Gem Hunters | Devpost

Inspiration

The core inspiration for Gem Hunters is a tribute to my most dear friend who was a Geology major. He always dreamed of discovering his own new rare mineral, and naming the rare stones, to be forever used by scientists. Tragically, he passed away last year in a motorcycle accident before he could fulfil this dream. This game is a way for players to live out that adventurous spirit of finding valuable and unique treasures in his honor.

What it does

Gem Hunters is an engaging mobile game where users explore four distinct, vibrantly colored biomes (Green, Purple, Red, and Blue) to mine rocks and gems of different values. Players use the currency earned from mining to upgrade their tools (like pickaxes) to become more efficient, allowing them to make more and more money with each session.

How we built it

The game was built using GenAI in the Worlds Desktop Editor by Meta.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into issues with ensuring correct lighting in all biomes. Since the environments are so vividly color-coded (red, green, blue, purple), achieving a level of lighting that made the gems sparkle realistically without washing out or muddying the deep colors of the surrounding trees and rock structures required constant tweaking of ambient and direct light sources.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of successfully creating four visually stunning and highly distinct biomes that are fun to explore. We're also proud of the satisfying core progression loop, as we learned a lot about how game development works in terms of creating enjoyable controls and using color to guide player experience.

What we learned

We learned a great deal about the nuances of game development, specifically how critical factors like color theory and the fine-tuning of controls impact player retention and enjoyment. We gained practical experience in designing efficient, repetitive actions (mining) that remain satisfying, and how to use lighting to highlight in-game value.

What's next for Gem Hunters

The game will continue to expand with more valuable content. I am working on this as we speak! Future updates will include:

More Biomes: Adding new environments with increasingly rare gems.
New Items: Introducing powerful items to buy, such as jetpacks for quicker movement and a double pickaxe for faster mining.
Idle Progression: Implementing a feature to hire agents to mine for you, allowing players to earn currency even when they are offline, or whenever they are focusing on one biome and their agents on another.