Depth by SaraJS
F A L L
"It's not the fall that kills you, but it might just send you to hell"
Control with WASD or Arrow keys. Esc to quit. Alt-Enter for full-screen toggle.
FAQ:
- is there an ending? Yes.
- Does X bit just randomly kill you? There are solutions.
- It's really hard! That's not a question!
Dev notes:
I've been eager to try throwing together something in the dreaded third dimension for a while now and this theme offered up just the opportunity! I dunno how much of it comes off but I was mostly inspired by Devil Daggers in making this nightmare like falling game. I wanted the player to be excited to discover new things and areas so that is the focus instead of showing a score etc. The game does have an end and although fairly short it can get pretty hard! Enjoy discovering the new areas! The little transitions are my favorite part of the game.
CHROME USERS: RIGHT CLICK DOWNLOAD LINK & HIT SAVE AS
| Windows | http://shaunspalding.co.uk/Depth.zip |
| GMS2.3 (.yyz) | http://shaunspalding.co.uk/Depth.yyz |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/depth |
Ratings
| Overall | 138th | 3.874⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 248th | 3.661⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 351th | 3.395⭐ | 88🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 22th | 4.398⭐ | 90🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 232th | 3.784⭐ | 90🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 214th | 3.58⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 540th | 2.201⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 125th | 3.841⭐ | 90🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
Great work!
The atmosphere here came out so well, gives off a creepy PS1 era vibe, love it!
..Those full size squares in the first layer with the small triangle cut out though!!
My reactions are not so good so I did not get too far, but enjoyed the game still.
The sound design is simple and efficient.
I hate those stairs !
I just found it a little hard midway when I touched the wall unintentionally and got pushed into the obstacle. But the controls are pretty great, the art is on point, the sounds are pretty good either. Congrats :smile:
But with beautiful sounds and a really impressive fake 3D
However some of the obstacles feel unfair/straight up impossible.
The player moves faster when moving diagonally compared to straight, which make the wall hugging holes impossible when they are on opposite sides of each other in non diagonal directions. Here's demonstrative gif: https://i.imgur.com/nkobA8y.gif This random element kept killing me so many times it started to get really annoying.
The white moving things felt a bit random, but it added tension to the game.
This game might be sliightly too challenging for a gamejam game in my opinion. A personal rule of thumb is that if you can't beat your game fully at relative ease at the end of a gamejam it's probably too difficult.
But I had to beat this game. It was taunting me. So I did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSc5i5vasmM The relief is immeasurable!
Out of curiosity, did you beat the game fully yourself or single levels separately?
In summary, I really liked it but also hated it. And the graphics and sounds were minimal yet consistent. Good game! This will definitely be the game I put most time into this jam.
PS. I submitted my game to your stream form but accidentally put the url to an ebay link instead of my game
I don't mind too much about what is good/bad "for a gamejam" bc I'm really just trying to challenge myself or make the best work I can and it was built to be extremely difficult.
I beat every zone individually multiple times when building it although it took some time after the jam to complete a full playthrough.
Thanks so much for playing!
-S
Yeah, it's a bit of personal preference. I usually want to complete the gamejam games I play, while also playing many different ones. I got stuck on this forever, but it was worth it in the end!
or like @silkworm_sweatshop mentioned, would love to try it on VR :) Nice
Awesome game man
I think what you pulled off here technically is really cool, excited to see other GMers kicking this stuff around.
The game is so frustrating but I had fun!!!!!
I've heard playing in windowed mode makes it a bit better.
I think you scoped really well and even though I didn't finish it, seeing other people do is super cool. Really well done!
also imo too hard for a jam game but otherwise it was great!
Спасибо за игру! ^_^
Clever how touching a wall gives you knockback, so you can't just strafe along the walls to avoid obstacles.
I really like the classic idtech look of it as well. Good job!
There's a couple areas that are a bit unfair I think, and it seems most of the reviews agree. While there is a solution to the 3 hole wall, I don't think the way it's implemented is very fair to the player. The graphics can make it really hard to discern the solution with the low res textures (not that I have a problem with the textures in general, just in this one specific part). It makes it too difficult to see the solution and react within a reasonable time frame unless you get really lucky. This could probably be solved by slowing down this area in some way so the player can see the textures up close a bit before smacking into the wall, even if you were to only slow down in this area.
The other big area I think needs some tweaking are the areas where there are tiny gaps you need to squeeze through on opposite ends in both the first and second area. For most of these there are times when it is unreasonable to make it to the other side due to the constant rotation of the path. Most of the time when I made this, I was partially clipped into the wall already which felt like I probably wasn't supposed to be doing this.
I few small areas that could be improved as well: If you hit an outer wall in the main game you just bounce off, but if you hit it in the tunnel you die. This doesn't feel quite right because sometimes due to the spinning of the path, you'll feel like you're drifting to one side and want to correct your path, but it will usually kill you. In the area with the wooden doors where you have to press the button, it doesn't make sense that you can ram into the button but nothing else in the game. If you're going to use this mechanic, it's probably best to present it to the player in an earlier area. It doesn't look like something you should be able to bounce off of so I can imagine a lot of people losing a run to this.
Starting back at the beginning every single time can be a really big pain, especially when you're trying to learn patterns. For example, the 3 hole puzzle was so hard to figure out because I only sometimes ran into it, and sometimes I would get pretty far into the path before it showed up, and for the first dozen runs I just figured it was a death sentence every time I saw it. I eventually gave up because I kept dying at the second round of rocks in the 3rd area and it would just take so long to do the first 2 areas every single time. Because of this, I never had a chance to learn the pattern and just got really frustrated.
Anyway, hope this essay was a fun read. Overall, I really enjoyed your game. Thanks for streaming our games! It was a blast watching your playthrough of my mostly mediocre entry :)