This here is just where I place some kind of progress log on some games that I'm playing blind in the style of a work page. This is only really for fun.
Carvernous II is a game released in 2021 by Nucaranlaeg. The story starts off simple, being about someone who wakes up inside a cave with no idea where they are or why they're there, with the only thing that they can think to do being to get out of there, but being sent back in time to the beginning once you run out of your limited amount of mana complicates things a bit.
An Idle Game with Resources Management Gameplay in it, the main core of the game is to carve and optimize a path that can achieve your desired objectives throughout countless time loops, whether it's to gather more mana from mana rocks so that your individual loops can last longer, grinding stats so that you take less time to do certain actions, or to get certain permanent bonuses to help you out. As you progress, you'll end up having to deal with new helpful mechanics to get yourself out of some troublesome obstacles and hopefully get yourself out of this cave you're in along the way.
Trope List
- Another Dimension: Once you manage to get far enough, you'll be able to gain access to other realms. These alternate realms have special conditions that make progressing through them harder, but managing to mine their Mana Rocks will grant you bonuses that affect all realms, including your main realm (known as the Core Realm). These include:
- Long Realm: All actions that require resources to do (with the exception of smelting ores and vaporizing gold) cost twice as much and all actions take thrice as long to do. Mining Mana Rocks in this dimension will lower the time it takes for that particular Mana Rock to be mined.
- Verdant Realm: Every single non-resource-giving tile is replaced with mushroom tiles of various types and all mushroom tiles grow 5 times as fast. Mining Mana Rocks here will increase the amount of mana gained per piece of Gold vaporized.
- Anti Poop-Socking: Being away from the game allows you to bank time which can be used to greatly speed up game speed.
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: As you increase a stat more and more, the time reduction bonus that it grants you when doing certain tasks that use that stat increases slower and slower, thus reducing the benefit of increasing a particular stat.
- Forced Level-Grinding: As having higher stats allows you to complete certain actions faster, you will have to spend a good chunk of time grinding them up to the point where you'll be able to get more time that can be used for things such as progressing further through a zone, getting more clones, and harvesting more Mana Rocks. The game even mentions this once you manage to reach zone 7.Game Slowdown: At this point, the game slows down quite a bit. You'll need to grind stats much more in order to progress.
- Fungus Humongous: While the only visuals you'll see in game is just a green-colored tile (or variations thereof), the Mushroom tile and all of its variants are all described as "giant mushrooms", enough so that the stat that's used to help speed up the process is called Woodcutting.
- Idle Game: Outside of planning the optimal route for completing a goal you have in mind and scouting the zone to get a better understanding of your surroundings, most of the gameplay has you just waiting for a goal to be completed, whether it's stat grinding or mana grinding.
- Me's a Crowd: Managing to have enough gold to activate the Clone Machine will create a clone of yourself, able to do its own tasks or help you out on the same task, halving the time required to complete it. You will use this machine multiple times if you want to progress, eventually resulting in a good amount of clones of yourself running about.
- Resources Management Gameplay: You only have so many resources and mana at your disposal before you either get yourself stuck or are forced to reset the loop back to the beginning, so using them wisely is crucial to progress through the game, whether by progressing through new zones or by getting extra clones, among other things.
- Shout-Out: The title of a in-game message you get when you use an Iron Bridge over a Lava tile for the first time is "Lava Can't Melt Steel Bridges", in reference to the "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" meme.
- Teleportation: Managing to get to the Complete Goal tile in zone 6 gives you 2 new runes to use: a Teleport To rune that can be placed down at no cost but requires charging up in order to be activated and a Teleport From rune that sends you to the Teleport To rune with no charge-up time required but requires 2 Iron Ores to deploy.
