Ludum Dare #48compo

Wormy's Dangerous Dig

by pavelc

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.81

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.70

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.52

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.22

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.85

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.35

Help Wormy journey into the earth.
Dig deeper and deeper and consume different foods for different effects.
Yes, there is fire underground, I guess it is magma.
Watch out for underground holes!
Don't move into your own body.

A twist on the classic Snake gameplay. Instead of playing top down, the game has a side-view and you are digging down deeper and deeper.

Alternative title: Wormy's Big Dig

Currently there are 7 levels.

Playable on the web on itch.io or at the Lexaloffle BBS.
Alternatively download the executables on itch.io (I only tested the linux version, but they should all work fine as Pico-8 seems relatively stable).

Controls

- Arrow keys: Move
- Y/C: Mute the music
- X/V: Restart the current level
- Enter: Pause menu, restart from here

Everything else should be explained in the game.

Tips

- You can't go back to the previous level
- Watch out when making tight U-turns, you might hurt yourself

About The Game

Everything was created in Pico-8, for coding I did use VSCode.
This was my second Ludum Dare (I did one MiniLD and one full LD on the old site).
I did a short Pico-8 tutorial as preparation, apart from that this was my first time developing in Pico-8 and my first time programming Lua.

Level features are read from the sprites as they are placed on the map. Adding more shapes of existing features is therfore very easy, up to the resource limits of Pico-8.

This was my first time making my own music for anything, doing it in Pico-8 seemed very accessible and fun.

Thoughts

I might write a blog post tomorrow about my other thoughts about this LD.

Thanks you for playing and I can't wait to play your entries!

Get the cartridge:

Tags: #2d, #pico-8, #sourcecode

Genres: adventure

Tools: PICO-8

Comments25

coyotethursday26 Apr 2021, 03:51

I really liked the vibe of this game, the bones were a great touch! I also had a lot of fun figuring out how the digging mechanic worked, that was super interesting

rhoff9526 Apr 2021, 04:06

Really cool game. I like the idea of a 'sim' combined with snake. Well done.

NekuSoul27 Apr 2021, 15:24

Nice idea to combine Snake with a dash of physics. Puts an interesting spin on how you'd normally play.

PavelCauthor27 Apr 2021, 21:48

Thanks for giving it a try!

timeloopedpowergamer27 Apr 2021, 23:24

Loved it. Played all the way to the end. Really liked the physics combined with blocky graphics.

gnaro27 Apr 2021, 23:25

What a great submission! An elegant idea with such good execution! Congrats!

Threeli28 Apr 2021, 01:22

I can't believe this is the first PICO game I ran into. I loved it! I did accidentally glitch through the bottom of a screen when I'm guessing the fall mechanic took over a rather than pushing me left or right, but you must have coded for that because I popped right back up a second later.

The fall mechanic is really interesting actually. Ended with a score of only 100, but I did have a good time. Great work!

PavelCauthor28 Apr 2021, 13:03

@timeloopedpowergamer @gnaro I'm glad you liked it!

@threeli Yeah I also noticed that bug, there must be some edge case left somewhere. Hope I will find the time to add a bugfix.
For Pico games, I really enjoyed the mechanics of this Pico-8 entry I found: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/digidig

GoldenEvolution28 Apr 2021, 14:06

Fun little snake-like game with extra mechanics! Good submission!

Crazybot28 Apr 2021, 14:20

I finished it and scored 290, I really liked it! the holes mechanic took me a while to figure out because I had to realise it wasn't actually top down view

But overall a really creative take on the snake game classic!

zimny1128 Apr 2021, 19:53

A really cool take on this timeless classic! It was fun to play!

PavelCauthor29 Apr 2021, 15:53

@crazybot Yeah, I was actually wondering about that. "hen you work on something at a certain point you don't even notice things like that, but I also thought it is actually quite ambiguous whether it is side or top-down view graphics wise. Originally planned to have the outside world and some grass on the top of the first level to make it clearer, but didn't get around to adding that.

xxnolanxx29 Apr 2021, 22:32

Really enjoyed this! I like how it started out feeling like a pretty standard snake clone, but as I got through the levels I realized how important the differences really were, and ended up feeling like a completely different game. Great job!

plexium.nerd29 Apr 2021, 22:43

I like how the instructions were incorporated into the levels. Very clever twist on a snake game!

Vederant29 Apr 2021, 22:45

Really cool idea! It's feels weird that this is the first snake-adventure I came across, but it is such a great combination! The "snake" looks a bit suggestive though ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

audrey29 Apr 2021, 22:49

Very very good concept!! A nice amount of mechanics, speed affecting your jump length was really great and totally seems like something you could build off of! Allowing the player to choose to slow themselves down if they needed to was a very good idea, and not immediately killing the player from one mistake was definitely something I was pleased to see on the second-last screen when I hit some lava haha. My one complaint is that grabbing food can sometimes be difficult because of the required pixel-perfect precision I guess?

Secret Magic 40429 Apr 2021, 22:59

Wow that was fun! What a great snake-like adventure game. I was having a blast, but the game crashed!

The message error I got is "runtime error line 418" and apparently had to do with the update process for the cavities.

Hopefully that will be helpful to you to debug the game. I'll give it another try later to see if I can make it to the end! :smile:

DoctorTM30 Apr 2021, 01:16

Nice compo! Interesting mechanics

PavelCauthor30 Apr 2021, 21:59

@xxnolanxx @plexium-nerd @doctortm So glad to hear you enjoyed it!

@vederant Haha, maybe I should have chosen other colors :sweat_smile:

@secret-magic-404 Oh wow hadn't encountered that, will have a look. Thanks for pointing it out.

blob1 May 2021, 03:26

Ah that's a fun idea. Cool concepts to have to go over chasms using speed. Could see some interesting puzzles using length and speed.

DS Nahogara1 May 2021, 07:26

I never played a Snake game WITH gravity! This is the first time ever, it is a really cool idea, i love that you can also jump from side to side in some levels from open areas, and literally the fact that everything is eatable
makes it even better.

FANTASTIC Game! :heart:

pancelor4 May 2021, 19:03

nice twist on snake! I liked the fire pit in level 5; I nearly dove right in! I like how lenient the game was; if I only had 1 life I dunno if I would have replayed after getting hit, but I made it to the end and enjoyed it :)

Team-on5 May 2021, 11:50

Impressive innovation for a shake!

felo077 May 2021, 00:20

Really simple game, good graphics. Sound effects a bit annoying. Nice take on a classic

Euler Moises14 May 2021, 04:00

Liked it! A more modern worm game. With phases and power ups. Not just that annoying thing of just increasing in size.
Take this project forward. It will definitely be a great game.

congratulations on the work!