Are you one of the people who would have a little bit too much fun with the enemies in the original Dig Dug? then this little toy seems like it’s for you.
You can place tile with right click, and destroy them by shooting or moving into them. there are 4 different resources and weapons, but 3 enemies. When you inflate an enemy, you can grab them with right click and take them with you, and use them as cover, as inflated enemies block other enemies, but not you. you can also tether them with string using the E key, AND freeze them with the ice drillgun, to keep them fully inflated for longer~
(Warning: contains popping. it’s dig dug.) Click here to play! the password is "digdug"
Make sure you play in fullscreen. There should be some instructions out of bounds.
I don’t really have any coherent plans for this project, but i figured it was in enough of a state to share. if there’s any interest, i can expand upon this project
I gotta say this is a interesting new Dig Dug A.U, where Taizo Hori is fucking dead.
Or he got turned into a Fygar, one of the two.
Ok but seriously I do like this game quite a bit despite it feeling very tech demo-ish.
The original art assets look very cute, if a bit rough and the controls feel good and responsive.
I have no idea if you are going to work on this further, but if you do there are some problems I noticed.
The weapon balance doesn’t exist, at all. The triple shot pump basically makes all other weapons obsolete as it can mine out the map faster than any other option, deal with crowds of enemies better than the other and is the best way to deal with armored Pookas.
Even if it got nerfed, the ice pump and the non upgraded red pump would still be amazing because you can hammer the left mouse button until you win.
The gun and the steel pump are fine tho.
The block placing, enemy grabbing, and the tether run into the problem of being neat, but not super useful.
The blocks seems like it would be useful, but as there are 3 different giant blobs of enemies, that can destroy your blocks incredibly fast making it kind of pointless.
The enemy grab and body blocking other enemies with a inflated boi would be useful as they cannot be destroyed from enemies, but you have to get in close to grab them, which can easily get you killed by their friends, and you can accidently pop your shield instead of hitting the enemies making it pointless.
And there’s the tether which is like the body block but now you have an enemy permanently stuck within close range to you, so good luck not popping your tethered guy or dying from him.
Speaking of the enemies, they are super basic, they just lock on to the player and will run in that direction until you or them are dead, if there’s a wall they will hump that wall until they make an opening.
This is kinda unfortunate as they lost the ability to warp through walls to try and pincer the player like in the original game, also the Fygars lost the ability to spit fire, so they are just exactly the same as Pookas.
This is also what makes the unlimited use infinite range pumps the best, you can just walk backwards and shoot and nothing will threaten you.
This isn’t really related to the game but I need to ask; if you decide to keep working on this, are you still going to keep using the Dig Dug characters?
I don’t know how stingy Namco is when it comes to their old not as well known IPs like Dig Dug but I would hate to see this get taken down due to copyright issues so you might want to make it something more original or just make it “Legally Distinct Excavation and Inflation Game” so you don’t have to worry about that.
Sorry if this whole post came off negative, I do enjoy this concept quite a bit, a top down shooter with a bit of a sandbox twist is a surprisingly good combo, and I hope you consider working on this further!
the Reverse Gun is pretty neat, but you deflate pretty fast. It’d be nice to see enemies that inflate you, adding a sort of damage while not instantly resetting the level.
dude, thank you so much for such deep feedback for my silly little game. absolutely did not come off as negative, i really appreciate people using their brain about something i made!
Weapon balance
yeah its totally unbalanced, lol. It might be best to make a cooldown for each gun, so you need to go more slow and methodical.
Block placing, enemy grabbing, tether
Yeah, block placing is kinda useless as it is. my original ideal for this game was the idea of some kind of tower defense basebuilding scenario, but you also go into random dig dug levels and inflate enemies to bring back home. as of right now, with no pathfinding, and all enemies being able to tunnel, block placing is an entirely meaningless ability.
However, i tried to give the tether and the bodyblocking way more playtesting, and i thought they were good (but that’s my bias since i always kept a slow and methodical playstyle) You can stand about halfway through an inflated enemy, and the shots you fire won’t “enter” their hitbox. The tether was useful for dragging more cover with you. You might not know this, but i programmed it so that enemies on a tether get armor so you don’t pop them. The problem is i made this a 90% chance for some reason, as i didn’t want a level to be stuck with unkillable enemies. it would make way more sense from a gameplay options perspective for these features to be more obvious and all-or-nothing thing, bullets should ignore an enemy if the player is standing anywhere in that hitbox, tethered enemies should have 100% armor, and just give the player the option to untether enemies from themself. Hopefully these options become much more appealing if the drillgun has a cooldown on it.
Enemies are really basic
Yeah, the reason i first abandoned this game is because of me not knowing how to implement a pathfinding algorithm. In the time since, i went and built a prototype entirely focused on pathfinding (and then i abandoned THAT game) so now i should be able to actually take the behavior of the enemies a bit closer to the authentic dig dug experience. (that includes gravel/boulders falling and smooshing enemies) i actually have some sprites in reserve specifically for the ghosting behavior and fire breathing.
copyright
I am not too worried about rightsholders, a quick glance at itchio’s search shows me a corporation that does not behave very similar to its more litigious contemporaries when it comes to hunting down people crafting labours of love and them stomping them into the dust. cough, pokemon
regardless, ive fallen for the siren song of the cult of free and open source software (hence godot), so if push comes to shove, i want to release code and project files so that a game can still exist and be picked up by someone who might want to expand it.
What next?
On that same note, texture packs and possibly also mod support in one way or another are really cool ideas id love to experiment with. i know my patented eye-melting minecraft + ms paint combo isn’t for everybody, so what kinda art styles would you guys like to see for a 2d dig dug? hand-drawn? vector illustrated? pastel painterly? faithful pixel art?
I’m also open for suggestions as to what actual gameplay loop could elevate this from a sandbox toy to an actually playable game. i could clone the original dig dug, but at that point, you might as well play that instead. It might be a good stepping stone for development, but not as a standalone thing.
i was imagining a dig dug level, but you have a small base in the center, you gotta go out and explore, you can drag enemies back home and keep them as balloons. maybe you gotta fight off enemies from your base as well.
when the level is clear of enemies, or after a certain goal is completed, then your base gets teleported to the next level, keeping all of the blocks youve added onto it and all the inflated enemies you collected. while at the base, maybe you can craft upgrades using resources you get from killing enemies. Or, maybe you only get resources for saving fully inflated enemies in your base at the end of a level.
There’s JUST ideas here, there’s roguelike elements, arcade score attack ideas, tower defence ideas, survival crafting sandbox ideas, but i DON’T want to just throw them all together willy nilly until i can’t choose and lose all motivation(like what happened last time i worked on this game and couldn’t decide if i wanted the steel gun to be the default weapon). i want to take these ideas and cut them down with a chisel until i can see what the actual fun game hiding in the marble is.
in other words, i want to aim small, but i am TOTALLY open to suggestions. totally hit me up with anything that seems like it could be fun.
Alright here’s a suggestion. How about a ghost type enemy that can pass through walls and inflate the player if it gets too close? I don’t know how hard that would be to put in, it was just something I thought would be fun
