The first lines of Farm in Mine were written 2.5 years ago at the Ludum Dare 48 game jam. The theme was "Deeper and Deeper" and it gave an idea of a game where the player first digs potatoes and then reaches coal, iron, oil and other natural deposits.
Since then the game is updated with new content, concepts and convenience improvements. In its current state there are 52 work facilities, 28 professions, 51 inventions, 6 cats, 8 permanent prestige upgrades. Here is a teaser of a fully unlocked farm:
Many ideas from the newest update were suggested by the viewers of my livestream. During the whole September we were running a streaming marathon where we played Farm and Mine for 30-60 minutes every day. During the streams we shared strategy advice, answer questions and discuss plans for the future. Totally the streaming marathon took 19 hours and consists of 38 series.
This experience helped us spot and fix various gameplay issues. Sometimes we even did programming right on the stream.
The biggest issue spotted was a difficulty to regain progress after a midgame restart. The commonly used strategy to do it was the following: wait till the game offers you a daily reward, but don't use this reward right aways. Instead, restart, gain prestige points, and after this get a daily reward (which might be coins or ideas). This tactic helps to regain progress after a restart, but the restarts were limited by the availability and the value of the daily bonus.
So to make the players restart easier we added 2 new facilities: Bank and Library. The corresponding inventions for them are unlocked after the inventions Economy(2) and Science(1).
Once constructed, these building start generate coins and ideas. But not for immediate use. Instead, these resources will be available for use only after your restart the game. So, once you construct Bank and Library you'll be able to restart at a time which is the most convenient for you.
Among other improvements the update 1.2.2 brings are:
- It's possible to roll back all Workforce upgrades at once
- Inventions button is on the main screen
- It's possible to clear earning statistics, to let you easier spot the current best earning facility
- Formula for the prestige gain is adjusted (earlier it had slight discrepancies due to float numbers)
- Issue with the Steam Engine stopping over time was partly fixed: now it's possible to manually stop the conveyor belt which transports coal away from the engine
The game is available for Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.
- Itch: https://airapport.itch.io/farm-and-mine
- AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/farm-and-mine-deep-idle-ld48/id1564694016
- Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airapport.farm.mine.idle.ludumdare48
As we live in Ukraine, we never forget that we can keep creating games only thanks to the protection of the Ukrainian Defense Forces and the help from our friends worldwide. Ukraine is withstanding the terrorussians' attacks for over 600 days now. Please, keep supporting volunteers' initiatives such as O-Pocket Foundation (https://o-pocket.org/). This is a fund organized by the game developers from Kharkiv, the city in the East of the country. They provide the Ukrainian defenders with the necessary supplies.
Your help and support are vital. Thank you!
