Definitely a fun game, has potential to be great. My biggest complaint would be that I can't mine above me, I would also love to see more upgrades added like player speed or even like adding tourches to provide more light in the dark. Having a place to save your progess would be sick too.
I do like the relaxing vibes to it, and I do like how simple it is, great job!
thank you! i wrote everything down and will see what i can do. everything is possible. for the torches unfortunately i would need to rewrite my lightning system. its just a black image above everything with a circle cutout that follows the player. no adding torches would change everything but i will see what i can do :)
Has potential. Better controls would help a lot. Using the common w/a/s/d is a problem because CTRL + S is a safe file shortcut, so many players will have to use the arrow keys - two hands on keyboard.
I'd recommend making it playable with one hand plus mouse; so Left Click rather than CTRL as action button. I don't care for the force-stopping when mining either. I'd suggest that holding e.g. Left + Action Button will just let me walk left, unless/until there is something to mine in front of me. So you can just hold it down to strip-mine a whole row, for instance. I'd use another button for ladders, maybe just L.
There's space at the bottom of the screen, so you might put a little UI strip with instructions/controls down there; better if players don't have to scroll down to the description to see how to play.
I think those changes would reduce the control-related friction that can make it confusing/awkward to play. And then of course, whatever cool upgrades and stuff you might add would make it more fun :)
Wish I'd gotten here a few hours sooner to provide some input on this. I adamantly disagree with the user above re the mouse. While CTRL+<any letter> is going to be a bad time because of keyboard shortcuts (although I got a laugh out of one game that forced you to reconfigure the controls as a game mechanic... and tricked the player into bookmarking the game half way through), the mouse is the wrong control to use for this. A mouse isn't a button, its primary function involves positioning. By using the mouse as an input, it provides the impression that interactions should be oriented using the mouse - which is an entirely reasonable UX, but obviously not what you decided on for this game. And unnecessary mouse use makes a game more difficult to play on a laptop with a touchpad.
I see you left CTRL+arrows in as an alternative, and that works perfectly fine, so adding the mouse as an alternative here didn't hurt playability (although it's still not the right use for a mouse). But don't let the previous commenter's opinions fool you into thinking the mouse is actually a good/better "button" as you make future updates/games. From a usability perspective, using it for that purpose is wrong, because it implies a control scheme that it isn't being used for, and I spend WAY too much time explaining this to developers.
HOWEVER - two handed keyboard use then would be aided by not needing the mouse for menus.
And you are also completely right. Makes totally sense the point about the mouse. So i changed back, but instead of CTRL you use SPACE Key. I hope this should not affect any browser gameplay anymore, lol. I will keep that in mind what you said about using mouse. Thank you.
it should work but i figured out my controls could cause problems on browser because you need to press CTRL and then WSAD at the same time and this could cause problems on browser because they are also shortcuts for saving or even closing tab, lol. so i am reworking controls right now.
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Definitely a fun game, has potential to be great. My biggest complaint would be that I can't mine above me, I would also love to see more upgrades added like player speed or even like adding tourches to provide more light in the dark. Having a place to save your progess would be sick too.
I do like the relaxing vibes to it, and I do like how simple it is, great job!
thank you! i wrote everything down and will see what i can do. everything is possible. for the torches unfortunately i would need to rewrite my lightning system. its just a black image above everything with a circle cutout that follows the player. no adding torches would change everything but i will see what i can do :)
Has potential. Better controls would help a lot. Using the common w/a/s/d is a problem because CTRL + S is a safe file shortcut, so many players will have to use the arrow keys - two hands on keyboard.
I'd recommend making it playable with one hand plus mouse; so Left Click rather than CTRL as action button. I don't care for the force-stopping when mining either. I'd suggest that holding e.g. Left + Action Button will just let me walk left, unless/until there is something to mine in front of me. So you can just hold it down to strip-mine a whole row, for instance. I'd use another button for ladders, maybe just L.
There's space at the bottom of the screen, so you might put a little UI strip with instructions/controls down there; better if players don't have to scroll down to the description to see how to play.
I think those changes would reduce the control-related friction that can make it confusing/awkward to play. And then of course, whatever cool upgrades and stuff you might add would make it more fun :)
Thank you for that constructive comment! You were absolutely right. I did update the controls. You can try it out.
Wish I'd gotten here a few hours sooner to provide some input on this. I adamantly disagree with the user above re the mouse. While CTRL+<any letter> is going to be a bad time because of keyboard shortcuts (although I got a laugh out of one game that forced you to reconfigure the controls as a game mechanic... and tricked the player into bookmarking the game half way through), the mouse is the wrong control to use for this. A mouse isn't a button, its primary function involves positioning. By using the mouse as an input, it provides the impression that interactions should be oriented using the mouse - which is an entirely reasonable UX, but obviously not what you decided on for this game. And unnecessary mouse use makes a game more difficult to play on a laptop with a touchpad.
I see you left CTRL+arrows in as an alternative, and that works perfectly fine, so adding the mouse as an alternative here didn't hurt playability (although it's still not the right use for a mouse). But don't let the previous commenter's opinions fool you into thinking the mouse is actually a good/better "button" as you make future updates/games. From a usability perspective, using it for that purpose is wrong, because it implies a control scheme that it isn't being used for, and I spend WAY too much time explaining this to developers.
HOWEVER - two handed keyboard use then would be aided by not needing the mouse for menus.
And you are also completely right. Makes totally sense the point about the mouse. So i changed back, but instead of CTRL you use SPACE Key. I hope this should not affect any browser gameplay anymore, lol. I will keep that in mind what you said about using mouse. Thank you.
mining doesn't work
it should work but i figured out my controls could cause problems on browser because you need to press CTRL and then WSAD at the same time and this could cause problems on browser because they are also shortcuts for saving or even closing tab, lol. so i am reworking controls right now.
i changed the whole input system. does it work now? you need to press WSAD/ARROWS for a direction and then hold left mouse button.