DIG DEEP: Artifactually Incorrect

Dig for relics of varying value. Upgrade your pickaxe to dig some more. Proudly display what you've unearthed!

Hot diggity dang!

THE GAME

Find relics of varying value in this dig 'em up!

► Use your pickaxe to dig for buried relics ⛏️
Relics are valuable 🦴⚱️ Trash is worth little 💾📼
► Your actions and pickaxe damage are limited, but you use money you gain for selling loot on upgrades
Complete relics will give you more points, so choose wisely
► Trash is worth little on the marketplace but is safe to sell 💸
► You have 7 days of digging available before the game ends 📅


HOW TO PLAY

Dig Deep is divided into 3 screens: the Digsite screen, the Findings screen, and the Results screen.

Digsite

🕹️ Click the tiles you wish to dig with your pickaxe
🕹️ The ground is made up of 4 layers of increasing HP
🕹️ The tile will show if it contains an item to find
🕹️ More valuable items appear on the lower layers

Findings

🕹️ The Findings screen displays the items you've found
🕹️ Click on what you've found to view the object description
🕹️ The sell price is displayed in the sell button underneath each item
🕹️ Upgrade your pickaxe on this screen by clicking the upgrade button
🕹️ There is one upgrade track. The next upgrade is listed next to the upgrade price

Results

🕹️ View your final score, your earned title, and the state of your discovered relics


SUBMISSION

We have added a new version of the game post-jam which has fixed the game soft locking. We highly recommend playing that version of the game, though the jam submission version is still very much playable. Thank you!

Voting results

Overall
1st
7.607
Graphics
1st
8.286
Audio
1st
8.071
Gameplay
2nd
6%
6.536
Originality
2nd
6%
7.250
Theme
6th
31%
7.107

This game entered in the Team competition (16 entries).

Comments (21)

Devousa
 • 4 years ago • 

I think I broke your game. :) Or maybe I just couldn't figure out how to continue after I had gone through all the tiles with 1 day left. The soundtrack and the graphics are on point!

balestel
 • 4 years ago • 

Awesome! loved the humor on the artifacts and attention to detail.

Also, the game was spot on with the theme!

treslapin
  • 4 years ago • 

@devousa yeah that happens if you sell everything haha :D You're supposed to save items for the final scoring.

MatchaMaze
 • 4 years ago • 

Great game! Really enjoyed it! It is qute well crafted!

TomBuston
 • 4 years ago • 

Really good entry, a lot of polish and an original gameplay. I would have liked to know instantly if I dug up something; I'm not sure I always understood when the tile showed there was an item in it ?
This is one of my favorite game of the jam so far, well done :)

Odrez
 • 4 years ago • 

I really didn't expect to like this game when it started, but you can get hooked easily. It has a relaxing and easy to learn gameplay loop, enough stuff to find and great sound design. Well done & quite original! The graphics are actually quite nice too.

mad-s
 • 4 years ago • 

The strategy is really in the title: I tried both digging shallow one layer at a time and deep, which gave much better results. Besides a minor issue (the game soft-locks when you dig out everything), the game ran without any issues. I really liked the style of the graphics!

remco
 • 4 years ago • 

The polish on this is amazing. You don't notice it's a jam game at all!

As you can see from my submitted hi-score, points can be fractional (well, the screenshot in any case, I rounded down just to be safe) … I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.

Like the poster above me, I could not see much strategy one I figured out that it's (almost) always optiomal to dig deep (unless an item is already visible, perhaps). Maybe it's also that it doesn't matter which tile is next to which.

I enjoyed the music, very on point.

Baconinvader
 • 4 years ago • 

Ended up playing this one more than I thought I would. It's really quite addictive once you get going. As others have said, the game softlocks after you mine everything, which I thought was a shame. Besides that though, great job! I especially like the little descriptions on everything.

pikachurian
 • 4 years ago • 

The game is fun and addictive. I like the mechanics and the decision making around chosing wheather to keep or sell items. I think the game should make it clear weather or not you dug up an item.

alyphen
 • 4 years ago • 

Well-polished, very clean game, with an interesting risk/reward system.

I feel like it would be nice if there was some way to tell which places you were more likely to find pieces, as it is it feels somewhat random as to what you find, and completing an artifact is incredibly difficult.

smbe19
 • 4 years ago • 

The game looks really polished. However, you don't need to think at all when playing, as there is only ever one upgrade available and it does not matter in which order one digs up stuff. Furthermore, if one buys too many upgrades, the game gets stuck as there is nothing left to dig up.

treslapin
  • 4 years ago • 

Thank you everyone for your comments! We've updated the game now with the soft lock fix. :) The original is also available to play.

Subatiq
 • 4 years ago • 

It looks like a game that I would install on my phone. And it looks like you can do it right now without any additional polishing. But at first I didn't understand the value of the found objects - overall concept was hard to grasp. But after some time It became much clearer.

Great entry, keep up the good work!

mit-mit
 • 4 years ago • 

The game is very well polished: graphics look super tight, and I really liked the music and sfx, perfectly suited to the experience. The artifacts are cool. It's not too challenging, fun to replay a couple of times too: a perfect casual game. Well done!

ratrogue
 • 4 years ago • 

Well done! I totally didn't understand that I'm not supposed to sell everything, so there's that - would be great if the game could give some feedback about that, and not just stop working whenever I digged out everything there is. :-P But it's a great idea, you interpreted the theme very well and made a unique game. Congrats!

TimTips
 • 4 years ago • 

I found this quiet addictive but I only realized very late that the pictures at the end showcase the fragments of the artifacts you dug. The graphics and details are great!

Mr. Chocolate Salmon
(@mr_chocolatesalmon) • 4 years ago • 

I really enjoyed this one and played through it a couple times. The graphics and sounds are spot on, and overall it was easy to understand and get into. It did take me a couple tries to understand that I needed to keep some of the higher value artifacts for the scoring at the end though.

But as I said, it was a fun game and I think one of my favourites so far!

maartene
 • 4 years ago • 

Nice polished game: graphics, UI, sound, music, narrative, mechanics, etc.
I would like some less RNG: there runs where I had days without any relic. That feels unfair because you can't "snow ball".

Aurel300
 • 4 years ago • 

I have to second the RNG criticism: my first run went pretty well, all subsequent ones not so much. If you don't find relics in the first days, you might as well restart. Personally I would like there to be some way to strategically choose which tiles to dig from. Minesweeper-like indication of nearby relics? But then not everyone likes puzzle games :)

The other minor issue I had was that I did not know how much the upgrade cost – no text displayed in the purchase button. Not that it mattered, since I pressed it anyway, just in case I had enough!

Clean UI, nice graphics, cute item descriptions, chill music.

thomastc
 • 4 years ago • 

Very high marks all around on this one! Graphics look extremely polished, the music is pleasant and fitting, and the sound effects are great too.

With regards to gameplay, there is an interesting balance to be struck between selling early so you get those desired pickaxe upgrades, and keeping artifacts for your final score. I got my highest score by selling my findings and upgrading early on (up to but not including the 100-cost tier), which gives a lot more digging power for the remainder of the game. I got a Triceratops part early, so subsequent bones became the money makers. And the golden masks too, which don't seem to contribute to the final screen.

Where to dig is not really an interesting choice, as most/all artifacts seem to be buried deeply and scattered randomly. It would be more fun if the individual parts of a particular artifact occurred close together. (Maybe this is the case, but since you can't see what you dug up until the end of the day, it's hard to tell.)

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Links

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Authors

dorkulon
Elchao
cloakedninjas
treslapin

Details

High scores Submit score

#UserScore
1@M2tias4731 
2@thomastc3265 
3@minoryo2123 
4@jcochet1833 
5@remco1087 
6@Aurel300476 
7@cloakedninjas411 
8@Wan384 
9@laaph318 
10@TimTips294 
Total submitted scores: 11
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