They Lurk Beneath by ArcturusDeluxe

[raw]
made by ArcturusDeluxe for LD29 (JAM)
You are a ship defending the seas against a nightmarish force from the depths creating evil sea creatures that are attacking unsuspecting vessels.

You must move your ship left and right across the game area and drop depth charges on the creatures below. There are various creatures with different abilities, but the red Grabbers are the ones to look out for, as they will attempt to drag friendly vessels down to the depths. If a Grabber reaches the bottom with one of the ships, you lose the ship permanently. If you lose all friendly ships, or your ship is destroyed, its game over.

Every now and then, a lost city will begin to ascend from the deep. At this point you need to focus your attack on it before it fully surfaces! Don't worry about the grabbers, they will leave the ships alone while the city is rising. Watch out for the super nasty Protector creatures that the city spawns!

An Xbox 360 controller is recommended for this game! Use the left analog stick to move left and right, and A button to fire.

Keyboard-wise you may use A and D, or the cursor keys to move, and right shift to fire. Left mouse button also fires.



A game by Nega Drive for Ludum Dare 29.

Art and Sound by Richard Dunn
Coding by Matthew Jenkins

Created in Unity.
Graphics created using Photoshop and Flash. Sound created in FL Studio, BFXR and Audacity.

The font used is an vectorised version of 'BM Germar' found on dafont.com.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.34 293
Audio(Jam) 3.41 212
Fun(Jam) 3.23 238
Graphics(Jam) 3.62 277
Humor(Jam) 2.39 444
Innovation(Jam) 2.68 519
Mood(Jam) 2.99 425
Theme(Jam) 3.52 189

Feedback

PoQA Games
29. Apr 2014 路 04:53 UTC
Fun and simple. Nice music. It's weird that the game display area's bigger than 1920x1080 in a browser.
馃帳 ArcturusDeluxe
29. Apr 2014 路 11:22 UTC
Really? It should be 720p. We're looking into doing an alternate web version with a smaller screen at some point, though.
Brodenino
29. Apr 2014 路 12:18 UTC
Really nice with the menu screen, it caught my interest directly! The gameplay was solid too. The audio gave a really nice mood to everything :)
Chinchilla
29. Apr 2014 路 12:20 UTC
Nice artwork, I really like the look of the huge red spider things dragging your ships down. Would have liked a health bar or something for the cities, its not obvious whether you're dealing any damage to them. Weapon upgrades would be great too, the player weapon seems pretty puny! A solid entry!
Zeta
29. Apr 2014 路 13:03 UTC
Overall nice art and nice music combined with nice gameplay! Those monsters are pretty terrifying!
sprawl
29. Apr 2014 路 13:11 UTC
Really nice art and music !

Liked the gameplay, is was addictive, nice job.
MintArcade
29. Apr 2014 路 13:18 UTC
My score was only 8700, but it was addictive
Tititesouris
29. Apr 2014 路 13:19 UTC
Now that is a great game! I really enjoy these simple games very well done rather than the ones who try to be fancy and end up feeling unaccomplished. Great job!
Mekuri
29. Apr 2014 路 13:40 UTC
I liked the fact that the ships resurfaced if you manage to kill the biggies that pull them down :-) - I liked the mechanics, it felt solid. The music was okay, but maybe something a bit more dark or sinister would've added a lot to the mood! - Well done!
Jeremias
29. Apr 2014 路 14:35 UTC
Solid and addictive game. The graphics and the music do their job. The fight against the upcoming city was interesting.
dj_pale
29. Apr 2014 路 16:47 UTC
Very nice gfx and music. Kept attention long enough to fight the city. Was a bit hard :)
BubuIIC
29. Apr 2014 路 17:14 UTC
Really nice music.
Kragnir
29. Apr 2014 路 19:18 UTC
Well put together game. Lacks some kind of difficulty increase and something to give it a bit more depth. Some nice opportunity in this game to play on the inevitable doom of the player that is not really used.
DarkMeatGames
29. Apr 2014 路 21:03 UTC
Great art, especially liked the purple guy with the sideways teeth. Got a little boring after a while. I wanted powerups!
spartangeek
29. Apr 2014 路 21:49 UTC
well designed game with solid mecanics. The shooting is frustrating though, it's too difficult to aim. One don't loose 'cause the game is becoming too fast (like in good arcade games) but because missiles are inefficient...
sugarbyte
29. Apr 2014 路 22:51 UTC
Fun!
stenol
29. Apr 2014 路 23:19 UTC
Nice game. The music is nice, the red monster have a good mechanics. Great work. :-)
archaeometrician
30. Apr 2014 路 00:16 UTC
Nice gameplay, simple and fun :D
nimblegorilla
30. Apr 2014 路 00:23 UTC
Nice music. I wish the controls were explained in the game rather than the description of your game on this site.
RARoadkill
30. Apr 2014 路 02:58 UTC
"How was your trip?" "Oh pretty good we only got pulled under by monsters 3 times"
Fun game, Liked the different monsters.
kyyrma
30. Apr 2014 路 12:35 UTC
I like the graphics, very simple and flash-like but especially the monsters had a consistent visual style. The only real complaint I have is that using the Shift key for shooting is slightly annoying, as Windows kept giving me a prompt about toggling on Ease of Access settings every few presses.
BoaHeck_ArtGent
30. Apr 2014 路 15:34 UTC
I like this. simple arcade style gameplay with nice graphics and nice sound. Good mood too.
sink_t
30. Apr 2014 路 17:38 UTC
A good game in nearly all respects. The only thing I found lacking were power-ups, which would've added a little variety to the gameplay and perhaps made it possible to survive a little longer. The usage of the shift key is also an issue on Windows.
Wir
01. May 2014 路 16:20 UTC
Full Humor for ships beeing pulled down and beeing just fine after coming up again :D
Ken Ichi
01. May 2014 路 16:26 UTC
awesome game!
jujule
01. May 2014 路 20:42 UTC
At first, I thought, well, another polished but generic entry and then the city/boss came and I loved it. I'd like to see more bosses, with different behaviours, and maybe a life bar for the enemies. Game controller was a big plus.
cirolve
02. May 2014 路 03:36 UTC
Very nice and simple. The art is good, and the last part was a surprise! Well done!
ripatti
02. May 2014 路 04:33 UTC
At the first run I quickly lost two ships before understood how to play and got 28700. On the second run I lost only one ship but got less than 10000 because of strange island came from the deep and spawned strong enemies. On the third try I got about 18000 and saved all ships but strange island killed me again. Hmm... looks like this game should be more balanced.

Anyway, great work, I lile graphics, music and simple gameplay. Weel done!
lowcade
02. May 2014 路 15:21 UTC
Simple and easy to learn.
Maybe some powers and upgrades make this game better.
I like the tension when undercity is coming out and a lot of monster shows up!
Catman
03. May 2014 路 07:25 UTC
Nice! The music was really good for the atmosphere, and I liked that the red monsters clutched the ships and you could then free them. That was innovative. Good job!
HybridMind
03. May 2014 路 16:17 UTC
The game looks really nice. I found it a little too easy and it got tedious fairly quickly unfortunately. I was basically just doing well enough by holding down the fire button and strafing left and right. Seems like a solid concept, but just needs some changes to make it more exciting and fun. I'd mess with pacing, powerups, speed of the attacks, restriction of playfield width potentially. I guess those are the parameters I'd experiment with to see if it could be made more fun/exciting/challenging. Very well polished at least!
crocantidepollo
03. May 2014 路 17:26 UTC
I really like the art style in this. Nice!
馃帳 ArcturusDeluxe
03. May 2014 路 19:17 UTC
Thanks for all the comments and criticisms everyone! We are currently working on a post-jam version with more balanced gameplay, and yes, POWERUPS! Hooray! And some sneaky secret extra stuff. Stay tuned.
Jupiter_Hadley
03. May 2014 路 20:10 UTC
Great graphics and super nice game! I included it in part 11 of my Ludum Dare compilation video if you'd like to check it out :) http://youtu.be/-vf2U372Ego
terraco
04. May 2014 路 05:23 UTC
Different take on a defence game. Well done.
nSun
04. May 2014 路 09:56 UTC
You make a nice "Depths Invaders".
I found the boats to be protected are a little too passive. These ships may play interesting roles or functions to enlarge gameplay. For example: a repair ship, defendera ship (short range), ammunition ship supply (to allow sending a powerful bomb)
Wakka
04. May 2014 路 10:12 UTC
Score 17700. That was funny. Really awesome music.
Oddly Shaped Pixels
04. May 2014 路 10:58 UTC
Simple concept, well executed. Maybe you should add some aiming system.
matt_j
04. May 2014 路 19:37 UTC
For some reason I like the simple explosion effects :D
csanyk
05. May 2014 路 17:02 UTC
Can't play. Unity player crashes when I try to run.
Gwinnell
08. May 2014 路 22:27 UTC
10850. For a moment I thought the game was fundamentally broken. I thought I could just defend my last ship from the grabbers but then... The city stared coming out of the ocean and the music started getting more... evil. Dang, that was tense.
TobiasW
10. May 2014 路 10:52 UTC
I really like the graphics, and the music and sound effects work well enough (although I would've liked them a bit darker for such a game). I'm not sure if the game played on the right speed for me! If it did, it was a LOT too fast - the red things didn't even take two seconds to appear and completely pull a ship under, and I have to get in position first to protect it and hit two of those puny missles.
angelk
11. May 2014 路 10:08 UTC
Glad to hear some sound since it's usually neglected. Gameplay was good once I realized I could hold the mouse button down to continuously drop mines :) I liked the warning symbol to let you know one of the ships is being taken; it's simple but easy to overlook. I think my favorite part is how the ships slowly right themselves when they reach the top of the water and play a water noise when surfacing.
wilbefast
19. May 2014 路 21:29 UTC
This should be a Samuel L. Jackson movie called "Alien motherf*ckers stole my motherf*cking ship again!" :P It's fun how the ship floats back to the surface and is completely fine too :)

Nice arcade game, it works really well!
I find using a mouse for boolean input (ie. firing in a fixed direction) is a travesty that should no go unpunished though ;)