Try GeoDepths on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2206140/GeoDepths/
Pilot your drill deep below the surface of a remote planet, to find ore to refine into resources, which will be used in drill upgrades and construction of your homebase. Upgrades will allow you to drill deeper to find more types of ores. Explore caves to uncover mysteries and secrets.
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seems fun. but that screen shake hurts me 😞
For me the worst is when a game has a nugget of greatness that is buried and shines through just often enough to make me want to deal with the frustration.
For your maze logic, the only things I've encountered that thwart the 'hold left/right' is if the entrance or exit are not along the outer wall. Even then, you'll eventually go in a circle and will know it isn't working.
All of that is thrown out the window if the walls move, though.
I see some potential for a 3d dome keeper using roughly this gameplay
Following a wall in a maze works as long as there are no loops in the maze, otherwise it is possible to get trapped in a loop that does not connect back to the entrance or exit. And as long as there are no loops, if you continue following the wall after hitting the exit, but not leave you will hit every section of the maze before getting back to the entrance.
If this demo is representative of the full game, there just seems to be no challenge at all. You don't have to plan, preserve resources or think at all. Time waster games absolutely have their place but usually they have interesting core gameplay or challenges to reach. If this game has any it doesn't show.
Thanks for covering my game, and providing tonnes of feedback! I particularly like the idea of making the drill map more varied with obstacles that you need to navigate around, with upgrades that allow traversal through them. Maybe also denser rock that is slower to get through at first. A lot to think about!
Ok hot take. I think the mineing could be more like fossil fighters like. Like hard dirt patches that need a better drill or fragile ore that need a like vacuum drill or something. Add more puzzle like elements.
This game has some cute little mechanics, but from playing as much as I could find in this demo, it doesn't yet have any point to draw me in.
Deep rock galactic? 7:14
As a random passing game dev, I really appreciate your musings on game mechanics. It's fertile stuff 🙂
As you were talking about random "shortcuts" in tech trees and such, it really resonated with a recent experience that's been on my mind. I'd been (re)playing E2E, the godfather of "expert" technical modpacks for Minecraft (Modded MC has a steep learning curve, but I think you'd love what is essentially the guiding light of a lot of games you've said you enjoyed. That said, "Yet another Minecraft youtuber" really doesn't seem to be your vibe). It's basically tech tree: the game, but extremely "crunchy" and deep such that a brisk run generally takes something like 100 hours.
Anyways, E2E gives a reward crate after every major progress milestone – and the prize pool is brilliantly designed. You never get basic resources or currency-type stuff. High quality food (Which doubles as a small permanent boost to your hp) is common, allowing you to neglect farming until midgame. Some rewards are just a huge stack of decorative blocks, which stingy players otherwise would never have spent resources on. A rare few rewards are duds or at least extremely niche – but some very rare drops give a carefully chosen endgame item that completely changes the nature of your run.
What's extra interesting, is that you usually can't make use of it right away, adding a massive incentive to the necessary parts of the tech tree. It's super memorable to get a useful machine early and rush power generation to run it – or to get a luxury power source and just completely skip all the low tier generators – or to start with a midgame convenience item that lets you to sift sand and gravel instead of actually mining for resources. So many of the possibilities are really heavy hitters, yet it's surprisingly balanced! You only find things you were eventually going to make yourself anyways (probably in mass), and it's never something that just does everything for you. The net effect is that they give intermediate goals, in what could otherwise be a daunting wall of tasks when you start a new game
here are some things that I think could make this game better; please keep in mind that I'm not a game developer, so some of these might not be great.
– the ability to scan the mushrooms. mushrooms are very interesting, and even after centuries of research we still don't understand them, so there's no reason they should be relegated to set dressing.
– the ability to take samples, such as rock chips, spore samples, or soil samples. collecting specimens could make cave exploration more interesting and rewarding. taking multiple scans and samples of the same plant could still give you some research, albeit with diminishing returns.
– a change in how minerals are shown. minerals could start out invisible to you but be revealed as you scan the area and take rock samples. new minerals could be unlocked by getting new methods of scanning, like sonar or by increasing the sensitivity of existing ones.
– liquids and atmospheric conditions in caves. these could serve as hazards, or just things to take samples of.
– having to keep the atmosphere at your base clean and oxygenated. different plants and machines could filter certain pollutants, or produce oxygen but add pollutants of their own. having the plants grow in different conditions could make it an interesting challenge, and put more weight on scanning and sampling plants.
– making the resource extraction more interesting. this could take many forms, but my idea is to add one or two extra layers of rock, where you have to remove parts of the layer above to access the layer below. I would also make digging require power, which you have a certain amount of per resource patch. you would have different tools that remove more or less rock, but the large ones have a chance to destroy resources. there could also be fragile resources that require you to dig around them so they aren't destroyed. this would make the extraction of resources a puzzle, although I'm not sure that's what this game needs.
This feels like it would have been a killer first wave VR game. Still would be fun as one, with some minor tweaks and additions!