No, sorry, I just played in the browser, could that be it? The game crashed after 3 digging runs. After that, each time i went to dig, it would randomply crash before I could finish and reset everything to before that run, back to the museum. Even any shopping would be reset.
love this game so much! though i've come across a glitch with the display table; when i go to 'assemble' it, nothing shows up despite having multiple display case fossils :(
Oh no. Could you give me a bit more information so we can try track down this bug?
It would be helpful to know if you were playing in browser? Were you resuming a save from a previous version? What happens if you do quit and resume, any chance that fixes it?
If you would be willing to email me a screen recording that would be really helpful too! romy@unsigneddouble.com
Sorry about this, we will try to figure it out and fix it asap!
Hey, I think I'm getting the same bug. The "assemble" works when you go with your character to the table, open it and then press the assemble button. It does not work when you move stuff around, select the table and click assemble. Restart does not help. I'm playing on the web version
it happens how racoon has said, instead of assembling anything, it just goes to the character. it happened in my first play, and coming back to a save, and even resetting the browser didn't fix it on my end. i use google chrome, and when i get home in a few hours, if you haven't been able to reproduce it, i'll happily send over a video of it :D i know bugs like this happen, otherwise from what i've played the game is really good. its got a cosy vibe and is really simple in a good way.
I pushed an attempted fix about 10 - 15 mins ago. If you reload the browser / download the new version it should be fixed. Or is this problem still happening? If it's still happening you can send us a video of it, that would be super helpful. either to our email: lasse@unsigneddouble.com or you can send it to us on discord.
I'm so excited to watch this grow! It has all the makings of a game that will suck me in. It's so cozy and cute while being simple yet interactive. My only request/suggestion is as the game goes on, having different ways of aquiring fossils would be great. I know this game is brand new so you guys definitley have more planned and I'm STOKED!!!
This is awesome!!! So so fun and I love the technical design of the game! The dig site, scanner, and fossil excavating are all lovely and designed rlly well! It was a little confusing at first but I caught on quickly :)) would be great if there was a short tutorial or even just a page describing how it works!
Great game. The info on the exhibits are a big plus. Wondering if the full version has an encyclopedia that comes with it, explaining all the unlocks. I spent way too much time on this demo. What a gem.
Yes we definitely plan on having some sort of encyclopaedia and a way to track what you've found vs what you haven't in the full game. So happy you enjoyed it :-)
Thanks so much for doing a lets play! We agree with your feedback and do plan on adding some onboarding and also adding a pause menu with some audio controls :-)
I like your idea of being able to zoom in and out while you are in your museum. We might add that! Thanks!!
Hello everyone :-) We just uploaded a new build due to a little bug where some information wasn't getting pulled through into the exhibit info. It should be all fixed now but if anyone has any issues do let us know. Happy digging!
oh my i have a huge paleontology hyperfixation. when i saw this on my fyp i HAD to play. this is so beautiful ilysm for making thiss!! /p /vpos
downloading INSTANTLY
question: does the fossil quality affect exhibit/income related stuff? or is it just 'get too low and you lose the fossil'?
also i dunno if this is a skill issue or not but when i try to scan (hold/click with two fingers/right click), it just inputs it as a dig cmnd (on trackpad)
another question: will going back to past digsites be an option in the future? js wondering
It's a pleasure :D comments like this really make my day. I hope you enjoy it! If you have feedback let us know.
the fossil quality has some affect on the exhibit rating once its setup in the museum. And the higher the exhibit rating the more visitors like it and they more they pay. You can find better quality bones and they will swap out so don't worry if you damage one ;-)
Hello, I played it all evening yesterday. At first, I had trouble understanding what to do. I find it a bit of a shame that there's nothing that really explains what we're supposed to do, or even which key to use to interact with the exploration table, for example, or that it doesn't explain that bones have durability.
But I still really enjoyed the cozy experience of the game, I really love the game's graphics; they're adorable. The game is intuitive once I figured out what to do. Anyway, thank you for this lovely game that's a great way to pass the time. By the way, I'm French, so sorry if some of my sentences don't make sense.
Hello! Sorry there is no onboarding/tutorial. We will try to improve this in the future and maybe add more control icons so it is clearer.
I am so glad you enjoyed it once you figured it out though, you are very welcome and thanks so much for playing and leaving us feedback! We really appreciate it. We will be posting some updated content over the next couple months if you come back to try again :-)
The game is working on Firefox for me now too, on PC, btw (saw the comment below), I previously was not working a couple of weeks ago, I've had the game in my 'to check later' for a while and kept checking back XD
:D Really love what's here so far!
Feedback wise, it would be nice to be able to see what the fossil ratings are before setting them out? unless i'm missing something, it seems like you have to set the fossil out to then examine it to see what it's rating is and such, it would be nice to be able to compare all of that stuff beforehand!
Things also got a liiitle repetitive, but that's expected for an early beta type of thing, I do wish that the puzzle type minigame for fossils was a little more common, I liked that more than the pickaxe/chiseling one!
We are going to add more puzzle games, thanks in part to this feedback so thank you for letting us know! We will also have a chat about the fossil ratings. At some point we are going to redo that whole menu, as the game gets bigger and more complicated that menu will need to change. Sooo we may just leave it for now and wait until we update it properly in the future, we will see. But good to know you wanted that feature! thanks so much for playing :-)
Really loved this game, I can't wait to see where it goes! The graphics are adorable and the game play loop is rewarding while still having a lot of room to play with if more mechanics are added later down the line. The randomized bones/layouts at each dig site kept things from getting repetitive, and it didn't take me too long to complete both large fossils. Having information plaques on each fossil in game was also cool, I liked learning about them! I did manage to get the game working on firefox. I use a mac, maybe that bug is PC only?
Some suggestions (that you are by no means obligated to listen to!):
> having the direction you dig rely on the direction you're clicking instead of the last pressed direction input. It might just be a skill issue on my part, but I would miss my targeted dirt block so often because I would unthinkingly readjust a step vertically and not turn back.
> fun hats/costumes you can buy for the little guy (maybe fun hats for the large fossils too. if you are feeling whimsical.)
> some sort of explanation for how ratings work with fossil upgrades. I had a fossil get upgraded from bronze to gold, but visitors still treated it as bronze. Maybe I missed that you have to manually put the new fossil out or something?
>Another use for duplicate fossils could be some sort of npc quest where you're tasked to find a specific fossil for them to buy. It'd also give the player another avenue for money.
> Some sort of brush-the-dirt-off-of-the-fossil minigame like the puzzle minigame could be fun, if you're interested in adding more of those.
> someone else mentioned the remove display function being broken on mac, I experienced that as well
> gigantopithecus fossils (china) would be cool to include, if you're looking for more sites around the world.
Hi hallowclave. Thanks for playing and taking the time to provide such awesome feedback. I will try to address all your points, please forgive me if I miss something!
Firefox on mac working... Thats weird... but good news I guess. I don't know what's up with firefox and I've spent so much time trying to get it to work. I've almost given up at this point...
Digging Direction We're planning on completely reworking how these mechanics work so that you click on a block to dig it out. We might not get to this super super soon but it is in the plans.
Cosmetics Definitely on our radar to add cosmetics AND character customization when you start the game.
Fossil Ratings This is a bit confusing. There are individual ratings for the fossils and then an overall rating for the exhibits. If you pick up a gold fossil and you already have a bronze fossil in an exhibit, it will automatically replace that fossil with the higher quality one BUT that doesn't necessarily mean your exhibit quality will go up.
The exhibit quality only goes up if enough fossils are of a high quality.
We'll work on making this clearer :-)
Duplicate Fossils
We have thought about duplicate fossils. But until you can do something with them it would just confuse the player. In future we might allow the player to get duplicate fossils and sell/trade them with other paleontologists. We're thinking about how to deal with this...
Brush-the-dirt-off-of-the-fossil minigame
Totally on our radar and in our plans! Great minds think alike. We're just still working on figuring out what kind of mechanics we want to add here and how to make it fun. We might make bones degrade slowly over time and then you have to maintain them? Something like this is coming soon though!
Broken Hotkey on mac
Sorry... I'll add an alternate key for mac in the next update I just forgot for the previous one :-(
Gigantopithecus
Looks awesome!!! We've got such a humungous backlog of dinosaurs and fossils we want to add and it takes quite a while (about 4 days of hard work) to add each dino... so we'll try our best to add Gigantopithecus.
:D Thanks for taking the time to reply, it's so cool to hear about the future plans/behind the scenes for the game! I'm excited to follow the game's journey, and I know I'll come back to enjoy the demo frequently
I have encountered a bug, whenever there is music playing and you are not looking at the game ( Im on chrome), the music just freezes and starts playing the same sound over and over! Anyways, awesome update!
I managed to get as far as starting to uncover my first fossil in Montana, but then the game froze. Not sure if my laptop is just too warm or whether I should re-launch from the Itch app. Stupid hot weather. But I've been fine playing other games. Anyway, I've wishlisted on Steam. I'll try again, since it looks like my kind of game, and I do want to play it. I'll play it when it comes on Steam anyway.
I did re-launch, and hadn't saved, so started from the beginning. Tried Saskatchewan instead this timed, and found my seventh fossil just before the game froze again. Sigh. Wish the game auto-saved. I did find another fossil, but it was partly in the green stuff and I couldn't get the whole fossil uncovered. Ah well.
Itch App. I... think I downloaded the executable? *looks blank* I downloaded something through the Itch app and then clinked on Launch when it was finished.
We have a new update up! New fossil puzzle game added and a new room you can add to your museum. This update should not affect anyone's save games. Hope you enjoy it :D
Hi there, I am really sorry about that. Because of the nature of the things we added/changed we had to wipe the save games otherwise things would have been very broken :-(
We are really sorry. I know it sucks. It's hard In the early stages of development when things are changing so much. In future we promise we will try our best to not wipe saves if possible!
Its completely okay! I liked playing on a new save, and i needed to make money manualy instead of using the money i aready had. Awesome! Also, the audio is really grainy sometimes,
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.
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i've been looking for one fossil for 15 ingame days
10/10 peak game
ahaha hope you found it! If you didn't and you think it might be bugged please let me know which fossil was eluding you. Thanks for playing!
my things are gone :( I came back to play and my museum is empty
Oh no sorry. When last did you play?
Unfortunately, during one of the updates the save games stopped working. But that was quite a long time ago.
Sorry for the late reply. It was few days ago, just before the last bug fix. Inventory listen them as placed, but there is nothing.
I tried to post an screenshot but the site wont let me
does it save?
It should save your progress yes. If you have any issues please let us know :-)
The downloaded version is safer in general.
I loooove this game sooo muchhh !! At first, it's kinda hard to understand how all the tools work but then it's okay
really fun game but it keeps crashing
Oh no thats awful. Sorry about that.
Are you using the windows download version? If you are, you could email us your player.log file?
It will be found here: C:\Users\[Your user name]\AppData\LocalLow\UnsignedDouble\Fossil Quest
You can email that file to lasse@unsigneddouble.com and we will take a look ASAP.
No, sorry, I just played in the browser, could that be it? The game crashed after 3 digging runs. After that, each time i went to dig, it would randomply crash before I could finish and reset everything to before that run, back to the museum. Even any shopping would be reset.
Very strange. But also hard to fix because of of many things that could be going wrong. Like fixing someone's car but from 5000km away:-(
You could try using a different browser, that might help? Or you could try downloading it if you're on Windows?
Sorry about this. It sucks for us having the game crash.
Hey, it's no worries. Might just be my browser. I'll give downloading it a try. Thanks for the great game!
love this game so much! though i've come across a glitch with the display table; when i go to 'assemble' it, nothing shows up despite having multiple display case fossils :(
Oh no. Could you give me a bit more information so we can try track down this bug?
It would be helpful to know if you were playing in browser? Were you resuming a save from a previous version? What happens if you do quit and resume, any chance that fixes it?
If you would be willing to email me a screen recording that would be really helpful too! romy@unsigneddouble.com
Sorry about this, we will try to figure it out and fix it asap!
Hey, I think I'm getting the same bug. The "assemble" works when you go with your character to the table, open it and then press the assemble button. It does not work when you move stuff around, select the table and click assemble.
Restart does not help. I'm playing on the web version
Strange. Thank so much for the extra info, that's really helpful!! We're going to try to reproduce it and get it fixed.
I think we have fixed this!
Yeap, fixed for me! Thanks!
it happens how racoon has said, instead of assembling anything, it just goes to the character. it happened in my first play, and coming back to a save, and even resetting the browser didn't fix it on my end. i use google chrome, and when i get home in a few hours, if you haven't been able to reproduce it, i'll happily send over a video of it :D
i know bugs like this happen, otherwise from what i've played the game is really good. its got a cosy vibe and is really simple in a good way.
I pushed an attempted fix about 10 - 15 mins ago. If you reload the browser / download the new version it should be fixed. Or is this problem still happening? If it's still happening you can send us a video of it, that would be super helpful. either to our email: lasse@unsigneddouble.com or you can send it to us on discord.
I'm so excited to watch this grow! It has all the makings of a game that will suck me in. It's so cozy and cute while being simple yet interactive. My only request/suggestion is as the game goes on, having different ways of aquiring fossils would be great. I know this game is brand new so you guys definitley have more planned and I'm STOKED!!!
Thank you so much!!! We are planning on having more variety and things to do in the full game so it doesn't get too repetitive :-)
This is awesome!!! So so fun and I love the technical design of the game! The dig site, scanner, and fossil excavating are all lovely and designed rlly well! It was a little confusing at first but I caught on quickly :)) would be great if there was a short tutorial or even just a page describing how it works!
Thanks for playing! Yes we are planning to add a bit of tutorialization as soon as possible.
Making tutorials can be a bit tricky and time consuming sometimes but we may, in the interim, just add a how to play page.
Great game. The info on the exhibits are a big plus. Wondering if the full version has an encyclopedia that comes with it, explaining all the unlocks. I spent way too much time on this demo. What a gem.
Yes we definitely plan on having some sort of encyclopaedia and a way to track what you've found vs what you haven't in the full game. So happy you enjoyed it :-)
this is the cutest fricken game ive ever played, distracted me from uni assignments but TOTALLY WORTH IT
Haha! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
A little gameplay, a little critique ;)
Thanks so much for doing a lets play! We agree with your feedback and do plan on adding some onboarding and also adding a pause menu with some audio controls :-)
I like your idea of being able to zoom in and out while you are in your museum. We might add that! Thanks!!
Amazing game, I had a blast. Good job dev!
Hello everyone :-) We just uploaded a new build due to a little bug where some information wasn't getting pulled through into the exhibit info. It should be all fixed now but if anyone has any issues do let us know. Happy digging!
oh my i have a huge paleontology hyperfixation. when i saw this on my fyp i HAD to play. this is so beautiful ilysm for making thiss!! /p /vpos
downloading INSTANTLY
question: does the fossil quality affect exhibit/income related stuff? or is it just 'get too low and you lose the fossil'?
also i dunno if this is a skill issue or not but when i try to scan (hold/click with two fingers/right click), it just inputs it as a dig cmnd (on trackpad)
another question: will going back to past digsites be an option in the future? js wondering
It's a pleasure :D comments like this really make my day. I hope you enjoy it! If you have feedback let us know.
the fossil quality has some affect on the exhibit rating once its setup in the museum. And the higher the exhibit rating the more visitors like it and they more they pay. You can find better quality bones and they will swap out so don't worry if you damage one ;-)
Hello, I played it all evening yesterday. At first, I had trouble understanding what to do. I find it a bit of a shame that there's nothing that really explains what we're supposed to do, or even which key to use to interact with the exploration table, for example, or that it doesn't explain that bones have durability.
But I still really enjoyed the cozy experience of the game, I really love the game's graphics; they're adorable. The game is intuitive once I figured out what to do. Anyway, thank you for this lovely game that's a great way to pass the time. By the way, I'm French, so sorry if some of my sentences don't make sense.
Hello! Sorry there is no onboarding/tutorial. We will try to improve this in the future and maybe add more control icons so it is clearer.
I am so glad you enjoyed it once you figured it out though, you are very welcome and thanks so much for playing and leaving us feedback! We really appreciate it. We will be posting some updated content over the next couple months if you come back to try again :-)
The game is working on Firefox for me now too, on PC, btw (saw the comment below), I previously was not working a couple of weeks ago, I've had the game in my 'to check later' for a while and kept checking back XD
:D Really love what's here so far!
Feedback wise, it would be nice to be able to see what the fossil ratings are before setting them out? unless i'm missing something, it seems like you have to set the fossil out to then examine it to see what it's rating is and such, it would be nice to be able to compare all of that stuff beforehand!
Things also got a liiitle repetitive, but that's expected for an early beta type of thing, I do wish that the puzzle type minigame for fossils was a little more common, I liked that more than the pickaxe/chiseling one!
Thats really awesome that it worked in Firefox!
We are going to add more puzzle games, thanks in part to this feedback so thank you for letting us know! We will also have a chat about the fossil ratings. At some point we are going to redo that whole menu, as the game gets bigger and more complicated that menu will need to change. Sooo we may just leave it for now and wait until we update it properly in the future, we will see. But good to know you wanted that feature! thanks so much for playing :-)
Really loved this game, I can't wait to see where it goes! The graphics are adorable and the game play loop is rewarding while still having a lot of room to play with if more mechanics are added later down the line. The randomized bones/layouts at each dig site kept things from getting repetitive, and it didn't take me too long to complete both large fossils. Having information plaques on each fossil in game was also cool, I liked learning about them! I did manage to get the game working on firefox. I use a mac, maybe that bug is PC only?
Some suggestions (that you are by no means obligated to listen to!):
> having the direction you dig rely on the direction you're clicking instead of the last pressed direction input. It might just be a skill issue on my part, but I would miss my targeted dirt block so often because I would unthinkingly readjust a step vertically and not turn back.
> fun hats/costumes you can buy for the little guy (maybe fun hats for the large fossils too. if you are feeling whimsical.)
> some sort of explanation for how ratings work with fossil upgrades. I had a fossil get upgraded from bronze to gold, but visitors still treated it as bronze. Maybe I missed that you have to manually put the new fossil out or something?
>Another use for duplicate fossils could be some sort of npc quest where you're tasked to find a specific fossil for them to buy. It'd also give the player another avenue for money.
> Some sort of brush-the-dirt-off-of-the-fossil minigame like the puzzle minigame could be fun, if you're interested in adding more of those.
> someone else mentioned the remove display function being broken on mac, I experienced that as well
> gigantopithecus fossils (china) would be cool to include, if you're looking for more sites around the world.
Hi hallowclave. Thanks for playing and taking the time to provide such awesome feedback. I will try to address all your points, please forgive me if I miss something!
Firefox on mac working...
Thats weird... but good news I guess. I don't know what's up with firefox and I've spent so much time trying to get it to work. I've almost given up at this point...
Digging Direction
We're planning on completely reworking how these mechanics work so that you click on a block to dig it out. We might not get to this super super soon but it is in the plans.
Cosmetics
Definitely on our radar to add cosmetics AND character customization when you start the game.
Fossil Ratings
This is a bit confusing. There are individual ratings for the fossils and then an overall rating for the exhibits. If you pick up a gold fossil and you already have a bronze fossil in an exhibit, it will automatically replace that fossil with the higher quality one BUT that doesn't necessarily mean your exhibit quality will go up.
The exhibit quality only goes up if enough fossils are of a high quality.
We'll work on making this clearer :-)
Duplicate Fossils
We have thought about duplicate fossils. But until you can do something with them it would just confuse the player. In future we might allow the player to get duplicate fossils and sell/trade them with other paleontologists. We're thinking about how to deal with this...
Brush-the-dirt-off-of-the-fossil minigame
Totally on our radar and in our plans! Great minds think alike. We're just still working on figuring out what kind of mechanics we want to add here and how to make it fun. We might make bones degrade slowly over time and then you have to maintain them? Something like this is coming soon though!
Broken Hotkey on mac
Sorry... I'll add an alternate key for mac in the next update I just forgot for the previous one :-(
Gigantopithecus
Looks awesome!!! We've got such a humungous backlog of dinosaurs and fossils we want to add and it takes quite a while (about 4 days of hard work) to add each dino... so we'll try our best to add Gigantopithecus.
Thanks for playing!
:D Thanks for taking the time to reply, it's so cool to hear about the future plans/behind the scenes for the game! I'm excited to follow the game's journey, and I know I'll come back to enjoy the demo frequently
I have encountered a bug, whenever there is music playing and you are not looking at the game ( Im on chrome), the music just freezes and starts playing the same sound over and over! Anyways, awesome update!
Will take a look and see if we can figure something out.
It's so cuuute! Just what I'm looking for. I recommend this game!
Thank you! So happy you enjoyed playing :-)
I managed to get as far as starting to uncover my first fossil in Montana, but then the game froze. Not sure if my laptop is just too warm or whether I should re-launch from the Itch app. Stupid hot weather. But I've been fine playing other games. Anyway, I've wishlisted on Steam. I'll try again, since it looks like my kind of game, and I do want to play it. I'll play it when it comes on Steam anyway.
I did re-launch, and hadn't saved, so started from the beginning. Tried Saskatchewan instead this timed, and found my seventh fossil just before the game froze again. Sigh. Wish the game auto-saved. I did find another fossil, but it was partly in the green stuff and I couldn't get the whole fossil uncovered. Ah well.
Sorry Grace this really sucks! Did you download the executable, play it in the browser or use the itch app?
I'm gonna work my butt off to try fix this as quickly as possible.
Itch App. I... think I downloaded the executable? *looks blank* I downloaded something through the Itch app and then clinked on Launch when it was finished.
I think I've fixed the freezing issue now :-)
Sorry, was sleeping (Australia; it's now after breakfast, lol). Will have another go later. Sorry to find more work for you.
We have a new update up! New fossil puzzle game added and a new room you can add to your museum. This update should not affect anyone's save games. Hope you enjoy it :D
Such a beautiful game, so impressed with the art and mechanics!
I have just loaded into the game and my save was wiped :(
Hi there, I am really sorry about that. Because of the nature of the things we added/changed we had to wipe the save games otherwise things would have been very broken :-(
We are really sorry. I know it sucks. It's hard In the early stages of development when things are changing so much. In future we promise we will try our best to not wipe saves if possible!
Its completely okay! I liked playing on a new save, and i needed to make money manualy instead of using the money i aready had. Awesome! Also, the audio is really grainy sometimes,
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!