Deep Conversation by Paulsams
GOAL
Escape from the tentacles of the underwater monster! To do that, you need to... negotiate?
How to play
Listen to the monster's words and try to figure out what they mean. Pay attention to how it reacts to your actions. Use the oscilloscope to formulate your own questions and ask them.
Controls
| Action/Controls | Mouse & Keyboard | |--------------------|-----------------------------------| | Interact | LMB | | Move objects | Hold LMB | | Move camera | Mouse position at edges of screen | | Pause menu | ESC |
Versions Difference
- Jam Version — it turns out that there is a bug in which, with manual input, the game does not count the answers if they are not perfect. So when playing jam build, you need to copy the answers by clicking on the curve from the dictionary. But when playing the current version, there is no such problem anymore.
- Jam Version (+1 day) — added sounds (finded during by jam), a couple of VFX and a couple of systems have been added to make it easier to understand the game. And fix few bugs.
Hints
For Story Mode
!> 1. You need to try pressing the buttons on the dashboard; 2. You need to answer his question. That is, when he asks a question: "You understand the question" – you need to answer that you understand, but by answering with a different pronoun from the available ones; 3. Next, he asks for food and you should try to feed him eggs, fried eggs, an empty glass or coffee. You can feed by dropping food through the airlock on the left side of the boat; 4. You need to respond with denial (aggression) to his question or compose a completely different message that will happily say that you are kind; 5. All that remains is to ask if it is possible to finish the game: that is, to move boat. If you haven't discovered the word "boat", then you've missed many interactions: I advise you to press the horn, the ignition key, the door and the lever above the door.
| Web GL | https://cubes-tubes.itch.io/deep-conversation |
| Jam Version (+1 day) | https://cubes-tubes.itch.io/deep-conversation |
| Jam Version | https://cubes-tubes.itch.io/deep-conversation |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/deep-conversation |
Ratings
| Overall | 186th | 3.905⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 330th | 3.514⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 76th | 3.986⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 47th | 4.444⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 117th | 4.365⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 198th | 3.819⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 313th | 3.083⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 108th | 4.194⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 54🗨️ |
However, very neat idea and theme. By chance, have you watched or read Project Hail Mary? :D
Never heard about Project Hail Mary, looks interesting!
Without spoilers, Project Hail Mary has a kind of a very similar thing to your game as a very central plot point, so I think you'd enjoy it a lot :)
The game is very hard, I couldn't get to the end, but every time something clicks it feels rewarding. I played the easy way, thank you for letting the option!
Really glad I played it.
Can I ask how the squid parses our input? Is there a list of combinations it's listening for specifically, or is there something more flexible going on?
!> I managed to interpret all of the words in immersion mode, and fed it the fried egg, but I'm not sure what to do next. It seems like it's asking me if I am broken?
As for how the monster works: he has questions written down and he expects a specific answer (but often he can be answered in 2-3 ways). That is, there is no flexibility except to respond in several ways.
!> And about the hints... The penultimate question is that you need to answer his question with denial (aggression) or on the contrary positively (rather appease him). And right before the end of the game, you need to ask him a question that will mean winning the game. Also, just in case, I'll tell you, but you can press the door, the lever above the door, the ignition key and the horn.
I'm impressed myself that I managed to figure out all of the words in immersion mode, but on the other hand story mode seems way too easy! I love it when puzzle games let the player figure things out on their own, and I think this is quite well executed, with just the right number of hints.
It's also rather brave to make a game like this for a game jam, where players have shorter attention spans and quit easily. While there's definitely room for polish, the ambition more than makes up for the flaws, so this is one of my favorite LD59 entries just for that reason.
Потом перешел в сюжетный режим. Стало понятней, даже прошел до зеленой лампочки. Но по сути так же покормил осьминога. В общем я смирился с компанией осьминога я остаюсь с ним)
Is it even possible to make the various phrases just with the dials? Seems like I was stuck copying out of the recordings, which made me confused why the manual dials were even there.
The unprompted hints were kind of annoying. Having hints is good, but they should be asked for by the player imo.
Great concept, pretty good execution (as far as I got) just needs some UI\UX polish.
In general, you can enter what you don't know yet (because it's logical), but you need to know the curve or do it at random. There was copying for internal testing, but then we realized that the game was too complicated, so decided to leave copying for the players (who don't get high on use recordings) (but the player still has to find copy mechanic it himself). But the manual setting remained for the sake of immersiveness.
I completely agree about the hints, but it's not very good to make a single button on the main UI separately or insert it inside the book or as another button on the panel – no one will ever press it. Therefore, I decided that they should be displayed like this (once often, and then rarely).
But we are glad that our game was able to encourage you to find the bad elements in it and tell about them).
Amazing achievement for the short time, very unique project!
You guys were able to pull this massive idea of communication through sounds and stuff within 3 days of the jam is very ambitious, astounding job!
Классная проработанная игра!
!> ... figuring out how to tell the kraken I was coming in peace: I only got the connection that aggression = denial after reading the comments here. I think "aggression" might be misleading. Things i tried in the end: "I destroy pain", "I move joy", "I give joy", inverting "destroy" using the wave functions, asking "you destroy question" back (it replied with aggression, but I misinterpreted that as, well, aggression).
Still, I can only critique the implementation, the idea is still very solid and with a bit of play testing, this could be an amazing language puzzle game!
I really like the eyes of the octopus, it really brings it alive.
Great work!