Play game
Gold Express's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Fun | #3 | 4.406 | 4.406 |
Mechanics | #9 | 4.125 | 4.125 |
Overall | #13 | 4.219 | 4.219 |
Sound | #32 | 3.844 | 3.844 |
Aesthetics | #69 | 4.109 | 4.109 |
Music | #145 | 3.547 | 3.547 |
Story | #207 | 2.672 | 2.672 |
Theme | #518 | 2.672 | 2.672 |
Ranked from 64 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
2
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
2 royalty free music soundtracks: Surf Shimmy & Thief in the Night by Kevin MacLeod
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Fantastic game with smooth mechanics. Im even tempted to ask for the source code to learn some mechanics implemented here 😅
The game is very fun. The music is also fun.
Incredibly playable and replayable. A good tutorial and very simple controls. The game itself isn’t trivial and is really engaging. The fact that the levels are procedurally generated means you can keep playing over and over. Great idea and excellent execution. Everything fits together here. Graphics and sounds work well together. Congratulations on an awesome project!
Thanks a ton for the nice comment, it means a ton :-D We're glad that everything came together so well and you had a good experience!
The game is amazing but the jump is little bit to small beside that everything is great
Thanks for playing and also the feedback! We've talked about improving the jump so we might look into that in a coming balance update. :-D
Lots of fun! Who being a miner was so much fun! Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks for commenting and playing :-D Who doesn't love being a miner driving into the mountain hunting for gold? :D
Wow this is really a full fledged game basically good job
Thanks so much for the nice comment! We're happy you liked it! :-)
The presentation is accurate and looks very professional.
Everything is consistent, the game really happens in a cartoony gold mine, which is funny, and the SFX are well chosen ; I like the sound of the wind when the coaster is falling. But I didn't hear the music... I think it's supposed to start when we click at the beginning. Am I having a bug ?
The gameplay is minimalist, only one button is necessary (it could even be played on a phone, I didn't try). This makes the game instantly accessible.
Your game is a fun one. I may come back every now and then to take a ride down the mine. ;)
The biggest problem is : you're absolutely not in the theme. There's nothing tiny here. I don't really see how to fix this. But maybe it's not the purpose of this submission.
Thanks a bunch for your comment and great feedback! We're happy you liked it :-D
I really enjoyed that! it is a minecart ride like Ottos adventure but with dynamite and cool surf music! well done to the team!
Thanks for playing and commenting! :-D
Really fun game with a cool idea. The visuals look great :)
Thanks a ton for playing and taking time commenting! It's super awesome :-D Hope you've had a great jam!
A pretty cool entry to be honest , liked it very much good job
Thanks a bunch for the nice comment, it really makes our day! :-D
Wow, super cool game. Pretty much a full release! The tutorial helped a lot but the time slow made me mess up some jumps for sure. Second time through was much easier. Love the backflips and warning signs. Took a few runs to understand what is an obstacle and what is part of the environment. I thought blowing up the barrels in front would do something.
Shop is cool, would be nice to see some icons or changes, but that is beyond the 10 day jam. Really fun and satisfying to have upgrades and zoom around faster.
Really cool visuals and music combination, good job on the colors, feels uniform and professional. Even the background is a nice touch of 3D!
Gold digger life, 10/10
Thanks a bunch for playing and the nice comment and great feedback! We've heard the issues about background objects and obstacle objects before and it's definitely something we'll look into improving. Hopefully some color adjustments can do the trick so obstacle objects are more clear :-D
We're happy you had fun playing!
A very fun entry for the hills/jumping kind of game! The new mechanic with using space-bar to use dynamite for everything from jumping to blowing up the treasure path was totally awesome. It’s a great fit for mobile, it reminds me of a few games from there, and I was addicted to Tiny Wings when it released. How did you do your play testing? I super appreciate continuing the tutorial after my epic fail so early and not just restarting it or skipping it.
Thanks for the comment :D We'll have to look into Tiny Wings, weren't familiar with that title!
Regarding play testing we tried to do a moderated test with someone outside the project at least once per day during the first couple of days of development. As such, we usually sat together online in the evening and invited friends, acquaintances and partners in to try it out. It wasn't really important if they were familiar with the genre, or even gamers in general, as the most important task in the beginning was to just create a core foundation that worked. Then as we came closer to the end of the jam, our focus turned more towards polish and finalization of the content we had, and couldn't justify spending the evenings doing moderated play testing. Instead we created a private version of the project and sent it out to a wider group of people to get their feedback. The value in doing it this way, was that it removed the observer bias of us as developers, meaning the experience of the players were more raw and natural and less filtered. In the same way, we couldn't help the players as much, meaning the game to a greater degree had to be able to stand on its own without our help. The dynamics between those two approaches definitely helped catching a lot of the bigger teething issues before we submitted the game. Several of the issues described by players in the comments below (Shop being too expensive, the tutorial breaking the initial momentum) comes from features that were implemented or finalized in the very late stage of the project (A few hours before the deadline) and as such we weren't able to remedy those before the jam ended.
But hopefully we can catch up to those after the jam has ended and improve them :-D
Very fun game! I really like how you reuse the spacebar for different situations—laying dynamite when on the ground and backflipping in mid-air. That’s some smart design. Great work!
Thanks a bunch for the nice words :-D We're also really happy how it turned out, even though it was an ongoing discussion point during the development, so we're glad it worked out in the end!
Very impressive game. Loved the mechanics and physics and how you can upgrade your cart with gold! This was a pretty addicting experience. I can agree with some of the other comments that this would make a great mobile game!
Thanks a bunch for playing and the nice comment! We'll look into doing some balancing adjustments and more quality of life improvements, and then we'll investigate the possibilities for a mobile port :-D
This game is really cool, the basic gameplay loop is solid, the physics of the minecart are really satisfying, and the back flip mechanic is great.
I do agree with others here that the pacing is a bit off, but I think for me it's not so much about the prices of the upgrades, it's that your income doesn't seem to increase much as you get the upgrades. I think something like a multiplier that increases as your boost speed increases, and that you have to keep back flipping to maintain would fit in really nicely here. I do get what you were going for with the ore caves, and visually they look really nice, but they also to me break the pace of the run. The most fun I had was when I got a really good speed boost going and was just blasting down the track, trying to back flip to keep my speed up, and the treasure runs felt like something I needed to do to get more gold but brought the breakneck pace of the rest of the run down a bit.
All that being said, you guys really nailed it on so much of this game, the visuals, the audio, the gameplay. It has some of the tightest mechanics of any of the games I've played in this jam, and the whole concept is perfect for a jam game. Nice work!
Thanks so much for the reflective comment! It definitely leaves some stuff for thought. It's a great idea with relating gold multiplier with boost amount and might be something we'll look into adding in a balance patch after the jam. While the treasure run segment is not something we'll remove, it might make sense to reduce the brake-amount (or even remove the braking altogether) so it doesn't feel like a setback.
Thanks for playing and the great feedback, it's definitely something we'll take into consideration! :D
This makes me think of that old flash game about the penguin trying to fly. Beauytiful, my only comment is things seem very expensive and there isnt a distance multiplier but besides that, I could soooooo see young me playing this all night long! GGz!!!
That game was super awesome! So cool that you got reminded of that :-D The shop economics is definitely something we're going to revisit and improve in a balance patch after the jam is done. Thanks a bunch for commenting and playing!
Awesome.
Thanks for playing and the kind word :-D
Great game with very good polish. Everything was fitting very well together, even with that western font. The shop was a little exception from that maybe. The visual were fitting and consistent though not really my taste, but still good in what it was. Good job in overall!
Oh and another game i will probably copy at some point ;)
Thanks for playing and commenting, it means a lot to us :-D
Cool! Love the simplisity of it. One-button control makes it good game for a mobile.
Thanks for commenting, we wanted to really push for a simple control scheme, so we're glad it landed well :-D
Excellent, very polished game! The sounds/music were perfect, the jumps are SUPER satisfying with the jostling of the cart and all that, and the general gameplay loop is fun!
I do think...that I must have missed something, or perhaps experienced a bug. It doesn't seem like distance traveled (or backflips) have any impact on the amount of gold I earn? Which means the only gold I'm earning is from pickups, which means the gold costs in the shop feel...far too high. I dunno, maybe I'm just really really bad, but currently it feels like there's a pacing issue and it doesn't sound like anyone else is experiencing it.
I'm curious what your thoughts are, but in any case, still a fantastic game with a ton of polish and hard work put into it!!
Thanks a bunch for playing and you reflective comment.
Regarding how to earn more gold in a run, the intention is that it depends on your boost level when you hit a treasure run. Doing more back flips increase your boost level for a while, which in turn increases how many gold-ores you can crash into when during the treasure run. The gold ores in the treasure run gives significantly more gold than the single pick-ups throughout the level.
However you are absolutely spot on regarding the pricing in the shop. We didn't manage to balance the shop economy properly, which is probably the pacing issue you experience. Before we submitted the final build, I actually went in and reduced all the prices in the shop by half, in an attempt to remedy this, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough. We'll be pushing an update after the jam with a more appropriate shop economy which hopefully will improve the pacing a bit :-D
I seeeee, thanks so much for clarifying, that makes sense!