It's o-fish-al! by apaphy

[raw]
made by apaphy for Ludum Dare 48 (COMPO)

You and your crew members onboard your submarine are looking for an elusive fish species that has not been seen in thousands of years. To find it, you must go deeper and deeper into the ocean to reach the ocean floor and find the fish.

CONTROLS: A and D to move left and right (arrow keys also work)

Hold Space to propel downward into the water.

TOOLS USED:

Unity

Visual Studio

Bosca Ceoil

Krita

Making of this game can be found here: https://youtu.be/EVWdwV7_Lws

Screenshot 2021-04-25 174846.png

Screenshot 2021-04-25 174927.png

Screenshot 2021-04-25 175008.png

Ratings

Overall 599th 3.24⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 627th 3.04⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 633th 2.9⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 306th 3.8⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 503th 3.36⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 473th 3.08⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 411th 2.56⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 577th 3.042⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 31🗨️

Feedback

sonicpixelation
26. Apr 2021 · 04:47 UTC
Nice game. It's a fun concept kinda like upside down platformer. Good Job!
Taximan981
26. Apr 2021 · 04:56 UTC
Nice game, I always run out of fuel right as I go in the hole so both sounds play, the levels take a lot of trial and error but it kept me playing for a while, you really made a lot of levels I got up to the part where it said it would start getting dark. That was a lot for 48 hours so good job
rainysolar
26. Apr 2021 · 04:56 UTC
Very Nice Puzzle Game.The folat mechanics make some levels really challenging.And I found the fish~
GG
![2213.png](///raw/d2f/11/z/3d2af.png)
Pierre.F
26. Apr 2021 · 22:23 UTC
Man that was harder than it looked ! The solutions where obvious but the controls where tricky, I had fun !
axeltherabbit
27. Apr 2021 · 11:02 UTC
![Screenshot from 2021-04-27 12-01-04.png](///raw/c37/03/z/40781.png) I can't go futher, I tried the HTML5 version
PurpledArtFrog
27. Apr 2021 · 11:12 UTC
Thank you very much for your entry - I hope you had great fun making it :smile:

Nice simple setup :smile: pretty fun entry and well polished - everything worked as expected :thumbsup_tone1:

I hope you'll drop by mine and give it a spin :wink:

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
Kittenhunter
27. Apr 2021 · 12:07 UTC
Was quite fun and tricky. The ship could have been a little slower.
BangKerpow
27. Apr 2021 · 12:58 UTC
Inverting the platformer was a cool way to match the jam theme. I could have used 'R' to restart a level for as often as I needed to do that. The level tuning was very tight as I was almost always totally out of fuel when I got to the end of the level.
joonamo
27. Apr 2021 · 18:03 UTC
Note to self: Pack extra fuel on my next submarine trip. 🛀
🎤 apaphy
27. Apr 2021 · 18:13 UTC
@axeltherabbit i'm not sure why that's happening, maybe try it in a different browser or downloading the windows build?
axeltherabbit
27. Apr 2021 · 18:32 UTC
@apaphy ok, I managed to play using another pc, The game was nice and simple, I liked the little puzzles
saintchristopher777
28. Apr 2021 · 01:13 UTC
The game looks great! Soundscape is good too. My problem is that I'm not very good at it! Not much room for error on that fuel consumption. :)
Eugenik
28. Apr 2021 · 15:20 UTC
woahhhh amazing!!!! really good work.
Harmadillo
28. Apr 2021 · 20:46 UTC
Nice game. The levels often looked simple but i found many of them challenging with the fuel limit.
Shell Pirate
30. Apr 2021 · 10:38 UTC
Very solid entry! Your graphics and sound were simple but worked rather well. I would have perhaps enjoyed a slightly less cheerful song (think something more ambient to match the depths you are going). Maybe not initially, of course, but as the game gets a bit darker a second more ambient track I think could be well suited. You can maybe even achieve this with the use of a low pass filter on the original track? I know if you use Unity you can implement FMOD to dynamically alter your tracks while in game, for example. All beyond the scope of the jam, of course, but just suggestions for an even better mood in a later version.

The gameplay was simple, but tricky as heck. I really had quite a bit of fun with it for a jam game. The only things I think you can improve have to do with game feel (again, stuff for a post-jam release). For one, the physics felt pretty damn wonky when it comes to the rotation of the submarine. I would try to hug corners (which years of racing game experience have taught me to do), yet oftentimes this would result in the little scope (I think that's what you call the thing you use to see on a submarine?) getting caught on a corner and my submarine getting stuck and spinning around maniacally. This didn't really feel like a fun challenge because I felt I did nothing wrong, but the game punished me for it because of its physics. Thankfully, you can easily fix this by just making the collider of the submarine be only its body and not the scope. If you want to take it further, you can make it slightly in favor of the player by making the submarine more "slippery" on curved surfaces, instead of the clunky-ness it has now. I know Godot has a move_and_slide function for this, and I'm sure the same is achievable in Unity or Game Maker, for example.

The rest is more minor game feel stuff. Firstly, I feel like it takes too long to restart a level after you run out of fuel (I played the web build just for reference). The bubble animation is charming, but it also takes some seconds to get it started and with a game that is as tricky as this, every second invested into getting back into the action can be detrimental for the pacing. Furthermore, restarting should also be possible with the keyboard, in my opinion (just map it on the R key, for example).

Secondly, I see no reason why I would not be able to keep going with no fuel. I had a situation where I was comfortably parked under a platform and could feasibly slide to a fuel tank, despite having no fuel currently. Yet I couldn't do that, because the game treats running out of fuel as a game over no matter what. I honestly think you wouldn't lose much by not having a fail state enforced by the game at all and just letting players manually restart if they so choose. So, basically no fuel related game over, just let players restart themselves when they have deemed the levels "uncompletable". This may also result in funny situations for them where they set a challenge for themselves to waste as much fuel as possible and coast along to the end on an empty tank.

Finally, a very small issue. Often I would reach the bottom with no fuel and then end up winning still. This results in a bit of cacophony because I hear the winning sound but also the no fuel sound. You should probably disable the latter. Furthermore, the hole I need to go down, I don't always reach fully, yet I can still pass the level by just touching it. This is visually rather weird, so you could maybe make it so you get sucked down the hole as soon as you have touched it. All minor things, but I figured I'd mention them for the sake of completeness.

Overall, very solid entry! I had some fun and I really think if you take my (and other people's) feedback into consideration you can make a fantastic arcade game out of it. Great work!
🎤 apaphy
30. Apr 2021 · 17:26 UTC
@shell-pirate thank you for your comments! you're totally right about the music. i made it before deciding i wanted a mood change and didn't realize that it should change. the rotation of the submarine was just terrible code on my part and i should've elected to use physics based movement for the horizontal movment as well to have cleaner rotation. my mistake. i agree with everything you've said, and i'll try to fix it!
Soyeahimjames
01. May 2021 · 11:05 UTC
Overall quite a fun little game. I would often "complete" the level and the sub would leave the bottom, but I'd have ran out of fuel in the process and the level would reset which is a bit of a shame. I really liked the music track you've added, and I can certainly see where puzzles could be expanded in the future. Nice Work!
Brice Mahier
17. May 2021 · 02:47 UTC
A real tough challenge, but I liked it all the way!