it's flood season, dig caves to redirect an inevitable rising water until you can save everyone
Also available on itch.io for binaries https://nusan.itch.io/flooded-caves
This game has been made in 48h for game jam Ludum Dare 50
Your digging power is limited, it recharges over time. At regular interval, you can save someone by sending your rescue team
You can play the game using a keyboard (action is key C ), a gamepad or a mouse
This is really clever how the water physics have balance between predictability and randomness to give the player interesting decisions.
I saved everyone on a really hard level, but it did feel really hard.
It would be a very different game, but would the physics support having some rafts (that float) sitting around the bottom of the map, and the way you save people is to guide a raft to them and then make sure it carries them the rest of the way to the surface as the level fills?
Very nice! I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'll definitely be playing it more. The water physics was a little counterintuitive for me - I kept expecting pressure to force water up from below, but then I started thinking of the water more like sand and that helped a lot. That might be for the best gameplay-wise, though, I think it likely makes for more interesting decision-making. Great game.
Great game, but the water pyhsics were a little odd. I think @luchakis right and thinking of the water as sand helped to determine where it would go. But this didn't stop the game from being loads of fun.
A very simple and effective game that is well executed.
@NuSan : A suggestion (that you can ignore): In the game it obviously makes sense to get the lower trapped humans first. To add more challenge to the game, you could implement a points system where higher points are given for rescuing humans trapped lower later in the game. The score for rescuing a human is the Y position multiplied against number of humans already rescued.
It's really fun to just play around with the water physics in this, it's really satisfying just watching how areas fill up and watching the flow. Super impressive work for 48 hours!
This is a really fun game! Thanks for making it.
I've been playing on the "really hard" difficulty level for a while, and I've found a strategy that works most of the time. When it works, it becomes quite easy to save all 18 people. But every now and then the cave layout doesn't make it possible, and the game gets hectic.
@cmounce haha, impressive technique, I added the second water stream late in dev as a way to balance and make it more tense at the end, and also to counter the FPS slow down
Interestingly I managed to make an optimized version that run full speed but I can't balance it properly to keep the tense and hectic at the end
I'm really enjoying playing this game. The gameplay is well balanced and I find it so satisfying digging through the rock and moving the shape of the water. I keep coming back to it for a quick blast.
One technique to save drowning people is that their "drowning meter" resets when they fall. So if they are submerged you can keep them alive longer by letting them fall a little way then waiting, then repeating the process.
One other "game mode" you can play is: can you drown all the people (on easy level) before you are allowed to rescue the first person?
Really great game, very tense, and very impressive it was put together in 48h. Really creative use of the mechanics.
Wow, I just barely managed to get through the easiest level without losing a life. Superb gameplay, interesting mechanics. Addicting overall. Gold star work, @NuSan !
i somehow saved everyone in super hard on my first try, but 2 people (possibly more) did get close to drowning
Music is really awersome, difficulty is well balanced, did on mobile, normal, or eazy, i clicked on eazy idk, bad that it didnt worked normally in p8 player, just didnt showed out cave and only texture of logo in right upper corner :P
i just love the music so much! this is so fun and i just cant stop playing it!
This is more addictive than I would have expected. I've run thru every difficulty level twice.
Really good game!
I'm new to Pico-8 and just started looking around, but this game is the one that I keep coming back.
Awesome music, interesting concept, fun and rewarding gameplay that is super easy to understand / get into. I love the "sandbox" aspect of it as well.
@donbattery - completely agree. This is one cart I return to again and again and again. Short enough to only take a few minutes and as relaxing or as stressful as I want it to be.
Thanks! It warms my heart that this game is still played today, I'm glad I managed to strike a good balance for the difficulty, and that the game can be both a relaxing puzzle and an hectic battle against the flood
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I have probably told you on every channel already, but thx for coming up with this genius game concept! I updated my clone to reflect it's heritage in the game's menu :) Nothing beats your difficulty settings though, they are perfect. Here is my clone:
Really good fun this. I'm surprised I never noticed it before. Anyway, I made a video here:
I'll be taking a look at the clone above me in another video so look out for that one too. :)
Played this for over an hour, wonderfully simple but addicting and satisfying game!
Played it more this evening, after 5 wins on really hard in a row i decided that i need to stop haha
Loved it a ton, i can't believe you made this in only 48 hours!
The best PICO-8 game I've ever played so far! So many things to mention: simplicity, fun, originality, layered music as the flood progresses, satisfying physics, replayability, balance, graphics. And you did that in 48 hours? Wow!
I discovered this game a while ago, but still come back to it often.
Also love this epic screen that says BRAVO to me when I straight up drowned 17 out of 18 people.
@zaka thank you for your kind words!
Admittedly I should have put a let happy message if you don't save at least half the people, but hey, one person saved is still a lot better than none!
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