Raise the sea by Erkberg
A short interactive experience about pollution.
Use mouse to move.
All platform versions and source are available here: https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea
~ Mini postmortem ~
I had very little time this LD because I was at a festival over the weekend and only returned and started working on the game Sunday night. I thought a bit about ideas at the festival, but my brain was pretty busy with metal and beer at the time, so I only came up with a concept on my way back. I did however instantly like the idea of combining running out of space for sea animals due to pollution and the rising sea level caused by global warming taking the land from humans. I was a littled worried though that these two sides might not go along together well and cause and effect could be misunderstood. Still, I decided to use this concept and started working. Well, Sunday night was not productive at all, because my body and mind were very exhausted from the festival, so I went to bed after two hours, with only one day left to finish a whole game, which was kind of a frightening thought.
I slept quite well for six hours and got to work. I knew I had to scale down tremendously, so I decided upon a minimalistic art style and quickly scribbled the basic art within 2h. After that, I went on to implement the mechanics and make the game fully playable. I achieved this goal with still 8h left, which was fantastic. To get there this fast, I had to cut a lot though, i.e. I wanted to implement some baby fish following the big one, which could not all be saved, to increase the emotional impact. Also the different kinds of trash should behave differently underwater, like some should not fall but float up and down, but this would've been to hard to balance. So I concentrated on polish and boy, do I love polishing stuff! So the rest of the time went by pretty fast and I had a lot of fun polishing everything up, creating the music and sounds and watching the game become shinier.
So what is left to say? I had a lot of fun again, am really satisfied with how the game came out and I like the message (and I hope it isn't delivered too bluntly ^^). Now I'm really looking forward to see what you all came up with!
~ Timelapse ~
https://youtu.be/7xNv9XuY13U
PS: One could potentially interpret the penguin as the evil guy. Please don't do that :)
| HTML5 (web) | https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea |
| Windows | https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea |
| Linux | https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea |
| macOS | https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea |
| Source code | https://erkberg.itch.io/raise-the-sea |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/raise-the-sea |
Ratings
| Overall | 378th | 3.581⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 930th | 2.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 569th | 3.194⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 306th | 3.823⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 718th | 3.25⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 110th | 3.828⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 32th | 4.156⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
This was short and easy but the message is here ! Great job managing the short amount of time you had and using minimalistic graphics to bring it. I liked the music, that was sync when I ended the game. As a quick suggestion i would like to see the mouse cursor to ease controls. Ho, and I've made a fish game about pollution too <3
Cheers :)
I particularly loved the music of course and the minimalist graphics were very fitting for the idea.
Good work :)
Really nice work specially considering the lack of time!
The message is certainly in slight opposition to the interactivity. Concentrating on trash would have fit the theme and focused the environmental angle more effectively. The rising sea level increases the amount of space available, watering down the challenge; is completely out of the player control; and has nothing to do with the trash *directly*. It is the darn ~~penguin~~ factory behind it all!
Overpopulation (or higher standards of living for everyone) ramping up the volume of plastic might have been a better fit.
I like the hand drawn black and white style; the music fits too. It kind of restarts in the end after the icebergs go down, which was slightly distracting for some reason.
Stylistically solid work with such a limited schedule. The interactivity design is lacking.
Overall: *Above average (3.5)*
Fun: *Bad (2.0)*
Innovation: *Good (4.0)*
Theme: *Bad (2.0)*
Graphics: *Good (4.0)*
Audio: *Good (4.0)*
Mood: *Great (4.5)*