Oh no! Sorry we haven't actually tested it on mac so good to know other things work. We'll try sort that out ASAP. For now you won't be able to delete them which sucks, sorry :-(
Let us know if anything else is broken on mac and we'll try sort it out.
Loving the update!!! One thing I noticed is that the Triceratops now has two left humeruses... humeri...? I know the "right" one is darker than the "left" one but it still tripped me up for a good minute lol
Hello there! Devs here. Quickly wanted to let everyone know that the update we were planning for today is delayed until tomorrow. We need some extra time for testing and polishing a bit.
There will be a new location to travel to and some new fossils to find and.. A SHOP! you will now be able to spend your money :D Plus a host of other improvements. See you tomorrow!
Hey there! just wanted to say I seem to be having the same problem as Firefox users previously, but I am on chrome. Is this fixable? Unity loads in, and it goes black, then after a while the whole browser crashes...
It looks really fun, and I'll try downloading it on another device!
We've been hard at work trying to figure out why it's crashing on FireFox, unfortunately not with much luck yet. Web builds can be tricky! It hard to say if yours is the same issue or something else without more information. Were you on a windows PC when you tried?
Either way I'm sorry for the frustration! Maybe try again when we push the next update and let us know? It should be up tomorrow. Or try to play the downloadable build :D
Awesome Game! I have a few suggestions, 1. Add like a desert version where you use a brush and brush the fossil off. 2. More Museum customisation would be really cool! 3. Ability to travel elsewere in the world would be really cool.
We are getting ready to push an update that will allow you to upgrade your aeroplane to travel further ;) the first new location we have added is The Karoo, South Africa. It should be up tomorrow.
Your other suggestions are great!! We'd love to add a brushing/cleaning mini-game and more customisation options are on the cards for future updates. Thanks for playing!
I also have another suggestion, when you have parts of a dinosaur, maybe the parts you found have a smaller chance of being found since you already have them. This is an annoying thing i have experienced when i need a Triceratops torso but i am getting everything but that.
this game made me realize that the skeletons assembled at museums don't all necessarily belong to one single dinosaur and now I feel like my life has been a lie.
btw great game! I found it very cute and fun, and I look forward to play a full version of it.
AHH yes I felt the same when I found out!! It's very rare to find a complete skeleton, sorry for breaking the illusion!
...BUT seeing as we already have, you may as well also know: Most of the big complete dinosaurs you see in museums (esp the ones not behind glass) are made up entirely of casts and the real things are kept in the back where they are safe. In most cases they are too fragile and valuable to display out in the open :-) Next time you are in a museum you can ask a curator which ones are real bones and they should be able to point them out.
I didn't know that either!! but thanks for sharing, I bet you learned a lot about this stuff while making the game, there's loads of information in it.
Makes me so happy to play games developed by teams that really put their heads on the theme and went further to add accurate info. Learning even random stuff while playing and having fun feels amazing! I hope you guys are able to develop the game with all the ideas you want to!!
I think my recommendation is for when you collect all the common skeletons in the dig sites that's when it opens up newer dig sites, or maybe you have to buy them, one or the other lol :P
I also think it would be cool if there were more decor options and the ability to move the decor desk, dig site desk and shop desk when rearranging the room!
These aren't even critiques because I don't think they're needed at all I just think it's cool
I really love this game and do NOT listen to the haters, they're mad you came up with this first I love this game so much it's probably the number one thing I've been looking for since I was a wee boy
Your comment really made my day, thanks for taking the time to leave us some feedback!
All of your ideas are awesome and pretty much all of them happen to be things we have planned to do already so that's super cool! In the next update which will be up either Wednesday or Thursday we will have a shop where you can upgrade your airplane (and other things too!) so you can fly further to new dig sites.
Being able to move all the tables is a great suggestion and something which we've added to our list of to-do's
So stoked that you like the concept of the game so much!! I hope you enjoy all the future updates coming your way :D
WOW!! The idea of going out to dig and find fossil pieces for a museum is amazing! Also, exploring different parts of the world and highlighting those locations teaches us where dinosaurs used to live. The art is beautiful, I’d love to see more of this project! Is there a sequel planned? I think it could be expanded into something bigger for Steam — keeping the exploration and fossil-hunting mechanics, but adding the process of cleaning what you find and organizing it in your museum, unlocking new exploration sites and dinosaur information. It sounds awesome! I’d love to see this idea developed further because it’s truly great!
We're actually thinking about all the things you've mentioned and we are going to release a full version on steam. While we work on the full game we will also continue updating the prototype on itch though so everyone here can still experience the new content.
Thanks for playing and thanks for leaving such a lovely comment. Have a rad day!
this is so cute and well made!! the art style is really lovely and I love the fossil assembly aspect. I didn't encounter any bugs or issues, but i think it would be more intuitive if there was a key to dig rather than mouse controls. really cool game!!
After sorting out my tech difficulties (skill issue, not game design), I can say that the game is as charming as it looks.
The art style is good at balancing a variety of factors. It is adorable, it is detailed enough to convey the fossils as stone remembering bone, and is simple enough to be pleasant while doing both. There are a few main themes for decorating your museum that mix and match quite well. And, again, these add to the experience without being distracting. Very well done.
The music is pleasant but unobtrusive.
The gameplay was fun. Describing why things are fun is not my strong point, but it worked for me. Perhaps as important is how delightfully intuitive it is. No tutorials and minimal popups, but easy to play anyway. I tend to do poorly at games without in-game tutorials, but I only made one mistake when I started playing. And that only a very minor one. I would call this very good design.
I quite enjoyed putting the dinosaurs together. Neither of mine were complete, as it is a bit late for playing through more than one dig site, but it settled the part of my brain that is always looking for a nice, low-pressure puzzle.
I like the writeups about the dinosaurs. I only played through one dig site, so I'm not sure how many dinosaurs are currently in the game, but it was fun to read about the history of paleontology. For both of them. And obviously learning about dinosaurs is always fun.
A very good game on the whole. My only problem is both small and might have been my fault. I struggled to find a way to exit the game once it was running. There didn't seem to be any button for it, and neither the escape key nor any of the letters provided an exit option. Needing to pull up the task bar to manually close the window to exit a game is not my preference. I did go back and double check that I hadn't missed an instruction on the starting menu and loading screen. Still, this is a very minor issue and as it is late and I am bad at tech may well be my fault.
On the whole, a very pleasant game. I look forward to playing again and to seeing it expand.
We are happy you are enjoying it so far. Thanks for pushing through the technical issues and trying to download it again.
It is not your fault at all, we have not yet added a pause menu or an exit game button. You can never leave! Lol jokes! sorry about that :-P I know it's a pain to have to manually close the window. We will chat about if/when we could add one in to the prototype.
The movement is incredibly slow/jank - the pickaxe should not force you in an unskippable animation that follows through/enacts whenever you hold down those buttons (maybe let the player move while doing it?)
When it comes down to it, there needs to be more depth/interest in these minigames - if you feel that they can have an "auto complete" system (as in the assembly function for the fossils), that means that the system/function likely isn't interesting enough to participate with on its most basic level (it could still be a feature added later on if you don't want to fix/achieve things).
I see some potential if you explore the players intentionally messing up their fossils to make new abominations - falsifying descriptions, or anything else (if that is fleshed out/expanded upon more, I feel that it could become a whole "good" vs "bad" player thing).
There are a lot of ways this game could expand in, as I feel it is somewhat flavorless in all of them (but especially the exploration part - why not add some combat or some other bs in the caves?)
My gripe is that everything here is effectively one giant fetch quest (as most games go), that the player can immediately recognize is a fetch quest. There needs to be depth/detail to the story to distract the player from that.
Perhaps you can change this a little bit - making it more fantasy-esque, and turn it into something where you are an archeologist that dips his hands into necromancy - bringing back the skeletons as loyal minions/pets - you could then take that added feature into an entirely different direction, where you make a combat/autocombat system (akin to pet autobattlers), or you could just have the skeletons follow you around and assist in the excavation (in addition, this would add more depth, where you are able to tie the individual pieces to stats - you could have the stats be used for you creating your own "unique" fossils, and would give that much more of a reason (lore and gameplay) for people to come and "pay" to view your artificial creations.
I don't think our vision for the game aligns with yours at all. We're not looking at making a combat game, rather a more relaxed game and one that is more faithful to paleontology. If that's not your vibe, then I don't think this game will ever suit you.
We're never going to add combat or autobattlers or fake dinosaurs.
Just wanted to make that clear.
There are a ton of combat games out there that are fun and I think would satisfy your urges but I don't think that's the point of this game.
Thats fine - I just think that this game won't be able to break any barriers like stardew valley did - stardew valley was a broad, all-encompassing field that included things such as digging, farming, etc.
Those were just ideas to do if you were open to the consideration.
If you want to keep it going in this direction, I would still recommend tailoring those sorts of features (ignoring the battler part), as it could be fairly interesting and allow you to stand out - the idea of customizing pets/"creatures" through the necromancy of dinosaur fossils.
Hi! Thanks for sharing your feedback! We really appreciate it. This game is a very very (really very! haha) early prototype. We agree there a lot of ways the game can be expanded on and that is the plan. Hopefully in the future once we have posted a few rounds of updates you will enjoy it more, we have lots of things we plan on adding :-)
Thanks for your feedback on the movement during the digging phase, that is something we plan to look at improving!
This looks really fun and interesting, but unfortunately I can't play it.
When I try the web version it doesn't load properly. After the Unity screen it is just black. There is some music that starts up if I click on the screen though.
When I tried the download version it crashed and gave me this error message: Unable to parse Build/Web_0.1.2.framework.js.br! This can happen if build compression was enabled but web server hosting the content was misconfigured to not serve the file with HTTP Response Header "Content-Encoding: br" present. Check browser Console and Devtools Network tab to debug.
I'm really sorry we can't get the web build to run on Firefox currently. The downloadable executable should work though and as a bonus it looks much nicer than the web build ;-)
Hello! I'm so sorry the web build doesn't work on Firefox. We looked into fixing it but it's quite complicated and it seems likely we will never get it to work on Firefox for various reasons :-( Sorry about that. Web builds can be tricky and often come with issues.
With regards to the download crashing, could you let me know which file you downloaded? What was the executable called? Your error message mentions "Web_0.1.2" which is strange. Makes me think you somehow downloaded the web build so I just want to double check that. I have attached a picture with the correct download file underlined if you could let me know if that's the one you have.
Thanks for sharing the error message. I hope we can figure out why your download version crashed. Sorry for the frustration :-)
I went to the game page in the Itch app and used the install option. Thank you for pointing out the correct one, it appears the app automatically picked the web version instead when it installed the game and I didn't notice at the time. All fixed now.
It's such a cool game, the exact kind of vibe I like.
I wish there was a parameter button that I could click to dissable the sound though. Or maybe I just couldn't find it. To tell the truth, the reason I was searching for it was because unfortunately the music was terribly glitchy for me...
But other than that, like I said, I really like the game. It's cosy, and cute, and not boring. I had a great time playing.
nice game, excited to see it get updated. i like the assembly, feels very tactile in opposition to most museum-type games i've played. note: audio options & a way to play in windowed mode would be helpful. i like to listen to other things when i play games, but i had to set volume to 0 in volume mixer for this one. easier to have ingame settings.
I made an account to comment because I liked the game so much. It's really cute and scratches the same itch that animal crossings/stardew valley does, which is just what I was looking for. I think one of my fossils is stuck in the blue blocks area? I can't pick it up. Also I'm really curious to learn about the method behind the fossil quality or is it randomized? Every fossil except one was 70% quality and I can't figure out why, lol. Great game and I really enjoyed playing it!!
Thanks for making an account just to let me know! I really appreciate it!
Ah sorry you got one of our known bugs in the web build. I posted a dev log today with a bit more info about them. Basically for now if you leave that stuck bone behind it will respawn in another location so you can still get it somewhere else.
Haha you also shouldnt be able to see the sky there but that'll be fixed in the next build too 😅 sorry about the bugs!
Currently the fossil quality is random and you can pick up better quality bones over time that will swap out. Also if you hit the bones when excavating them it lowers the quality. Do you think it's unclear the way it is now? Let me know if you think we need to explain this to the player or change how it works? thanks for playing and I hope you'll come back and test out the next update, we have lots more content coming 😉
I didn't even notice the sky, haha, so not a big issue :). I was only confused on the bone quality because when I broke blocks, the dirt would sometimes take one hit and other times it would take two hits. So I didn't know if I was like...messing up while digging and making the quality worse (I hope that makes sense, lol). I think a short tutorial would be the best solution to clear up that bone quality is randomized and that breaking dirt blocks is supposed to take 1-2 hits. Also because my first bone only had blue stone on it that needed a pickaxe and I didn't realize that the tools were for different things and totally obliterated that bone, whoopsies.😂
This is such a charming and relaxing game concept! The gameplay loop of digging, scanning for fossils, and then carefully excavating them in the mini-game is incredibly satisfying. Getting to take your finds back to build and decorate your own museum is a fantastic reward that ties everything together beautifully.
Hii! I really like the design of the game and everything but I cannot figure out the controls? Please if you would maybe add control instructions in the description of the game it would really help people like me that just cant figure them out!
Hi there! Sorry for this oversight. I will add a controls list ASAP. In the meantime: Moving around is WASD and most things are done with mouse clicking. Other controls are shown in the UI for rotating bones etc. But I will definitely write up a proper controls list soon :-)
Thanks! I figured it out but it took me like 10 minutes to realize i couldn't pick the bone up because it was still blocked lol. Mostly a user error but its always a good idea to have clear instructions!
Having encountered something similar myself, I think it might still be considered 'buried' by one or more of the tiles on the right. Or at least, every time I had a "stuck" bone like that and I cleared out around it I could eventually pick it up! :D
Yeah thats exactly it. It's overlapping very slightly with the block on the right which is an indestructible block. So I'm just updating that code to ignore overlaps with indestructible blocks.
I'll try push an update later today with this fix as well as a couple of other ones.
Unfortunately web builds come with a bunch of annoying problems and because so many people are playing im a bit nervous about pushing a big update and accidentally causing other (potentially worse) issues.
This game is lovely! I really enjoy both finding and building the skeletons, and the decoration options are good. My only problem is that whenever i scroll down the page, (ie leave the game window), or when a loading screen appears, the audio glitches out, repeating a single note over and over again until the normal game resumes.
We're sorry about that :-( It only happens in the web/browser builds but yeah I know its horrible when it happens! We will try solve this issue soon. Thank you so much for playing and I hope the audio issue didn't ruin the experience too much! Hopefully it'll be fixed for our next update.
I knew I'd love this game from the moment I saw it. It's so cozy and adorable, and such a unique concept. I'm sure the complete version will be amazing, great job devs!!! The artwork is also amazing, the game really has a style. I love the cute character models and the pretty museum decorations.
Haha I LOVE him!! this made us laugh so much. Thank you! Made me think we should have an "invent your own dinosaur" area where you can use your discarded bones to invent strange creatures XD Thanks for playing :-)
Hi there. I am really sorry about that, that's frustrating! We will take a look at this first thing tomorrow morning and try fix it! If you are up for it and have the time to send us your player log file it would help us figure out why it might be crashing for you?
this is a super awesome game but the audio has been glitching for me :( it’ll start lagging weirdly and skipping. i know its not my computer, i tested different audio stuff
I am glad you enjoyed it. Sorry about the audio glitch! It seems to only happen in the web build and not when you run the downloaded version so that's a temporary fix if you want to keep playing? but we will try to fix the audio issue on web asap, I know the sound it make is horrible when it does that :-( sorry.
cool game but i found a bug where the map didn't block the sides so i ended up falling off the map. i can't go back up and had to refresh the page but it did save my progress and let do the level again. Also noticed some small visual bugs. the double text and bones being shown without being unburied. idk if the bone one was a chance to happen but i did see another one do it on the same level. love the game just like to bug hunt to help out!
Thank you so much for going bug hunting for us!! I really appreciate it <3 We are going to squash these bugs this weekend. Esp the falling off the world one, that's not nice at all! sorry that happened to you.
really cool idea you guys have going on here, looking forward to seeing where it goes :) really like having to assemble the skeleton, haven't seen something like that in a fossil-themed game before.
Had a fun time! If you're interested in fleshing this out some more (pun not intended), I'd say the actual digging gets kind of tedious. Might I suggest ways to upgrade digging speed? That and more dinosaurs, because everything needs more dinosaurs! :D
Glad you had a fun time! As for the digging getting tedious: sorry about that. When we initially started we had 1 dinosaur so there wasn't as much digging involved.
We're actually right in the middle of working on the shop and one of the upgrades is actually a better/faster digging tool. So that's coming soon!
Ah yes, sorry, there are only two full Dino's and two smaller single find fossils at the moment! We are going to add more in future updates over the next couple months though along with some other features! If you follow us you should get a notification whenever we add a major update. I have a long list of dinosaurs/fossils that we plan on adding 😬
The game has potential, the build your own dinosaur mechanich is really interesting, to be able to recover the dinosaur skeleton bone by bone and build it yourself.
The fossil excavation mechanic can be fun, it feels like the typical updgrade game (dig 1 and dig 2).
I would like to play a finished version of this game.
I feel that the main point of development should be the gameplay loop for the fossil excavation mechanic: setting objectives, encountering limits, improving the gear, overcoming the limits and encountering new ones and son on. Besides some quality of life improvements to make the excavation feel nicer. Maybe there should also be a reward for obtaining fossils, to make it an objective.
such a lovely idea! that's the kind of game I would've loved to play as a kid and absolutely enjoy now as well! the illustrations are adorable, dino facts are very interesting. will be waiting for more updates :)
Hey thank you so much for playing and leaving such a nice comment, really appreciate it! Awesome!! We are already planning what content to work on for the next update, excited about it :-)
Now this is a game that tickles my fancy. Cute smooth graphics and controls. Love the searching for fossils part and then assembling the bones after. Can't wait to see what the game has to offer in the future. Welldone
Hello Hello! I just wanted to say I played it and enjoyed it. I'm not into dinosaurs but I'm into cozy games, I liked the radar in the game and that there's the guide on the exhibit and auto setup (I used it once on accident and then the other time to make sure it was aligned juuuuuust right). I didn't have an account on here before, created one just to comment here!
WOW you made an account just to let us know!!? that's so awesome. Super duper cool of you! We really appreciate it <3
We are planning on adding more dinosaurs and extra content in the future so if you follow us it'll notify you when we make a major update. We'll get you in to dinosaurs if its the last things we do ;-) hehehe
I love the art style of this cosy game. For someone who knows almost nothing about dinosaurs - I really enjoyed it! The re was just enough information and fun facts for me. Being able to put together the exhibit in the end really tied it altogether.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
how do i delete a exhibit stand on a mac. when i press "delete" it js exits the "manage exhibit"
Oh no! Sorry we haven't actually tested it on mac so good to know other things work. We'll try sort that out ASAP. For now you won't be able to delete them which sucks, sorry :-(
Let us know if anything else is broken on mac and we'll try sort it out.
Thanks for playing
New update is up, hope you enjoy :) let us know if you have any issues/feedback!
Loving the update!!! One thing I noticed is that the Triceratops now has two left humeruses... humeri...? I know the "right" one is darker than the "left" one but it still tripped me up for a good minute lol
Thanks for letting me know! Appreciated. Glad you enjoying the update :-)
Hello there! Devs here. Quickly wanted to let everyone know that the update we were planning for today is delayed until tomorrow. We need some extra time for testing and polishing a bit.
There will be a new location to travel to and some new fossils to find and.. A SHOP! you will now be able to spend your money :D Plus a host of other improvements. See you tomorrow!
this is so fire
Hey there! just wanted to say I seem to be having the same problem as Firefox users previously, but I am on chrome. Is this fixable? Unity loads in, and it goes black, then after a while the whole browser crashes...
It looks really fun, and I'll try downloading it on another device!
I haven't experienced that problem on Chrome myself. It might have to do with Chrome itself.
We've been hard at work trying to figure out why it's crashing on FireFox, unfortunately not with much luck yet. Web builds can be tricky! It hard to say if yours is the same issue or something else without more information. Were you on a windows PC when you tried?
Either way I'm sorry for the frustration! Maybe try again when we push the next update and let us know? It should be up tomorrow. Or try to play the downloadable build :D
Thank you so much! I tried the browser version today and it worked perfectly! I spent all day playing!
Awesome Game! I have a few suggestions, 1. Add like a desert version where you use a brush and brush the fossil off. 2. More Museum customisation would be really cool! 3. Ability to travel elsewere in the world would be really cool.
We are getting ready to push an update that will allow you to upgrade your aeroplane to travel further ;) the first new location we have added is The Karoo, South Africa. It should be up tomorrow.
Your other suggestions are great!! We'd love to add a brushing/cleaning mini-game and more customisation options are on the cards for future updates. Thanks for playing!
Yw!
I also have another suggestion, when you have parts of a dinosaur, maybe the parts you found have a smaller chance of being found since you already have them. This is an annoying thing i have experienced when i need a Triceratops torso but i am getting everything but that.
Ah it is meant to do that but it's not working perfectly at the moment :-( I've made a note for us to look at improving it.
this game made me realize that the skeletons assembled at museums don't all necessarily belong to one single dinosaur and now I feel like my life has been a lie.
btw great game! I found it very cute and fun, and I look forward to play a full version of it.
AHH yes I felt the same when I found out!! It's very rare to find a complete skeleton, sorry for breaking the illusion!
...BUT seeing as we already have, you may as well also know: Most of the big complete dinosaurs you see in museums (esp the ones not behind glass) are made up entirely of casts and the real things are kept in the back where they are safe. In most cases they are too fragile and valuable to display out in the open :-) Next time you are in a museum you can ask a curator which ones are real bones and they should be able to point them out.
I didn't know that either!! but thanks for sharing, I bet you learned a lot about this stuff while making the game, there's loads of information in it.
Makes me so happy to play games developed by teams that really put their heads on the theme and went further to add accurate info. Learning even random stuff while playing and having fun feels amazing! I hope you guys are able to develop the game with all the ideas you want to!!
Thanks again for all the dino info<333
I LOVE THIS GAME so much I love it so much
I think my recommendation is for when you collect all the common skeletons in the dig sites that's when it opens up newer dig sites, or maybe you have to buy them, one or the other lol :P
I also think it would be cool if there were more decor options and the ability to move the decor desk, dig site desk and shop desk when rearranging the room!
These aren't even critiques because I don't think they're needed at all I just think it's cool
I really love this game and do NOT listen to the haters, they're mad you came up with this first I love this game so much it's probably the number one thing I've been looking for since I was a wee boy
Lots of love :D
Your comment really made my day, thanks for taking the time to leave us some feedback!
All of your ideas are awesome and pretty much all of them happen to be things we have planned to do already so that's super cool! In the next update which will be up either Wednesday or Thursday we will have a shop where you can upgrade your airplane (and other things too!) so you can fly further to new dig sites.
Being able to move all the tables is a great suggestion and something which we've added to our list of to-do's
So stoked that you like the concept of the game so much!! I hope you enjoy all the future updates coming your way :D
great little game,keep up the good work
WOW!! The idea of going out to dig and find fossil pieces for a museum is amazing! Also, exploring different parts of the world and highlighting those locations teaches us where dinosaurs used to live. The art is beautiful, I’d love to see more of this project! Is there a sequel planned? I think it could be expanded into something bigger for Steam — keeping the exploration and fossil-hunting mechanics, but adding the process of cleaning what you find and organizing it in your museum, unlocking new exploration sites and dinosaur information. It sounds awesome! I’d love to see this idea developed further because it’s truly great!
Thank you random adjective!!
We're actually thinking about all the things you've mentioned and we are going to release a full version on steam. While we work on the full game we will also continue updating the prototype on itch though so everyone here can still experience the new content.
Thanks for playing and thanks for leaving such a lovely comment. Have a rad day!
this is so cute and well made!! the art style is really lovely and I love the fossil assembly aspect. I didn't encounter any bugs or issues, but i think it would be more intuitive if there was a key to dig rather than mouse controls. really cool game!!
Do you mean a key to dig while moving around at the dig site? If so, you can press space bar to dig.
Thanks for playing!
After sorting out my tech difficulties (skill issue, not game design), I can say that the game is as charming as it looks.
The art style is good at balancing a variety of factors. It is adorable, it is detailed enough to convey the fossils as stone remembering bone, and is simple enough to be pleasant while doing both. There are a few main themes for decorating your museum that mix and match quite well. And, again, these add to the experience without being distracting. Very well done.
The music is pleasant but unobtrusive.
The gameplay was fun. Describing why things are fun is not my strong point, but it worked for me. Perhaps as important is how delightfully intuitive it is. No tutorials and minimal popups, but easy to play anyway. I tend to do poorly at games without in-game tutorials, but I only made one mistake when I started playing. And that only a very minor one. I would call this very good design.
I quite enjoyed putting the dinosaurs together. Neither of mine were complete, as it is a bit late for playing through more than one dig site, but it settled the part of my brain that is always looking for a nice, low-pressure puzzle.
I like the writeups about the dinosaurs. I only played through one dig site, so I'm not sure how many dinosaurs are currently in the game, but it was fun to read about the history of paleontology. For both of them. And obviously learning about dinosaurs is always fun.
A very good game on the whole. My only problem is both small and might have been my fault. I struggled to find a way to exit the game once it was running. There didn't seem to be any button for it, and neither the escape key nor any of the letters provided an exit option. Needing to pull up the task bar to manually close the window to exit a game is not my preference. I did go back and double check that I hadn't missed an instruction on the starting menu and loading screen. Still, this is a very minor issue and as it is late and I am bad at tech may well be my fault.
On the whole, a very pleasant game. I look forward to playing again and to seeing it expand.
We are happy you are enjoying it so far. Thanks for pushing through the technical issues and trying to download it again.
It is not your fault at all, we have not yet added a pause menu or an exit game button. You can never leave! Lol jokes! sorry about that :-P I know it's a pain to have to manually close the window. We will chat about if/when we could add one in to the prototype.
Hope you enjoy the future updates too!
The movement is incredibly slow/jank - the pickaxe should not force you in an unskippable animation that follows through/enacts whenever you hold down those buttons (maybe let the player move while doing it?)
When it comes down to it, there needs to be more depth/interest in these minigames - if you feel that they can have an "auto complete" system (as in the assembly function for the fossils), that means that the system/function likely isn't interesting enough to participate with on its most basic level (it could still be a feature added later on if you don't want to fix/achieve things).
I see some potential if you explore the players intentionally messing up their fossils to make new abominations - falsifying descriptions, or anything else (if that is fleshed out/expanded upon more, I feel that it could become a whole "good" vs "bad" player thing).
There are a lot of ways this game could expand in, as I feel it is somewhat flavorless in all of them (but especially the exploration part - why not add some combat or some other bs in the caves?)
My gripe is that everything here is effectively one giant fetch quest (as most games go), that the player can immediately recognize is a fetch quest. There needs to be depth/detail to the story to distract the player from that.
You should also add an extra pivot for up/down to make it far faster and easier for people to pinpoint what they need to remove in the excavation.
Perhaps you can change this a little bit - making it more fantasy-esque, and turn it into something where you are an archeologist that dips his hands into necromancy - bringing back the skeletons as loyal minions/pets - you could then take that added feature into an entirely different direction, where you make a combat/autocombat system (akin to pet autobattlers), or you could just have the skeletons follow you around and assist in the excavation (in addition, this would add more depth, where you are able to tie the individual pieces to stats - you could have the stats be used for you creating your own "unique" fossils, and would give that much more of a reason (lore and gameplay) for people to come and "pay" to view your artificial creations.
I don't think our vision for the game aligns with yours at all. We're not looking at making a combat game, rather a more relaxed game and one that is more faithful to paleontology. If that's not your vibe, then I don't think this game will ever suit you.
We're never going to add combat or autobattlers or fake dinosaurs.
Just wanted to make that clear.
There are a ton of combat games out there that are fun and I think would satisfy your urges but I don't think that's the point of this game.
Thats fine - I just think that this game won't be able to break any barriers like stardew valley did - stardew valley was a broad, all-encompassing field that included things such as digging, farming, etc.
Those were just ideas to do if you were open to the consideration.
If you want to keep it going in this direction, I would still recommend tailoring those sorts of features (ignoring the battler part), as it could be fairly interesting and allow you to stand out - the idea of customizing pets/"creatures" through the necromancy of dinosaur fossils.
Hi! Thanks for sharing your feedback! We really appreciate it. This game is a very very (really very! haha) early prototype. We agree there a lot of ways the game can be expanded on and that is the plan. Hopefully in the future once we have posted a few rounds of updates you will enjoy it more, we have lots of things we plan on adding :-)
Thanks for your feedback on the movement during the digging phase, that is something we plan to look at improving!
Thanks for playing!
This looks really fun and interesting, but unfortunately I can't play it.
When I try the web version it doesn't load properly. After the Unity screen it is just black. There is some music that starts up if I click on the screen though.
When I tried the download version it crashed and gave me this error message: Unable to parse Build/Web_0.1.2.framework.js.br! This can happen if build compression was enabled but web server hosting the content was misconfigured to not serve the file with HTTP Response Header "Content-Encoding: br" present. Check browser Console and Devtools Network tab to debug.
I hope this is helpful.
The same thing happens to me on web. I'm on Firefox.
Thanks for reminding me to mention. I am also on Firefox.
I'm really sorry we can't get the web build to run on Firefox currently. The downloadable executable should work though and as a bonus it looks much nicer than the web build ;-)
I'm on Mac so can't use the exe. But I did get it to work in Chrome :)
Hello! I'm so sorry the web build doesn't work on Firefox. We looked into fixing it but it's quite complicated and it seems likely we will never get it to work on Firefox for various reasons :-( Sorry about that. Web builds can be tricky and often come with issues.
With regards to the download crashing, could you let me know which file you downloaded? What was the executable called? Your error message mentions "Web_0.1.2" which is strange. Makes me think you somehow downloaded the web build so I just want to double check that. I have attached a picture with the correct download file underlined if you could let me know if that's the one you have.
Thanks for sharing the error message. I hope we can figure out why your download version crashed. Sorry for the frustration :-)
I went to the game page in the Itch app and used the install option. Thank you for pointing out the correct one, it appears the app automatically picked the web version instead when it installed the game and I didn't notice at the time. All fixed now.
Thank you for your time and patience.
That's really strange, Itch should not be downloading the web build :-( Thank you for letting me know! Hope you enjoy playing <3
It's such a cool game, the exact kind of vibe I like.
I wish there was a parameter button that I could click to dissable the sound though. Or maybe I just couldn't find it. To tell the truth, the reason I was searching for it was because unfortunately the music was terribly glitchy for me...
But other than that, like I said, I really like the game. It's cosy, and cute, and not boring. I had a great time playing.
Thank you for sharing!
nice game, excited to see it get updated. i like the assembly, feels very tactile in opposition to most museum-type games i've played.
note: audio options & a way to play in windowed mode would be helpful. i like to listen to other things when i play games, but i had to set volume to 0 in volume mixer for this one. easier to have ingame settings.
Thanks I'm glad you're enjoying it! Definitely on our list of things to add! Sorry the options aren't available at the moment :-(
I made an account to comment because I liked the game so much. It's really cute and scratches the same itch that animal crossings/stardew valley does, which is just what I was looking for. I think one of my fossils is stuck in the blue blocks area? I can't pick it up. Also I'm really curious to learn about the method behind the fossil quality or is it randomized? Every fossil except one was 70% quality and I can't figure out why, lol. Great game and I really enjoyed playing it!!
Thanks for making an account just to let me know! I really appreciate it!
Ah sorry you got one of our known bugs in the web build. I posted a dev log today with a bit more info about them. Basically for now if you leave that stuck bone behind it will respawn in another location so you can still get it somewhere else.
Haha you also shouldnt be able to see the sky there but that'll be fixed in the next build too 😅 sorry about the bugs!
Currently the fossil quality is random and you can pick up better quality bones over time that will swap out. Also if you hit the bones when excavating them it lowers the quality. Do you think it's unclear the way it is now? Let me know if you think we need to explain this to the player or change how it works? thanks for playing and I hope you'll come back and test out the next update, we have lots more content coming 😉
I didn't even notice the sky, haha, so not a big issue :). I was only confused on the bone quality because when I broke blocks, the dirt would sometimes take one hit and other times it would take two hits. So I didn't know if I was like...messing up while digging and making the quality worse (I hope that makes sense, lol). I think a short tutorial would be the best solution to clear up that bone quality is randomized and that breaking dirt blocks is supposed to take 1-2 hits. Also because my first bone only had blue stone on it that needed a pickaxe and I didn't realize that the tools were for different things and totally obliterated that bone, whoopsies.😂
This is such a charming and relaxing game concept! The gameplay loop of digging, scanning for fossils, and then carefully excavating them in the mini-game is incredibly satisfying. Getting to take your finds back to build and decorate your own museum is a fantastic reward that ties everything together beautifully.
I'm so happy you enjoyed it so much! Thanks for playing!
Hii! I really like the design of the game and everything but I cannot figure out the controls? Please if you would maybe add control instructions in the description of the game it would really help people like me that just cant figure them out!
Hi there! Sorry for this oversight. I will add a controls list ASAP. In the meantime: Moving around is WASD and most things are done with mouse clicking. Other controls are shown in the UI for rotating bones etc. But I will definitely write up a proper controls list soon :-)
Thanks! I figured it out but it took me like 10 minutes to realize i couldn't pick the bone up because it was still blocked lol. Mostly a user error but its always a good idea to have clear instructions!
Cute concept! It reminds me of My Sims.
Here are some issues I ran into:
- Several bones could not be taken, even with all surrounding tiles cleared (at least 1 per area I played)
- Audio stuttering if I scroll down off the page
- Unplayable in Firefox, plays ok on Edge
Thanks for playing and sorry about those bugs!!
I'm busy fixing the issue you posted a screenshot of, should have a fix up later today. Also looking at the sound issues.
The firefox issue is a really hard one... I'm looking into it but its complicated. Hopefully I can find a fix for it. Sorry about that.
No worries! I really enjoyed parts of the game such as the bone cleaning part, which was very relaxing. Keep up the good work!
love the game, great way to pass the time :3
although-- found a bug, i think? i cant pick up this fossil :P
Oh no! Luckily this is a super easy bug to fix. Will sort it out asap.
Sorry about that.
Having encountered something similar myself, I think it might still be considered 'buried' by one or more of the tiles on the right. Or at least, every time I had a "stuck" bone like that and I cleared out around it I could eventually pick it up! :D
(Loving the game, it's very fun XD)
Yeah thats exactly it. It's overlapping very slightly with the block on the right which is an indestructible block. So I'm just updating that code to ignore overlaps with indestructible blocks.
I'll try push an update later today with this fix as well as a couple of other ones.
Unfortunately web builds come with a bunch of annoying problems and because so many people are playing im a bit nervous about pushing a big update and accidentally causing other (potentially worse) issues.
This game is lovely! I really enjoy both finding and building the skeletons, and the decoration options are good. My only problem is that whenever i scroll down the page, (ie leave the game window), or when a loading screen appears, the audio glitches out, repeating a single note over and over again until the normal game resumes.
We're sorry about that :-( It only happens in the web/browser builds but yeah I know its horrible when it happens! We will try solve this issue soon. Thank you so much for playing and I hope the audio issue didn't ruin the experience too much! Hopefully it'll be fixed for our next update.
I knew I'd love this game from the moment I saw it. It's so cozy and adorable, and such a unique concept. I'm sure the complete version will be amazing, great job devs!!! The artwork is also amazing, the game really has a style. I love the cute character models and the pretty museum decorations.
Anyways here's my dino! Such a cutie <3
Haha I LOVE him!! this made us laugh so much. Thank you! Made me think we should have an "invent your own dinosaur" area where you can use your discarded bones to invent strange creatures XD
Thanks for playing :-)
Aww that would be so much fun! :)
Really wanted to try this game but the downloaded version crashes on start and the web version doesn't load (firefox)!
Hi there. I am really sorry about that, that's frustrating! We will take a look at this first thing tomorrow morning and try fix it! If you are up for it and have the time to send us your player log file it would help us figure out why it might be crashing for you?
You can find the file here on your pc:
%appdata%/../LocalLow/DefaultCompany/Fossil-Hunter
You can email it to: lasse@unsigneddouble.com or find us on our discord :-)
Oh and thank you so much for letting us know! Appreciate it.
this is a super awesome game but the audio has been glitching for me :( it’ll start lagging weirdly and skipping. i know its not my computer, i tested different audio stuff
I am glad you enjoyed it. Sorry about the audio glitch! It seems to only happen in the web build and not when you run the downloaded version so that's a temporary fix if you want to keep playing? but we will try to fix the audio issue on web asap, I know the sound it make is horrible when it does that :-( sorry.
Thank you so much for going bug hunting for us!! I really appreciate it <3 We are going to squash these bugs this weekend. Esp the falling off the world one, that's not nice at all! sorry that happened to you.
Thanks for playing!
Looks like an awesome game, but unfortunately its not loading on web for me :( Hope you guys can get this fixed as this seems like a super cool game!
Oh thats super lame. Could you let me know what browser you're using so I can try fix it?
Sure thing! Im playing on a Chrome browser rn, hope that helps!
really cool idea you guys have going on here, looking forward to seeing where it goes :) really like having to assemble the skeleton, haven't seen something like that in a fossil-themed game before.
Thanks for playing cerafish and have a lovely day. We're also looking forward to seeing where it goes! :-)
Had a fun time! If you're interested in fleshing this out some more (pun not intended), I'd say the actual digging gets kind of tedious. Might I suggest ways to upgrade digging speed? That and more dinosaurs, because everything needs more dinosaurs! :D
Glad you had a fun time! As for the digging getting tedious: sorry about that. When we initially started we had 1 dinosaur so there wasn't as much digging involved.
We're actually right in the middle of working on the shop and one of the upgrades is actually a better/faster digging tool. So that's coming soon!
Thanks for playing and have a rad day.
Yay dinosaurs!
Are there only two dinos at the current moment? I'm really excited for the full game.
Ah yes, sorry, there are only two full Dino's and two smaller single find fossils at the moment! We are going to add more in future updates over the next couple months though along with some other features! If you follow us you should get a notification whenever we add a major update. I have a long list of dinosaurs/fossils that we plan on adding 😬
Thank you for the fast reply! I look forward to the updates and am a rather patient person. I'll be cheering ya on in the bg!
We should have an update with some new fossils and other things within a couple weeks time 😊 thanks for cheering!! We appreciate it!
The game has potential, the build your own dinosaur mechanich is really interesting, to be able to recover the dinosaur skeleton bone by bone and build it yourself.
The fossil excavation mechanic can be fun, it feels like the typical updgrade game (dig 1 and dig 2).
I would like to play a finished version of this game.
Thanks for playing!
Anything you felt would be a good addition for the next update?
I feel that the main point of development should be the gameplay loop for the fossil excavation mechanic: setting objectives, encountering limits, improving the gear, overcoming the limits and encountering new ones and son on. Besides some quality of life improvements to make the excavation feel nicer. Maybe there should also be a reward for obtaining fossils, to make it an objective.
So cute, and the art looks great
Thank you!!
such a lovely idea! that's the kind of game I would've loved to play as a kid and absolutely enjoy now as well! the illustrations are adorable, dino facts are very interesting. will be waiting for more updates :)
Hey thank you so much for playing and leaving such a nice comment, really appreciate it! Awesome!! We are already planning what content to work on for the next update, excited about it :-)
Cool Game! I really liked assembling the skeleton. I want more dinosaurs
What dinosaur would you like us to add next? Let me know your favourite and we'll add it!
Now this is a game that tickles my fancy. Cute smooth graphics and controls. Love the searching for fossils part and then assembling the bones after. Can't wait to see what the game has to offer in the future. Welldone
Thanks ramborob!
We can't wait to add more features either. Don't forget to follow us so you're notified when we make an update :-)
Hello Hello! I just wanted to say I played it and enjoyed it. I'm not into dinosaurs but I'm into cozy games, I liked the radar in the game and that there's the guide on the exhibit and auto setup (I used it once on accident and then the other time to make sure it was aligned juuuuuust right). I didn't have an account on here before, created one just to comment here!
WOW you made an account just to let us know!!? that's so awesome. Super duper cool of you! We really appreciate it <3
We are planning on adding more dinosaurs and extra content in the future so if you follow us it'll notify you when we make a major update. We'll get you in to dinosaurs if its the last things we do ;-) hehehe
I love the art style of this cosy game. For someone who knows almost nothing about dinosaurs - I really enjoyed it! The re was just enough information and fun facts for me. Being able to put together the exhibit in the end really tied it altogether.
yesss thank you Kate that makes us very happy!
This is so much fun! Very cute, very functional. Great graphics, easy controls, intuitive and fun mechanics.
Awesome!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it and thank you for leaving a rating <3 Your name is very on theme!! love it :D
Thanks cozyharry! Glad you enjoyed it :-)