Salvager by J4cko16

Explore in the deepest depths of the sea in order to find various different kinds of gems and treasures!!! Earn coin, buy upgrades, and find the secrets of the sea all while trying to avoid the various monsters that live down below, or in other words, pufferfish!
Controls: A/D | Arrows: Horizontal Movement
W | Up Arrow: Break
S | Down Arrow: Sink
The theme for this jam was "signal" and in Salvager you use your trusty metal detector to locate rare gems. Hear the audio, see the waves, that there is a gem waiting to be claimed.
| Public Github (Source Code) | https://github.com/Jeksim/Salvager |
| Itch.io (WEB) | https://jeksim.itch.io/salvager |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/salvager |
Ratings
| Overall | 84th | 3.7⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 106th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 214th | 3⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 209th | 3.225⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 79th | 3.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 17th | 4.1⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 88th | 3.694⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
I absolutely love the vibin' dude riding the rope down to the bottom of the ocean haha. Music is awesome too. Fun game and great entry!!
I do feel like the game is a little too punishing in the beginning. You can rack up so many small fish very quickly and then the run is basically over. I also think it would have been fine if you could gather multiple treasures in a dive as that would speed up progression and I think the game is hard enough that it would not have made it too easy? Maybe at least limit it to a bag that can hold 3 treasures that then can be upgraded?
The overall feeling and art style really hit the mark tho and I love my little dude hanging on his rope and just exploring the depths. I really loved the glowing jellyfish!
I think it's super awesome how the music distorts as you get deeper, but I'm not enjoying the music in the first place so maybe that's not ideal.
The beginning feels pretty frustrating though, it takes more effort than I would like to get things going.
overall good polised game, and i love the audio and the walk animation !

even with my big rope

felt very polished and love how music shifted based on gameplay,
serious battletoads vibes,
it really made me want to try again just one more time to see if I could get farther,
well done!
Excellent work -- well done!
The audio all around is great. You added dynamic music I see, which is awesome. I love that the tracks fade in and out as you complete a level and rise back up
The graphics are also really charming, and the game works flawlessly with no bugs (as far as I encountered)
The gameplay is a bit shallow (no pun intended) but the shop helps with that. My only main issue is that I do think that the fish clambering onto the lantern and disrupting motion, although a cool idea in theory, is executed not the best - I found a coin off to the sides with 5 fish on my lantern, and i just sat there holding the right arrow key for literally 30 seconds as my character slowly moved to the right at like 0.001mph lol.
Its an awesome entry overall, great work!