Under the Surface by Wolfrug

“Explore the station, follow the signal, and uncover the secrets below.”
What starts out a a routine maintenance trip turns into something more unsettling when a distress signal rises up from the lower levels of an abandoned Research Station.
Will you follow the signal, and travel deeper and deeper beneath the ocean, unravelling the Station secrets as you go?
Or will you play by the rules, and go back home?
The choice is up to you.

Screenshots




Bug notes: At the moment there's a slight issue with the ending sequence cutting out, but we're working on a fix! And the game is still entirely playable except for those last few closing lines of text when you head back to Level 0.
Just imagine Stevie and Max flying off into the sunset on their excellent Seaplane...or not... depending on the type of ending you arrived at.
ALSO: Please click the -text screen in the bottom right corner- to continue whenever there is any story! Sorry for the inconvenience, this has been fixed in the post-jam version.
Ratings
| Overall | 278th | 3.93⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 653th | 3.5⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 917th | 3.2⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 406th | 4⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 349th | 4.17⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 277th | 3.88⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 668th | 2.977⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 177th | 4.16⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 65🗳️ | 85🗨️ |
I ended up stuck on a black screen after trying to take the flash drive up to Level 0. Not sure that's supposed to happen, but the story felt fairly complete at that point anyway. I also got a message saying "Cannot consume item - not enough in player inventory" after using the keycard (which was properly removed from the inventory). I also noticed that inspecting the terminal that takes the keycard, it says "I should try my luck elsewhere" even though that is actually the way forward (and that inspecting a body after looting it later on gives the same message as inspecting a locker). Really minor stuff, though: I think this is my favourite game from Ludum Dare so far!
Nice entry tho
The UI could do with more polish, I'm not sure how I was doing it but the guy kept walking away as I was trying to click on something. The chat box could do with being more central and prominent, I kept on trying to click or move only to see there was still a little bit of text left to read freezing me in place
Also love the ArtStyle, look really polish. Congrats
I only missed a way to progress the dialog other than to click on the dialogue window. And once I accidentally exited the game pressing ESC. It might be a good idea to add a warning there. I hope you can fix the ending bug, I was really interested to see how the story turns out. :thumbsup:
I love the atmosphere, it's dark, it feels almost claustrophobic! With the breathing sounds in the background!
The art is great (although I think there's a hole in Stevie's sprite :d)
Not too found on the way to move around though, but I guess that's more of a personal preference than anything
Just a bit sad about the ending bug, I hope this will be fixed! :D
Didn't end up rating it
I have only two nit pics. The first are the bugs, and the fact that the game starts up weird on WebGL (I have to go full screen and back again in order to see things). The second is that the UI feels very unresponsive to me.
The theme and the mechanic with the static/radio is also fantastically executed. 5/5 stars.
PS: If the writers on your team are looking for a project, hit me up. We may be looking for one after our demo. I can't promise that I'll come through though. Since that'll depend on the reception of the demo.
Very strong mood with art, ambiant sounds and narration, everything works well together and is coherent so great job on this :o
And all this is very well linked to the theme so big bravo to you, very well executed, you nailed this o/
Otherwise really solid entry, excellent art, mood and storytelling!
There were some issues that I saw:
Struggled to click on the locker with the flashdrive in, the circle sort of disappeared without triggering, but eventually it worked.
Got a weird inventory message when I used the key card (cannot be consumed there is no space in inventory).
Could not use oxygen tanks that was in the last slot.
Unfortunately I downloaded the windows version and it seems that it doesn't contain tutorial. I played the webgl version later and managed to go much further by taking my time and clicking everywhere.
This game has great potential, I can see the greatness in the graphics, design, story line but the user experience is really hurting it. A few changes could make it much more user friendly:
(those are just suggestion, you may find better solutions)
- Not blocking the click on the bottom right corner of the screen to go futher in the story. Allow the user to click anywhere to proceed.
- Not opening a drop-down menu when the player click on a world item that only has one interaction, just do that interaction.
- Some text say sometime akind: "ok time go to the elevator" but another call on the walkies talkie is require before the elevator works. Ironing out false clue like this one could remove a lot of frustrations.
Sorry I didn't manage to go far in your game during the stream, I see the potential in it, but unfortunatly the ui beat me.