It's fun gameplay loop but it is too frustrating for me, currently. The premise of the game is that you have an ever increasing amount of coal to supply to keep playing. The first day it's 40, and on Day 15 it's 40,000. If you fail to provide the amount you lose and restart entirely from scratch (there's no general passives over multiple runs).
What makes it fun? There's RNG in how each day's map is generated with the ore veins and powerups you can get for that run. Some maybe crazy powerful weapons, some may be passive bonuses for the player, and others may be bonuses for workers you can employ. In addition, there's a strategic element of purchasing upgrades to help you mine faster, hold more items, fly, upgrade workers, etc. all at a cost of gold. You get gold based on what ores you mine, with coal = 1 gold and a diamond 4,000 gold for example. If you fill your quota early, you can prioritize mining higher value resources to bring back. But there's a risk as anything not brought back in time doesn't count in the final tally!
In the first map, progression works by going down into heavier concentrations of ores. These are harder to mine and require more damaging utensils. But the difference between the dirt layer on top and the red/orange layer further down is ~5 coal per block versus ~500. So the goal is to get deeper and deeper and access more and more resources.
What makes it frustrating?
After the several rounds, I hit my skill / strategy cap and I can't unlock any more of the game. I get to Day 15 and lose, again and again. I've tried different utensils (differing pickaxes, unlocks, guns); different employee configurations (trying to optimize miners with collectors), but I always lose on Day 15. To unlock the next profession after the shaman you need to beat day 15 with the starting role. So I'm stuck. There is not any feedback that I have found for how to do better.
It also sucks having really powerful utensils and abilities and then spending 10 minutes getting halfway as strong as you just were again - only to repeat this (for someone like me) ad infinitum with no way to progress.
My suggestion to the dev(s) is to:
1. Implement a skill tree for the player to spend experience on to allow them to tailor their experience in a certain way. Want to use pickaxes and do classic mining? Here's a way to start with ladders and a better pick. Purchases on these items are discounted. Want to organize your company? Here's a skill that replaces a pick with a command function to order your miners and collectors around.
In this way you still have the RNG, but the premise of each dig is still under the control of the player. Instead of going through 8 days to really start specializing, this would allow the player to begin with a specialty to try from the beginning and then pivot or respec their skills if they don't enjoy it.
2. I'd recommend another pass at the buy menu for items and their costs. Not to make the game "easy" but where a doofus like myself can get to day 16 after 12 hours, because at this rate I'll never play again. The outcome will be the same.
3. Ladder interactions and a magnet item / ability. Ores get stuck in corners or pass through blocks and I spend almost a minute or more each round trying to jump off the ladder to the collection box at the top. I wish there was an easier dismount similar to Terraria. When you are on the ladder you should be on it. Any movement up or down is the player. Getting off should require a jump. If you move left or right then instead of jumping you move as normal. Up or no move is a jump as usual.
Game play loop gets old quick, was fun well it lasted.
Buy upgrades, run to bottom of hole, grind out as much ore as you can.
$15 was too much, probably worth 5.
Its not worth the price, you can finish the game in 3h (true ending), the gameplay won't change much between runs, there is a lot of classes and maps, but the endgame is always the same, spam miners/collectors
demo seemed nice, the game it self isn't challenging in anyway, rather easy the different play styles aren't too enganging it's the same with just different tools the price tag is also discouraging almost 15 bucks for this? double that and get grounded a real game :y
The graphics can best be described as: existing
The gameplay loop is simple and sadly not really all that difficult.
There is very little meta progression (unlocking characters and biomes)
And yet... Somehow the mindless task of mining coal all day is kinda addicting.
And it's suuprisingly well optimized. You can hire literally endless workers to help you, and it only starts to affects the framerate once you get past several thousand. And it stays somewhat playable until you get into the upper reaches of billions of workers. It plays as if it was stresstested by Let'sGameItOut.
(If you are on the fence because of the pricetag, try the free demo first. It's what roped me in)
felt no growth in any way, loop was not fun. This is more of a chore. found it almost impossible to clear past a day or 2 always get stuck with no way up
15$ seems like a lot for what this game is
5-10$ seems more reasonable
poorly optimized (I know what it was made in isnt good at optimization)
edit:
please add auto sprint option somewhere (ideally settings)
the coins from the chest is pretty useless, especially when i get 50 mil a day and it gives 300$ it could be a good option for when I dont want any of the options but adding basically nothing makes me have 4 useless choices instead of 3)
also, I lost at wave 35ish because for some reason I wasnt getting more than 1.2 quadrillion coal even though the amount of collectors and miners kept increasing (sometimes doubled) not sure whats up with that. (also game starts to lag a good bit past 20 billion employees)
i had 100 hours in the demo, so I was super excited for the release. It's a game that can be challenging, but also is a ton of fun and has quite a bit of replay value with all the different professions and modes. Bought it 5 minutes after it came out, and have been playing it almost non-stop since!
2/5 - Very close to a good game, but it desperately needs balancing, optimization, and persistence. The lack of persistent upgrades is really damaging.
Best f*cking game I have ever played in my god damn life holy s*it this game is good. I f*cking love coal holy f*cking sh!t I love f*cking mining coal all g*d d*mn day long holy f*cking sh!t!!!!!
Price too high for such a simple game. The game loop is far too simple, and once you clear the first mine there's nothing really worth doing anymore. There's not even a proper ending so it's quite unsatisfying game overall.
It's a fun game but is it worth $18 CDN? Feels like a $5.99 sort of game as the gameplay content is moderately wide but not very deep. Every character fundamentally plays the same way.
Giving it a thumbs up but the thumbs down button looks pretty tempting when I think about how I was overcharged by about 300% by most people's expectation of $/gameplay content ratio.
Dev, I know you gotta eat but we see all the blatant code recycling.
Good game — Is it worth €12-15? Eh.
If you're just looking to have some casual fun and turn your brain off, it's a nice lil' game. It doesn't do anything crazy. Think Motherload 2025 for brain-rot seeking number junkies.
It's not intruiging, doesn't offer anything new — but does give that addictive substance that our monkey-brain gather-oriented minds still seek pleasure from.
6€ is humble, 8€ is fair, 10€ is a stretch, 12€+ is not recommended. IMO
I miss having my insanely overpowered 2000 weak buffers from the demo. Very sad they got removed but am still loving the game even though my favourite cheese got deleted :(
I used to play this one flash game back in the day called something like Mother Lode, a game about mining and selling ore and upgrading your mining drill. This game scratches that itch 1000x over. The perfect game to chill-out with at the end of the night. The perfect for when you just yurn for the mines. Also really enjoying the battleaxe + mining drills.
Great rogue-like, 10/10 game.
EDIT: I stayed up all night until 3 AM to play the game, and I ended up playing until 10 AM. That was the filthiest thing I've done in gaming in so long lol.
Also I appreciate the comments! I didn't know Motherload was still around! ^^
It's fun gameplay loop but it is too frustrating for me, currently. The premise of the game is that you have an ever increasing amount of coal to supply to keep playing. The first day it's 40, and on Day 15 it's 40,000. If you fail to provide the amount you lose and restart entirely from scratch (there's no general passives over multiple runs).
What makes it fun? There's RNG in how each day's map is generated with the ore veins and powerups you can get for that run. Some maybe crazy powerful weapons, some may be passive bonuses for the player, and others may be bonuses for workers you can employ. In addition, there's a strategic element of purchasing upgrades to help you mine faster, hold more items, fly, upgrade workers, etc. all at a cost of gold. You get gold based on what ores you mine, with coal = 1 gold and a diamond 4,000 gold for example. If you fill your quota early, you can prioritize mining higher value resources to bring back. But there's a risk as anything not brought back in time doesn't count in the final tally!
In the first map, progression works by going down into heavier concentrations of ores. These are harder to mine and require more damaging utensils. But the difference between the dirt layer on top and the red/orange layer further down is ~5 coal per block versus ~500. So the goal is to get deeper and deeper and access more and more resources.
What makes it frustrating?
After the several rounds, I hit my skill / strategy cap and I can't unlock any more of the game. I get to Day 15 and lose, again and again. I've tried different utensils (differing pickaxes, unlocks, guns); different employee configurations (trying to optimize miners with collectors), but I always lose on Day 15. To unlock the next profession after the shaman you need to beat day 15 with the starting role. So I'm stuck. There is not any feedback that I have found for how to do better.
It also sucks having really powerful utensils and abilities and then spending 10 minutes getting halfway as strong as you just were again - only to repeat this (for someone like me) ad infinitum with no way to progress.
My suggestion to the dev(s) is to:
1. Implement a skill tree for the player to spend experience on to allow them to tailor their experience in a certain way. Want to use pickaxes and do classic mining? Here's a way to start with ladders and a better pick. Purchases on these items are discounted. Want to organize your company? Here's a skill that replaces a pick with a command function to order your miners and collectors around.
In this way you still have the RNG, but the premise of each dig is still under the control of the player. Instead of going through 8 days to really start specializing, this would allow the player to begin with a specialty to try from the beginning and then pivot or respec their skills if they don't enjoy it.
2. I'd recommend another pass at the buy menu for items and their costs. Not to make the game "easy" but where a doofus like myself can get to day 16 after 12 hours, because at this rate I'll never play again. The outcome will be the same.
3. Ladder interactions and a magnet item / ability. Ores get stuck in corners or pass through blocks and I spend almost a minute or more each round trying to jump off the ladder to the collection box at the top. I wish there was an easier dismount similar to Terraria. When you are on the ladder you should be on it. Any movement up or down is the player. Getting off should require a jump. If you move left or right then instead of jumping you move as normal. Up or no move is a jump as usual.
Game play loop gets old quick, was fun well it lasted.
Buy upgrades, run to bottom of hole, grind out as much ore as you can.
$15 was too much, probably worth 5.
Its not worth the price, you can finish the game in 3h (true ending), the gameplay won't change much between runs, there is a lot of classes and maps, but the endgame is always the same, spam miners/collectors
demo seemed nice, the game it self isn't challenging in anyway, rather easy the different play styles aren't too enganging it's the same with just different tools the price tag is also discouraging almost 15 bucks for this? double that and get grounded a real game :y
The graphics can best be described as: existing
The gameplay loop is simple and sadly not really all that difficult.
There is very little meta progression (unlocking characters and biomes)
And yet... Somehow the mindless task of mining coal all day is kinda addicting.
And it's suuprisingly well optimized. You can hire literally endless workers to help you, and it only starts to affects the framerate once you get past several thousand. And it stays somewhat playable until you get into the upper reaches of billions of workers. It plays as if it was stresstested by Let'sGameItOut.
(If you are on the fence because of the pricetag, try the free demo first. It's what roped me in)
felt no growth in any way, loop was not fun. This is more of a chore. found it almost impossible to clear past a day or 2 always get stuck with no way up
15$ seems like a lot for what this game is
5-10$ seems more reasonable
poorly optimized (I know what it was made in isnt good at optimization)
edit:
please add auto sprint option somewhere (ideally settings)
the coins from the chest is pretty useless, especially when i get 50 mil a day and it gives 300$ it could be a good option for when I dont want any of the options but adding basically nothing makes me have 4 useless choices instead of 3)
also, I lost at wave 35ish because for some reason I wasnt getting more than 1.2 quadrillion coal even though the amount of collectors and miners kept increasing (sometimes doubled) not sure whats up with that. (also game starts to lag a good bit past 20 billion employees)
i had 100 hours in the demo, so I was super excited for the release. It's a game that can be challenging, but also is a ton of fun and has quite a bit of replay value with all the different professions and modes. Bought it 5 minutes after it came out, and have been playing it almost non-stop since!
2/5 - Very close to a good game, but it desperately needs balancing, optimization, and persistence. The lack of persistent upgrades is really damaging.
Best f*cking game I have ever played in my god damn life holy s*it this game is good. I f*cking love coal holy f*cking sh!t I love f*cking mining coal all g*d d*mn day long holy f*cking sh!t!!!!!
Price too high for such a simple game. The game loop is far too simple, and once you clear the first mine there's nothing really worth doing anymore. There's not even a proper ending so it's quite unsatisfying game overall.
It's a fun game but is it worth $18 CDN? Feels like a $5.99 sort of game as the gameplay content is moderately wide but not very deep. Every character fundamentally plays the same way.
Giving it a thumbs up but the thumbs down button looks pretty tempting when I think about how I was overcharged by about 300% by most people's expectation of $/gameplay content ratio.
Dev, I know you gotta eat but we see all the blatant code recycling.
Good game — Is it worth €12-15? Eh.
If you're just looking to have some casual fun and turn your brain off, it's a nice lil' game. It doesn't do anything crazy. Think Motherload 2025 for brain-rot seeking number junkies.
It's not intruiging, doesn't offer anything new — but does give that addictive substance that our monkey-brain gather-oriented minds still seek pleasure from.
6€ is humble, 8€ is fair, 10€ is a stretch, 12€+ is not recommended. IMO
I miss having my insanely overpowered 2000 weak buffers from the demo. Very sad they got removed but am still loving the game even though my favourite cheese got deleted :(
I used to play this one flash game back in the day called something like Mother Lode, a game about mining and selling ore and upgrading your mining drill. This game scratches that itch 1000x over. The perfect game to chill-out with at the end of the night. The perfect for when you just yurn for the mines. Also really enjoying the battleaxe + mining drills.
Great rogue-like, 10/10 game.
EDIT: I stayed up all night until 3 AM to play the game, and I ended up playing until 10 AM. That was the filthiest thing I've done in gaming in so long lol.
Also I appreciate the comments! I didn't know Motherload was still around! ^^
