quick selection,
- maybe some quit button for the game ;)
- and of course it would be fun to have some sound effects and music!

Other ideas to that I think about looking at the game:
- powering the drills and the miners can be a thing, so more than just iron is needed to run them,
- some blocks or enemies to avoid or enemies that appears and attack you and turret building,
- drill for digging side ways would be helpful.
Corporation
Corporationauthor6 May 2021, 18:37
@zimny11 I'm glad you liked my game, your highly detailed feedback is very much appreciated! That's very valuable. Here's some thoughts: agreed with hotkey idea's, that should've been added; showing miners range was in my plans, agreed; indicating cold and lava pretty smart, didn't think about it; about image and buttons I answered above - thats actually because my engine was lacking input transparency for UI, I just added it after jam.
About your gameplay ideas: not sure about powering drill, gonna be hard to balance with iron peaces, but I'm thinking about nerfing mining in th end game; I don't think enemies will fit into my game concept, instead I was planning some kind of natural disasters, like earthquakes or magma erruption, also some kind of tough blocks to dig throu. Drilling sideways will kind of break some of puzzles when picking the right path)
hadesfury
hadesfury11 May 2021, 17:12
congratulation, it is a complex system you put in place.

Other games by @corporation

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord