The music made me went to fall asleep...

Cute little game with excellent, relaxing music! The gameplay was pretty fun (despite the collisions...), and I thought the difficulty increased at an appropriate rate throughout the levels. Good job!

I like the concept of this game. It's pretty easy so more enemies and obstacles would be great. The art style is cute and it would be much better if there were more animations. The music is also very relaxing, almost like a lullaby. Great work!

A very cute little game - and a lot of art for a weekend-jam.
I really loved the bee sprites, but the game itself wasn't really challenging.

Simple game. Good level design. Well done.
Not sure if the music is supposed to be funny but it sets some sort of ironic tone.

@batheo3000 I'm pretty sure I was severely sleep deprived by the time I got around to the music. I'm going with the theory it was subconscious desires coming thought. XD

@drachmor Glad you enjoyed it!

@martintristan Yeah, if I were going to make more levels, there'd be more difficulty. Glad you enjoyed it.

@phantom-lab I think I spent at least half my dev time on art. Worth it, I hope. And yeah, it's not super challenging, but I decided to err on the side of easier rather than harder without a load of time for balance testing.

@barret907k Glad you like it! As I said above, I think being tired played into the choice. lol But I tend towards preferring mellower music anyway.

Cool entry, good concept & relaxing ambiance especially due to the music which is quite strange regarding the story telling (would expect a more "dark" soundtrack but it gives an interesting feeling). The difficulty grows properly, even if the levels rely on same mechanisms, they are nicely done. It could be imho more challenging, but the game is pleasant and as a player, I continue to play to see the upcoming levels and content. Keep up the good work :thumbsup:

Nice entry - accurate art, good gameplay but too easy ... i think rope need "amortizate" from block. But ok, very good.

great game good job i like the gameplay and i like the concept

Pleasant to play

Very cute simple, game with good game play and unique, creative worlds. My one complaint with this is if it had been given a bit more asset polish. I though the fish with the crayon coloring in in the water level was cute, and I wish that that childlike presentation had been more consistent throughout. That music got a little monotonous after a while too. I would say this is a great concept, and could be pushed further by investing more time on the asset polishing side of things.

A simple idea well-implemented, with a respectable amount of content and levels. Could strongly use a little more variety gameplay-wise, fewer levels but enemies with different behaviours or another way to interact with the gameworld might have been a good trade. Music loop grated a bit after a while but generally speaking the simple self-made art-style and aesthetic was quite nice. A decent game!

Hopefully the sequel will strive to answer some of the questions the audience is left with here, like who took the gems, what nefarious purpose they have in mind for them, and what that one UFO is doing in the center of the earth. My theory? Lizard people.

Neat! I really like the hand-drawn art. It adds to the vibe of the whole thing feeling like a this childlike innocent world. That said, it gets REALLY HARD really fast! I wasn't able to finish!

It was nice and the music was good (albeit a bit repetitive).

The only major complaint is that the camera should be a bit lower, so that you can see what's coming. Also, the fish seem to freak out when colliding whith the bubbles.

Good impression overall!

Cute little game ! (except the first and last level, blood make it less cute, aha)
The game is a little bit too easy, and sometimes we get bored (maybe adding some coins or something ?)
Anyway, it was nice to play it. Good job !

@nidup Very glad you enjoyed it! I was actually going for more of a lighthearted feel, what with the excuse plot being kinda silly.

@splashshadow Yeah, it's a touch easy, but I decided to err on the side of more approachable than not. Glad you enjoyed.

@lamm @johndunaske Thanks!

@peter-sheehan I agree, the quality of the sprites is all over the place. Ironically, the sprites that turned out the best were the ones I drew on my phone at work, with my finger. Instead of the ones drawn with my actual drawing tablet. Go figure.

@dolash Yeah, it's a bit repetitive. I tried screwing a bit with gravity in later levels, just to catch people off guard. Glad you enjoyed!

@simonhutchinson I've been getting mixed opinions on the difficulty...lol I guess that means it's actually somewhere in the middle? Level 3 is definitely a difficulty spike. I do have a link to a video of full play, if you'd like to see what later levels are like.

@natrium729 Yeah, tweaking the camera placement is on my list for post-jam changes. And the fish freaking out when colliding with bubbles is a bug I wasn't able to fully squash. Definitely annoying visually, but at least it's not game breaking. Glad you enjoyed!

@yvanor Hah! It was actually supposed to be lava instead of blood, but I can see how the colors might lend towards that perspective...lol I contemplated coins or something, but didn't have enough time. Also I wasn't quite sure how to make them obviously "good" when surrounded by so many different things that hurt you

The game is very simple, but it does the level design very well. Each level doesn't just look different, it also feels different (the "rock labyrinth" plays radically different to the underwater one, for example), and some of the also have some "twist" on them (the "space" and "center of the earth" ones)

As a suggestion, it would be interesting if the game has "rope physics". That would give a lot of room to experiment with.

simple but pretty nice.
i found some bugs with hitboxes and with bubbles and fish on sea level.
Music are here, so it's good, but it wants me to fall asleep :( But still - my ears dont get pain hearing it :) Good Job.

Il like the concept, but I think this game have an issue that is easy to fix (even in a 72h jam) :

The distance of view is very short, the character is slow, and some obstacles are large, so, especialiy in the levels with "walls" (3rd and last), you juste can't avoid some obstacles unless you start moving BEFORE it get into the screen. It's very frustrating. The most anoying part is at the end of some levels, when the gem is not in the middle, if you come from the wrong size, it's impossible to catch it (and you insta-die if you touch the bottom of the level).

This is easily fixed by placing the character upper in the screen and/or increasing the screen height and/or increasing horizontal speed.


Otherwise, cute graphics, and simple but effective gameplay.

Simple and it's working, well done!
Some inertia could have improved greatly the gameplay though.

Random ideas after playing:

- The intro text should stay visible for longer amount of time (or be shown until a key is pressed).

- Music is nice and simple, but feels repetitive after some time. Making it a bit longer and making slight changes in the melody in each level or adding more voices with each collected gem would be nice.

- The yellow level was the only level I found difficult.

- Fish in the blue level were glitching when they touched a bubble.

- Collision could be improved by making the player's collider smaller (or pixel-perfect) - It felt like I hit obstacles that were still many pixels away.

- Sometimes I wasn't sure which objects were "active"/obstacles and which were just in the background until I hit them.

- Hitting a vertical wall caused the player to "glitch-climb" it, which was strange.

- Being able to speed up the diving would make re-playing a level more fun and would add a new strategy to avoid an enemy.

The game could be more polished, but the level themes are chosen nicely and I like the overall simplicity of the game.

Good stuff in here, this game could very well be made for children (that's the impression I got, anyway). The gameplay was really easy but it was fine since there were quite a few levels. I liked the different worlds but I wish the graphics had been a little more polished since the game was all about the colors and visuals of the world. The collision box was also pretty big compared to the character. Overall though, good job!

@pedro-romero I'm glad you enjoyed the level design! And I conteplated rope physics, I just am not sure how exactly to go about it. At the moment, the rope is just a rectangle drawn between the player and the top of the level.

@besslaaneshi Yeah, the fish + bubbles are kinda buggy. Not gamebreaking, but definitely in the category of "obviously buggy". It's on the list for a post-jam version

@thetatautau I'm a little torn on the player positioning. On one hand, my inspiration for the game was actually a lot crueler and you pretty much had to memorize your path based on multiple attempts. And my version is a lot easier, even to the point I've gotten a decent amount of comments saying it's *too* easy. On the other hand, I also agree that the player could be a little higher. A lot of other commenters have essentially wished for more control over the player, and I think nudging them up a little higher will help with that feeling. It's gonna take a manual rewrite of the camera though, as at the moment I'm using Game Maker's built in "view" system and the player can't be farther from the either the top or bottom edges than halfway.

@michaeltwg Glad you enjoyed!

@m-1 I'm glad you liked it overall. Some of the things you've pointed out are on my list to fix too.

@cttfow Glad you enjoyed! While not specifically intended for children, I like to make most of my games very approachable for children. And yeah, I plan to improve the hitboxes

Nice game, simple, with begin and end! Thanks for the web version!
Music is good for a gamejam =D
The art style is good but kind of blend between vector and pixel art styles =P
Easy to play, I liked the controls!
Good job,
Success!

I can't say I didn't like the game, it's actually one of the cutest and unique entries I've seen so far. But I think it should have been more suiting to the theme.


I really enjoyed it, so relaxing music and gameplay... even your drawings feel relaxing too... I just love it...

Keep up the good work!

The game was cute. But I think it could be more engaging with some "rope physics". Nothing fancy, but maybe if it could swing and you have to "force" it to the correct side.
Nice music!

@and-gamelab Glad you enjoyed! And yeah, I always try to include a web version, because I know after a while of playing other people's games, it's really nice not to have to download something and convince my virus blocker it's probably okay.

@deadlyalive Really glad you liked it! Theme...well, for the most part I like using it more in the backstory, this case your goal being to bring back the "power source". Or, you know, color gems. Because the world totally works like that.

@mateusmp Thanks! Rope physics, maybe. It's on my consideration list at least. For the most part, my goal with this game was something simple and instantly approachable.

As promised, I have played and rated Gem Diver. I can't think of much to say that hasn't already been pointed out. M-1 made a really great review that accurately captures almost all of my comments for the game. I did manage to finish the game (played story mode) though so it's nice to see that your game has an intro, instructions, and a functional win condition. Well done. Thank you very much for the opportunity to play your game.

Great game ! The gameplay is simple, easy to get into the game. You got time to do your own graphics, music and even have a story introduction, thats quite impressive. We usually just have the time to quickly resume the goal of the game on the main menu screen or on the LD entry page, but you create an entire game. That's impressive. Great work !

Nice game. I like graphics. Interesting story mode.

Quite cute and simple. Didn't particularly like the sprites but the level art has a weird charm to it.

@spetsdod - Thanks! I thought it was important to make something that felt like a complete game.

@lavwa - Really glad you enjoyed! Like I mentioned above, having the full deal was quite important to me.

@sumgamstudio & @sleepystudios - Thank you!

Simple but nice! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztP-p00QMyo