mining is marvelous

i agree with those people who have been saying that the current leveling system seems frustrating, disconnected and un-fun .. but i want to talk about something i think glitch does really well, which is mining!

mining is great. doing mining was the most fun i've had in the game so far. i enjoyed it so much that i'm going to try to abstract some of the reasons why i found it more fun than other things in the game.

1] exploration

unlike tree harvesting or gardening, minable rock chunks appear on all sorts of different platforms in the mining levels. it is cool to crawl through tunnels, leap from platform to platform and explore all corners of vertically oriented levels in order to find the rock chunks and go to work on them.

2] environmental impact

unlike harvesting, mining lets you have a neat visual and concrete impact on the level itself. be removing the rock chucks you are reshaping [if depleting] the environment. the whole process seems more tightly integrated into the game world, since there is feedback. perhaps when harvesting trees players should actually see cherries and bubbles pulled from the tree.

3] animation and gear

the swinging mining pick looks so cute. i can't wait until some sound effects are applied to it. the progress bar makes the process less frustrating than cooking, where you have no idea when it will end. it's also cool that the gear you use has an impact on the process. i found that i could use the focusing orb while mining to offset the energy costs. this made sense to me since i've broken up rocks before with a hammer and the steady repetition actually is quite meditative. combining the swirling mining animation with the axe pick animation was also cool. i felt like a supercharged mining machine!

4] competition!

since you're depleting resources, when other people are mining alongside you, speed is of the essence. electing whether to mine to beat someone to the punch - or keep exploring for more valuable rocks is a fun decision that gets you racing through caverns. of course, competition means opportunities for collaboration as well.

5] random drops

as you mine, sometimes the rocks spit out precious gems. this shakes up the whole experience and keeps it from getting boring quite as quickly.

Posted 14 years ago by striatic | Permalink