Subterplane by Bigbadbison

In Subterplane you control an RC plane attempting to explore a gloomy cave. Try to make it as far as possible without crashing. The further you go, the darker and narrower it gets.
Luckily, you managed to get a good deal in bulk RC planes, so you can always send in more if you do crash. Or, you can try exploring a new cave.
Watch your speed and make sure you don't stall!

Controls:
Left / Right: Steer
Up / Down: Thrust / Brake
TIP: Try to slow down if you find yourself crashing a lot. Also, keep an eye on your contrails, they indicate how much lift you are generating.


Background:
This is my first ever game jam, and also my first completed project in Unity. I went into it not knowing what to expect and I learned a lot in the process (mostly about Unity and the URP).
Deeper and deeper was actually one of the only themes that I did not have a solid idea for going into the jam, so I decided to keep the scope very small and focus on learning about polishing games in Unity.
The plane physics were written from scratch and a fundamental mistake that I made early on caused me to spend way too much time debugging, tuning parameters, and trying alternative, simpler methods. Which caused me to not be able to add as many features as I would have liked.
In the end, I'm happy with how the game turned out!
Would love to hear any and all feedback and criticism!
Resources: Unity, Inkscape, Wolframtones
Edits:
- Added Windows/Mac/Linux builds.
Ratings
| Overall | 285th | 3.649⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 185th | 3.757⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 427th | 3.243⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 529th | 3.446⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 541th | 3.284⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 668th | 2.379⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 458th | 3.236⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 44🗨️ |
Reminds me of the old helicopter game where you flew through a cave and clicked to raise up.
Let's see...
The game runs and didn't crash on me, which is always good. I found a little bug freeze tho: if you crash into the wall pretty soon and your plane turns back, it'll fall backwards forever.  It looked like this.
**Breakdown**
**Fun:**
The controls felt quite clunky. I wasn't able to figure out how to fly the plane properly, or at least I didn't feel like I did. I managed to get into the "flow" a few times (farthest distance 414m, IDK if it's good or bad). But if I understood your game correctly, that's pretty much the challenge of the game. Trying to figure out the controls was the fun part, realizing it takes too much effort without guaranteed results was the frustrating part. All and all I lost the motivation to play pretty soon, but I'm a carrot-on-a-stick guy. I like to know there's a goal I'm advancing towards when playing a game.
I don't really know what your intention was with feeling of the game, but from what I assumed I'd advise you to get the unity physics a bit better.
IMO a game like this needs a scoreboard. I have no idea what it takes to implement a scoreboard, but I'd at least encourage people to leave their scores in the comments.
**Innovation:**
I've seen variations on this gameplay mechanic (e.g. Flappy Bird). Not much to say here - you did your twist on the "avoid the obstacles" game.
**Theme: **
A pretty basic take on the theme. Not much to say here either.
**Graphics:**
Visuals are pretty basic. The colors fit together, although there's a lot of room for improvement. I'd definitely look up similar concepts and take inspiration from them. When starting with the visual design, google existing sceneries/concepts and get inspired - or outright steal the visual concept and adapt it to your vision. The light that turns on deeper in the cave is a very nice touch.
The UI feels a bit out of place. I can't say why - I'm not too good with that stuff - but the effort that went to it is noted. :ok_hand:
**Audio:**
Using SFXR or BFXR or whatever sounds would add a bit to the feeling of the audio part. Music is (understandably, it's a 48h game jam) too basic for my taste - but it's better than no sound at all. Try adding a second track (a beat/bassline at least), it'll improve the music a lot. Take your favorite song, and cover it in the music making software of your choice. You'll learn a lot.
**Humor:**
Didn't find any. Sorry.
**Mood:**
The mood is improved by the light inside the cave (I'd turn it on from the get-go. There's no reason to pretend you're not in the cave in the beginning of the game. The background says otherwise.). It suffers from the lack of audio. Once again - at least a BFXR generated sound on crash, a second instrument in the music track, and maybe some low humm when the plane is flying would improve the mood a lot.
**Overall:**
It works, it's consistent, runs smoothly, no weird glitches, feels okay.
If you want to see the numeric ratings, just tell me here, and I'll attach a screenshot, or send me a PM on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/dizztalgamedev) with a link to your game if you'd like to do this more privately.
Anyway, a job well done friend! Kudos!
The visuals are ok-ish to very good. I especially enjoyed the smoke effect of the dead previous planes (and there were many of them x)) and the flashlight when going deeper. The music is nice (is there a reason it is muted by default?). Some more sound effects would have been appreciated, such as explosions when crashing.
The gameplay is simple, not very innovative, but who didn't chose this path for a first game jam? It actually felt quite polished.
Note that I encountered a bug (sorry if it was already said, I didn't read all comments above). When you crash, you can click multiple times on the "Play again" button, and it will spawn as many planes, that you all control at the same time. Then each time one of them crash, the game over ui is displayed again.
Good job, congrats!
;-;
game's quite hard. and all those planes cause a black screen lmao.
other than that, the game has quite nice mechanics and it's fun to play none the less
Looks interesting from screenshots!
Is it possible to have a windows export?
Overall:2.5
Fun:2.0
Innovation:2.0
Theme:2.0
Graphics:2.5
Audio:1.5
Mood:2.0
here you go. best wishes bro/sis :heart:
Also, I like that crashing isn't the end. I bashed my plane into the ceiling still going parallel into the cave and drifted an additional 200m and beat my high school. I felt slick after pulling that one off. :sunglasses:
I like the idea, though the controls were a bit too sensitive and hard to master for me. I got past the 200m mark on three occasions, but would often lose control of my plane early on.
Graphics are good as well!
For some reason, both options after crashing started a new cave in the web version?
Congrats on finishing the game!
Glad you enjoyed it!
During one stall recovery attempt I was pulled up towards the ceiling, bounced of it and ended up in a free-fall outside of the map

It's also possible to fly backwards and get stuck in that position

If you spam the retry button, you spawn multiple planes

Finding the bugs were almost as fun as playing the game as intended, almost like a hidden easter egg. Good execution and a good game! I enjoyed it. :smile:
Excellent physics of the submarine!
Cool cave generation system, I wanted to explore more caves!
Great attention to detail, such as the inclusion of "headlights" at a depth of 250 m.
Thin that can be improved:
There is a bug that makes your submarines become several.
I didn't really like the graphics, but the essence of the game is not in it.
There is no audio at all :(

The bug with the several planes has been pointed out, I just found out that I'm allowed to fix bugs after the jam so I will be sure to fix that one :)
There is a bit of music, but it's muted by default and very minimal. Ran out of time to produce sound effects though :(
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006003249
This was a lot of fun! I noticed that a new cave spawns you much higher than just restarting the run does. Though I absolutely love the detail of seeing your crashed ships from prior runs, it's brilliant! Cool game.