Questionable Submarine by TheLastBanana

[raw]
made by TheLastBanana for LD29 (COMPO)
Welcome to Questionable Submarine, where your limited knowledge of nuclear submarines' inner workings is not only adequate, but in fact beneficial!

Your goal is to get as deep as you can, because you're in a submarine, and that's what submarines do.

On the left of your screen are gauges displaying your depth, rate of descent, ship health, fuel and air. Your fuel and air constantly decrease. If your air or HP runs out, you'll die, but if your fuel runs out, you just won't be able to accelerate.

On the right side of your screen is a view of the submarine's cabin. Click on any of the devices to interact.

The rightmost one is your control panel, which is considerably simplified for your model of submarine. Mash the GO button to GO. The longer you consecutively mash the button, the more speed boost you get. I hope your finger is ready. Just make sure you have enough fuel or this button won't do you any good!

The leftmost device with the nuclear symbol is your fusion reactor. It needs uranium to run! Conveniently, there's a uranium rod dispenser attached to it, so just grab a freshly-dispensed rod and throw it into the fuel hole! I know, these terms are getting a bit technical, but trust me, this is how real submariners do things.

In the bottom-left is your air compressor. This is a discounted model, so it's not as automatic as you might hope, but with a little elbow grease it'll get the job done! Just grab the plunger and pump up and down to increase your air supply. Where is the air coming from, you ask? I have no idea!

By this point, you may be wondering a) what the device at the top is and b) why you're being assaulted by a bunch of seriously pissed off blobfish. I don't have an answer for the second question, but the answer to the first might put you at ease: it's the control panel for your blobfish-blastin' gun! Take aim, then press FIRE to kill those bafflingly angry bastards!

That's all you need to know! Happy diving!

Ratings

Coolness 63% 3
Overall 3.78 107
Audio 2.64 620
Fun 3.63 134
Graphics 3.63 269
Humor 3.22 173
Innovation 3.60 204
Mood 3.52 185
Theme 3.66 212

Feedback

馃帳 TheLastBanana
29. Apr 2014 路 01:20 UTC
I've updated the source and executable to fix a crash bug if you managed to get beyond 3000m depth.
petey123567
29. Apr 2014 路 06:58 UTC
Fun, hard on a trackpad though. Love that you have blobfish!
manabreak
29. Apr 2014 路 07:01 UTC
I liked this :) It was pretty chaotic at times, but it was quite fun. I liked how the different things required different controls, air pump was probably my favorite!
Nyyman
29. Apr 2014 路 07:04 UTC
I liked it much! Even though it took me a long while to get what happens and how you control it, when I finally got it it was a blast to play. Although controlling the speed was still a little question mark to me, is it supposed to go at the speed you accelerate to or do you have to constantly always go press it? Anyways a great jam game, only notable minus is the audio, as I've been traumatized by the health bar sound in Pokemon.
KirbiKaka
29. Apr 2014 路 07:08 UTC
WOW! This was made in 48 hours? So awesome! This game is a lot of fun, I think it'd be crazy hectic with multiple people too :D. One thing I think I'd like to see is the ability to close the current window just by clicking outside of it, instead of always having to go to the red X at the top right, especially when things get rushed; it gets to be a bother. Oh and I liked the fun little physics on the Uranium :b. One major issue that ruined the game experience is that the game froze and crashed :[ I was only at like 58 m/s too (it took me a while to figure out that you had to push the Go! button to descend).
ruerob
29. Apr 2014 路 08:12 UTC
What a chaotic game. In a positive way. It really was fun. I like the mechanics and the little time to deal with all instruments.
aaronj
29. Apr 2014 路 08:40 UTC
Wow, cool idea and good execution! It's like a simplified version of the 'Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime' idea. This could make a great mobile game.
halfmage
29. Apr 2014 路 08:53 UTC
Very nice game, cool mechanics with the submarine-consoles
adamwoolridge
29. Apr 2014 路 08:54 UTC
Really awesome!
DMinsky
29. Apr 2014 路 09:00 UTC
Awesome! Gameplay is really fun!
GamerTaters
29. Apr 2014 路 09:04 UTC
Fun and frantic. Really enjoyed it. Well done!
Tifu
29. Apr 2014 路 10:28 UTC
That's some challenging management of things there. Good job.
travislucia
29. Apr 2014 路 22:30 UTC
Cool idea, I also made a submarine game and mine is also yellow haha
shs
29. Apr 2014 路 22:33 UTC
Probably one of my favorite LD games so far.
longshorts
29. Apr 2014 路 23:30 UTC
AGH. MUST DO THINGS FASTER :C

Fantastic game, your description made the game very comedic too. Well done!
Marcellus
29. Apr 2014 路 23:31 UTC
The best game I tested so far, it's a very good thing you fixed the 3000 meters bug because I'm pretty sure a lot of people would have suffered from it... (I reached 11 meters on my first game and 14 on my second, in over 500 seconds)
MetanoKid
29. Apr 2014 路 23:58 UTC
This is one of the best entries I've played so far! Pretty nice in every area, with a great gameplay and it's pretty hard as well! You have to sacrifice some resource if you want to keep playing, so it got me playing for a while! 5 stars!
stenol
30. Apr 2014 路 00:15 UTC
Not an easy game but it's awesome. Good work.
Jason Lay
30. Apr 2014 路 00:38 UTC
Wow! Nice and chaotic. Reminded me of Homer Simpson. Fun to play, nice job!
Franklins Ghost
30. Apr 2014 路 09:33 UTC
Such a clever little game and nice twist on the submarine game. Really enjoyed playing it and how you have to time manage, appropriate for Ludum Dare.
klianc09
30. Apr 2014 路 09:52 UTC
Ouch my finger hurts from clicking that much and I managed to get to 1098m. At first I tried the arrowkeys and keyboard to operate the submarine (because I didn't read your description), there should be an ingame text saying that it is played with the mouse. But I was able to understand the rest of the game without reading the instructions, so good job on that.
AnnaGavaldaKedavra
30. Apr 2014 路 17:21 UTC
nice game, fun to play!
VDZ
02. May 2014 路 16:44 UTC
Hmm...this is going to be somewhat useless feedback, because although overall I think it's a nice game, I didn't have enough fun to go for a third try but I can't quite put my finger on what exactly is missing.

The balancing act gameplay is well-executed; you're constantly running between your machines to make sure none of your problems escalate. The different forms of input make every activity feel different, and each activity has its own meaning and consequences on the gameplay. The graphics and sound are decent and functional.

Some suggestions and things that bothered me while playing:

- When firing at blobfish, you have to use your mouse to operate three buttons in a row. The fact that you have to use a mouse combined with the layout of the buttons (if the fire button were above the two others, for example, it would be less of an issue), you frequently click the wrong button. Although this makes the game more challenging, I feel it adds more frustration than it does challenge.

- Similarly, misclicking the fuel rod feels frustrating. Widening the fuel rod's hitbox would make this happen less often, and giving audio feedback (like a metallic *clunk*) when you misclick might help you understand when you've misclicked (otherwise it's easily to subconsciously blame the game; you're sure you clicked right but it just didn't recognize the click or something, that's how it feels).

- Audio feedback (and perhaps visual feedback) can also help the player to recognize when an activity is futile. For example, if your fuel is at 99%, dragging a fuel rod to the tank could make a 'tank now full!' sound or visual effect play. I found myself occasionally dragging fuel rods into the tank when it was already at 100% because I didn't see it was full already.

- Different alarm sounds for different severities might also be useful. As it is now, you'll always hear an alarm sound later in the game because there's always a blobfish bothering you. There's however no way to distinguish the sound of a blobfish that just appeared and a blobfish about to end your game. You lose the game due to your not noticing a situation, rather than your inability to respond to it well enough.
VDZ
02. May 2014 路 16:49 UTC
By the way, I made it to 3259m in 238 seconds. (First game was 886m in 217 seconds.)
tomvert
02. May 2014 路 17:27 UTC
Excellent game, I didn't understand I had to press go, so I made 0m in 220s ! It's quite addictive but it becomes very hard to manage everything, what is a good strategy ?
aelita1992
14. May 2014 路 07:23 UTC
Really nice game, I like the concept, quite challenging as well.