Neat idea, I think some clearer direction and simpler mechanics would have helped. It's very heavy on the gameplay systems with slots, wallet limit, damage, oil, block digging, but it feels quickly thrown together instead of planned out. Limiting the amount of mechanics would have freed up time for other lacking areas like artwork and design as well, especially for game jams when there's not much time.
Loved the music!
thank you for the feedback. Yeah I’m not much of an artist so I tried to focus on gameplay, but then it took me so long to get the gameplay feeling good enough to my liking that the other major component the upgrade system was lacking. Plus I realized while an incremental game sounds like it would be easy to make it’s really hard to balance it and make good upgrade trees so I kinda learned that one the hard way. Thank you for playing and thank you so much for the feedback. I had so much fun making it, I think i’m going to try to make it a full game since It feels like something I could actually complete and ship of course I’ll work to get better art UI and player experience. I need to check out your game, the name alone has me wanting to play!
No problem glad to help!
For this jam we tried to keep gameplay simple enough to put on a sticky note or two, otherwise it becomes too daunting and buggy. For our first game jam we went pretty heavy on mechanics and players ended up confused and frustrated with bugs the whole time. This jam went a lot smoother, we nailed the gameplay loop early on and focused on animations/graphics for most of the jam. Once you have a strong simple gameplay loop it's a lot easier to expand on it with later additions, upgrade systems, etc. Rather than trying to go all-in with a full web of systems at the beginning. This also helps a lot with the player understanding it too, games feel much more fun and gratifying when they slowly introduce mechanics vs. when they slam you with everything at once. I really love your driller frog concept, it's creative and you could have a lot of fun animating it with the drill bouncing up and down like a frog or something, and maybe the frog picks up gems with his tongue. For artists you can try looking for a friend who's good at art or check out the Big Mode discord, they have a huge busy chat for linking up with other people based on their talents.
Thanks for rating our game it's super appreciated :)
