Vertabyss by LDJam user 245161
You don't come back.
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https://youtu.be/hgjKJow1468
Vertabyss is a psuedo-3D isometric arcade game. It might be the only 2D isometric 5DOF shooter around. Dive infinitely deep and fight increasingly giant submarines for oxygen.
Why do the submarines get so giant? Well, it's due to abyssal gigantism.
MOUSE WITH SCROLL WHEEL RECOMMENDED. Please check README.TXT for controls! You might need a powerful computer unfortunately, as the optimization is kind of bad.
Vertabyss is inspired by a previous Ludum Dare game of mine, Vertico, but the gameplay is a lot different.
NOTE: I may update this into a larger game someday! However, I want to rewrite my compiler first, which could take a while.
There are online high scores now! If anyone manages to beat my (Ultimate Walrus) score, I'd love to gift them a free #Snake2 key... if you can leave a comment giving me a way to deliver it (might have to go by the honor system here :)
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SOME INFO ABOUT THE PROCESS: This was my first gamejam in five years. Part of the reason for that hiatus was because I was building a programming language! Vertabyss is the first game to ever use Manta, a revolutionary programming language I spent years making. It would have been an advantage if it were further along, but ended up mostly being a handicap, since I spent about 75% percent of my time just improving the language. It's unoptimized, so I ended up having to write 25% of the code in Python (the language it currently compiles into) where performance mattered. But I'm still quite pleased with the result!
If you want to keep tabs on my games or on the Manta programming language, please subscribe to my newsletter or follow my Twitter!
JAM NOTE: I updated this file after the jam ended, because it wasn't working on any PC that didn't have Python installed. I left the game as is, and just fixed this compatibility issue. UPDATE 2: More compatibility fixes - the game now works on any monitor from 800x600 to 4K, and defaults to fullscreen. UPDATE 3: macOS port complete! I added the macOS build to itch.io. UPDATE 4: I've given the game what I felt it desperately needed, which was an online high score chart and ability to reset the game without closing it. You can still download the original submission here for rating purposes, or you can just download the new version and pretend it doesn't have high scores or "press R to restart" :)
| Link | http://ultimatewalrus.com/#vertabyss |
| Link | http://ultimatewalrus.com/#vertabyss |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/vertabyss |
Ratings
| Overall | 929th | 3.5⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1137th | 3.203⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 148th | 4.016⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 736th | 3.781⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 792th | 3.781⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 982th | 3.083⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1388th | 3.125⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
@gentlemelon01
@robinfaury
@linkwin I'm glad you liked the website also! It will likely be years before Manta hits the public, unless I get investors. But I do feel confident that if it ever does, it'll be one of the best programming languages in existence. If you want to keep tabs on it, you could subscribe to https://ultimatewalrus.com/newsletter !
Very well done atmosphere, especially the descending was nicely made.
@microchasm Thanks for all the kind words and feedback. I do want to come back to the reticle if I make a post-gamejam version. Regarding "health:" actually, you seem to be misunderstanding the game. There is no health... one hit and you'll immediately explode. You may have thought you were getting hit, but those bullets were actually passing you by in 3D space.
What you see in the upper left is your oxygen, which constantly depletes no matter what. You have to keep killing blue submarines and stealing their oxygen tanks to keep this meter up.
The pseudo-3D really took a while to get used to, but I appreciated the depth lines. It was surprisingly intuitive to use the mouse scroll wheel to aim up and down, and for the most part I had a good idea of where I was relative to the enemies.
That said, the game is pretty darn hard. The limited space to move around coupled with having to quickly interpret the 3D space meant that the farthest I got down was in the 80s ("JARM" in the leaderboard).
A neat mechanic may have been making subs that are farther away from your level appear darker, as an extra way to intuit relative depth. I also would have appreciated a "bullet time" mechanic or extra lives --- but that's mostly because I'm bad.
Some music would have been a nice addition as well!
Regardless, nice work for the jam, especially in a custom language/framework!
And one more thing, maybe its a bug, but when i set the aim to way below, sometimes return to my own level.
@srrinio I'm blown away by your high score... how did you manage it? If you're at all interested in a free Snake2 key, DM @UltimateWalrus on Twitter and I'd be happy to give you one.
Regarding the reticle, is it possible you were just clicking the right mouse button? That recenters the reticle on the player's level.
I hope you won't mind if I do something to fix that exploit in a future version :) And if I do, I'll likely leave your high score as is as a testament to your skill and ability to find that trick.
One complaint I have is that although the red enemy ships show up very clearly, their bullets are not always as readily visible against the black background. Particularly because they are colored similarly to the player bullets, but also simply because they are rather dark. I frequently found myself "guessing" where bullets were based on enemy locations, rather than reacting to their actual visual positions, because of this.