It's o-fish-al! by apaphy
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



| source code: entire assets folder with level scenes | https://apaphy.itch.io/its-o-fish-al |
| itch link | https://apaphy.itch.io/its-o-fish-al |
| itch link | https://apaphy.itch.io/its-o-fish-al |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/its-o-fish-al |
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🗨️ |
GG

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:
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!