Miasma Caves

This isn't kinda bad, it's full on bad. The digging mechanic, the animations, the beeping sound with every word of dialog, it's all bad.

A quaint, pleasant experience for anyone who gets a kick out of spelunking but there's a twist; you're on a timer and it keeps you on your toes! The system of exploration and treasuring hunting can quickly become addictive, and the cave exploration provides a good challenge of avoiding obstacles and risk vs reward (more time spent in the cave=more treasure but also more HP lost). Recommended for anyone who wants a chill, less intense and peaceful rougelike experience.

A peaceful, relaxing game with enough ever present dangers to keep you on your toes. The world is charming and the charitable premise is refreshing. At the moment, the game is slow for me since I haven’t figured out the cues for avalanches and gem/treasure placement. I look forward to exploring the different tools, treasures, and crannies.

It feels like the developers first game. The walk animation for the player looks okay but the npcs seem to glide. the Player's run animation looks like a high knees exercise. the constant flipping of the camera when entering or exiting the cave is annoying. The forced 3rd person camera for everything other than digging is annoying. There is no reason to play in 3rd person because 1st person has the same if not better lighting than 3rd person. Outside of the cave, movement feels too slow, and the shops are setup in bad locations. Your house and the mining supply shop are the closest to the cave; but the shop where all your goods are sold is on the other side of the map. You find all your equipment in the cave and are subject to the random generation. You can't change the key bindings or the setting much. Movement inside the cave feels good and the cave-ins are nice. The digging feels slow but the pickaxe feels nice. The game is okay, as in not great there's room to grow. Multiplayer would be nice. Being able to order or buy equipment from the stores would be nice. The game is easier to get into and dig. I wish there were more digging games.

I had a lot of fun with it enjoyed the game only ran into a few hiccups, [strike]after saving in a cave (at the edge of the map or things just weren't loading?) the game soft-locked and will no longer load the profile resulting in i guess starting over.[/strike] This has since been fixed in recent updates so i'm back at it again. wishing I could rebind a few keys but this is more of a personal preference than an issue with the game I just always go to tab instead of the "i key" to open the inventory. trying to figure out how ropes work as I seem to always take fall damage if I use them to scale lower into the caves. The Music is always banging and could listen for hours. Overall just a nice exploration game some times panic and a lot of fun.

I was skeptical that the spelunking without enemies would be compelling, but Miasma Caves actually does offer up a decent amount of challenge through various hazards like cave-ins, collapsing floors, miasma, falls, etc that you really do need to be attentive to your surroundings. The most challenging part, however, is mapping out the caves yourself trying to keep track of where you've been and where you are going leaving little way markers as a breadcrumbs to lead you back out of the caves safely. Despite being procedurally generated, the caves are actually quite compelling to explore. The proc gen isn't leashed enough to prevent you from screwing yourself over if you go in unprepared, like dropping down too far without a rope to get yourself back out. There are also plenty of dead ends too, which helps keep the caves feeling believable and unpredictable, rather than a special little area laid out with you in mind, even though it is since the game does need to be playable. I've always liked the concept of having a home base where you venture out to a central dungeon and back with your treasures, and while this isn't a fantasy dungeon crawler, the spelunking loop of exploration, treasure hunting, and safely returning is very fun in Miasma Caves. It's a well put together game that executes on the core premise well, requiring actual prep work to successfully trawl through interesting proc gen caves. I highly recommend giving it a chance.

It's a relaxing game with a unique concept I hope to see iterated on in future games. Basically you slowly try to progress down a cave system that doesn't give a flip about being a convenient layout, and its that ignorance that gives it some magic missing in most games. Its voxel based, a kind that crumbles beneath your feat and cuts off passages, a dynamism that makes it more interesting. You gotta make sure you can make it out alive, so there is some tension to avoiding getting stuck or lost. Its fun leaving markers behind to make sense of it all, slowly building a path downwards. I recommend getting it on sale. Its not the most polished game, and I think most people will get bored after some initial interest, but its a game that has inspired me as a developer and will live in my mind a bit.