Because the camera rotates unintentionally, the direction becomes more ambiguous, and I stuck in a loops more and more and more.
Is there an exit in this game?

Of course there is an exit :D

The game is great, but it gives me nausea after a while. It would be great to have separate controls for pitch and yaw. Other than that it's a polished and engaging game, I like it.

Really interesting how you can create such a strong mood with basicall pretty simple effects. Really good job. I really felt like I'm stuck in some sunken ship and it's easy to see how people get really disoriented when they can't see the surface. Good job :)

I like the atmosphere. The sfx and water ripple shaders were nice touches.

Agreed with above on a bit of motion sickness after a while. Would have also enjoyed elevation controlls with Space/Shift as I often see with 6DoF games.

I did not expect this to be so unsettling when I first opened it up! Really impressive atmospheric work across the board, especially for compo! Excited to see where this ranks, I really enjoyed it :)

Agreed with above on a bit of motion sickness after a while. Would have also enjoyed elevation controlls with Space/Shift as I often see with 6DoF games.

I did not expect this to be so unsettling when I first opened it up! Really impressive atmospheric work across the board, especially for compo! Excited to see where this ranks, I really enjoyed it :)

I liked that you can pause the game with the pause key, but I'm so used to being able to bring up a menu with esc I accidentally exited the game twice.

I gave up before I could complete it; I never could find the blue X cube and I never really figured out how the maze is laid out. I might come back to this though because I really want to finish it.

You did a great job with the atmosphere and mood! I can't believe those perfect underwater sounds were just you blowing bubbles into a glass! :smile: This game seemed really simple but I felt like it was somehow more engaging than it had any right to be. I guess that's because of the mood. Great job!

Really nice game, thanks. Theses are good graphics with a nice water effect, you've got some solid sound effects. Batteries could have lasted a bit longer or maybe respawn. Missing a bit of fun, this gets a bit repetitive but still reaching the end is nice reward on it's on.
Well done !

This entry has Descent vibes (it's an old game). The camera is similar in that game because you are on a ship in outer space (i.e. there is no down). I didn't get any motion sickness or anything, but definitely disoriented. I only found the red X switch. After that I felt like I was going in circles and didn't find anything. I had to give up. :(

Still, this game has really BIG mood. You feel lost, claustrophobic, and honestly kind of scared. It's dark in there. I was worried I was going to come across something real scary. in that respect this game is really good. I dig the vibes it gave me. Well done!

Unfortunately the game doesn't start for me - it throws some SDL exception to a terminal window and then dies. Starting it from shell I get:

>Fatal: Can't create SDL window: Could not initialize OpenGL / GLES library

Perhaps there's some conflict from my own development environment / SDL setup on path?

Spooky. My thalassophobia isn't feeling great. It's awesome that you did it with just SDL and OpenGL.

Really moody labyrinth. I got really disorientated a couple of times, so, well done!

The sound and distortion on the camera really nail the atmosphere, and while the space is disorienting and easy to get lost in, there are enough well placed landmarks that prevented me from getting entirely lost. Well done!

Oh boy! It took me a while to find that exit, but I did eventually get the onion ring at the end (only those who beat the game will know what I'm talking about)

I like the idea, but god damn this game needs a lot of patience to beat!

I guess being completely disoriented in a maze was intentional and not a byproduct of the game's level design

Things I liked about the game:

1. the atmosphere is most definitley spot on

2. Thank GOD for those green arrows in the tunnels! Without them, this game would be like searching for a needle in a haystack

3. Controls are not frustrating

4. No bugs encountered

Things I didn't like about the game:
1. Was getting disoriented and dizzy as there's a huge lack of a sense of direction

2. Flashlight batteries are more useful as bread crumbs than actual flashlight batteries. I found that leaving a couple of them was a good strategy to let myself know that I've been in an area before. I suggest replacing them with flares that you can drop to mark previously-visited locations instead

3. Escape button just quits the game immediately instead of pausing, which resulted in me exiting the game and losing some progress by accident (cuz I'm used to hitting Esc to pause). I suggest making a pause menu where the player is given the option to exit the app instead

Overall, this a good game, but sadly I imagine that not that many people will be compelled to stick long enough to beat it as it requires a lot of patience to figure out what's going on. So, I recommend that you redisign the gameplay loop to make it more interesting

Well done and looking forward to your next game (or update for this game)
Cheers

Thank you all for playing and for your comments!

The disorientation part is totally on purpose (the motion sickness isn't) ... I can assure you that I had a hard time myself designing the maze. It turns out designing a 3D maze is a disorienting experience (you can't really use 2D maps, so you're stuck in subjective view) ... especially when there are 4 connected rotated instances of the same maze (spoilers, spoilers ... ).

@alpharock6 indeed, the up/down controls are a bit lacking. I didn't realize it until I tried playing with keyboard + touchpad (which I don't recommend!).

@codertrevor , @blood-jackal23 : indeed, making the escape key quit the game without confirmation isn't such a great idea. Especially when beating the game requires a lot of patience :D I'm fixing this for the next games.

@diego-escalante : I like your references ; The game Descent has always been a strong source of inspiration for me. It's nice to see that this old game is still getting some love!

@zebrainflames : are you running the GNU/Linux version? If so, what gives `ldd coiil.x86_64` ? This will show you the libraries the game will load when run. You should only see system libraries (e.g /usr/lib, but not /usr/local/lib). The most probable cause is a problem in your driver installation. Can you run `glxgears` ? What gives `glxinfo | head -n 100` ?

@justin-klinchuch : fun fact about those landmarks : at first I put them as design helpers ! I was wasting too much time getting lost in my own maze, so I had to put some objects. The green arrows, though, where added at the very end, to make the game less hard, and to make the "loop" more explicit.

@blood-jackal23 : thanks for the detailed feedback, this is very helpful. I added the flashing batteries in the last hour, but replaying the game after the compo, I find I was also using them as markers. The original idea was to add some sense of urgency, but I didn't have time to adjust the battery time properly ; and as I didn't want to have game-over mechanics anyway (people would already restart from the beginning too often by accidentally pressing escape :D) I had to keep at least some amount of ambient light. Your suggestion about using flares instead is very pertinent, as this might add a strategic side to the gameplay ; why didn't I think of it last week-end! I do also share your analysis about the game loop, which I also find a little bit shallow ; maybe some vague storytelling elements would do? Your comment about the onion ring made me laugh :D Yeah, I suppose the ending could be seen this way, kudos for reaching it !

@ace17 unfortunately I'm on Windows - I can try to have a look at what the issue is a bit later, or compiling from source once I have a spare moment :)

@zebrainflames then, you might want to simply try removing SDL2.dll from the game directory, or replacing it with a newer one from here: https://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL2-2.0.12-win32-x64.zip

I really liked the atmosphere in this game! The sounds and the water shader are really well done and they do an excellent job in giving you a feeling of isloation and anxiety, but not too much.

Pair this with some more crazy puzzle mechanics and it will even enhance the emotional atmosphere of the game. You should really try to come up with one puzzle mechanic that will make your game crazy. Maybe you can have different rooms depending in which direction you are swimming into a room? Maybe do something with the colors? Maybe you can only always activate one color? Maybe think specifically for a suiting mechanic that works only under water. maybe there are some air bubbles and you have to inflate / deflater certain objects.

Maybe you can even think about making this more a horror game as well. The atmosphere is already there. If there would be something coming after me I would be terrified AF. Maybe you can enter / leave the water and you have to do it to progress the game, but something only comes after you inside the water.

Also I can see this game being paired beautifully with a mysterious story about some science research with water gone wrong. Or something ;)

Keep working, it's already nice

Nice game!

So, first of all, it's nice to see another person with a custom game engine. I really like the game, I love the feeling of the freedom to move in space, but this game is SO hard, I didn't manage to find my way out of the lab.

Here are my suggestions:
- Make the game less dark or just make the flashlight last for more than 5 seconds, it will make the game less confusing to play
- Make the rooms less repetitive so it will be easier to navigate

Other than that, it's an awesome game :D

Nice ambience. And the sound is adding a lot on it.I like the effects too. But I didn't had patience to find my way in this repetitive labyrinth. Really stuck in the loop! ^^ So I would say that art and movements are good. Now You need a good gameplay and more variety.