The atmosphere is the best part of this game. The sounds and the feeling of being deep is really well achieved. The idea of the fish oredered by numbers and the sonar works really well. I see it's a WIP so I'l probably come and check it back later, but congrats! Really fun. Main thing missing imo is an objective to works toward.

@nicolas-kroupensky There actually is an objective, just gimme a moment to place it on the page! Thx for trying btw

@nicolas-kroupensky Alrite, stuff is up.

and I thought my game was original lol, oddly similar with yours, up to the name ! yours looks better tho, congrats ;) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/abyss-4

Got stuck on the last bit of the game. Don't want to spoil anything, but it was the message area at the bottom of the map (just kept saying danger near or something). Not 100% sure if I was doing everything right. The ideas are all there and the game was great!

@candlebird Essentially there was something in the previous large chamber you gotta kill.

Unless you did that, which then I gotta fix game breaking bug

Awesome game. Love the visuals and atmosphere. Got stuck at the end though, couldn't figure out what to do. (Weapons jammed, danger near)

@morr Aight, sounds like a bug gimme a bit to fix

Absolutely *loved* the atmosphere on this one! Really really well done visual and audio presentation. It felt a little punishing when I found I'd gone the wrong way and had to very slowly meander my way back to where I was supposed to go, but I think the patience helped with the mood!

Hey man I beat this game an hour ago but I'm writing now, anyway right off the bat 5/5 for theme, innovation and mood.

I was looking forward to play this. I won't spoil too much for the others but it took me a while to figure out the "boss fight." Honestly I think I was lucky in finding out how to damage it. (The jam and "danger near" is game design not a bug isn't it? You have to beat the "boss fight" first)

Gameplay wise-it was fun and I know the theme is a slow adventure, but I feel like pacing could've been just tad little bit faster. Also I still don't know what the search keypad does.

But overall very creative game. Like I said I was really looking forward to give this a try since it was so different.

I really enjoyed playing this game. It's very reminiscent of lunar lander! My favourite part was definitely the audio, which was super well done and really added to the atmosphere of the game. Thanks for not using audio jumpscares :). The map feels very complicated but I always felt like I knew where to go. *spoilers ahead* I found the wreckage before the massive sea creature thing, so when my weapons jammed and it said there was danger nearby that was very suspenseful. I was a bit confused by how the decoys worked. I thought my goal was to get it to hit the decoys, so I just planted them everywhere. It took me a while to figure out it was the naval mines that damage it. I also spent too long trying to find a way to un-jam my weapon. I think all of these problems could be fixed by expanding the super cool 'incoming transmission' thing with a couple more messages. Also, once you've pressed M to try (and fail) to start the rescue, you can't seem to press it to pause the game any more. Overall, it's super impressive for a game jam game, and I could easily see something like this on steam if it was expanded a little.

Tldr: This is a good game and you should play it.

It's a very decent submarine simulation.The visual is nice and simple.The atmosphere is awsome.
I really enjoy this game.Great work!


This is a really smooth looking and enjoyable game to play! I wasn't able to complete it on the first runthrough, but I'll definitely be giving it another shot! Travelling through the darkened tunnels pinging had a delightfully spooky atmosphere, though the slow pacing through rooms definitely left me with a lot of doubt about if I was going in the right direction at points, and the backtracking was definitely a bit rough when you did head in the wrong direction.

The implementation of the fish searcher was also a really nice touch - Picking up 'no such result' definitely cemented the vibe for me, as well as the audio entering the boss chamber. The first time I heard it along with the weapon jam, I turned directly around and went back up into the previous chamber to handle pre-boss spook!

At one point during my boss fight (after setting down and hiding in the hole with the crashed sub for a while to survive the deep sea heebie jeebies) I realized that the boss had stopped moving entirely - given that, I wasn't able to complete the boss fight, but while I was playing it, I positively loved the aesthetic! there's something incredibly good about the way you get a crisp look at it as it prepares to strike, you did an excellent job with it. I think here having a bit more speed on the side of your submarine would feel better - I definitely appreciated that it was much faster than the sub, but it also felt there were many times I simply couldn't catch its attention and then get into the proper position before it struck.

Overall, a delightful game, and I love your execution of this spooky undersea adventure~! Amazing work! ~☆

So the game is fun, but I realized there is nothing stopping me from just spamming the space bar. So the whole radar thing becomes useless if you think about it

As usual, the game is superb. It's minimalistic and fun. The only thing I would have changed is sonar mechanics. It would be better, if there were some small restriction, because I can rapidly activate sonar, something like a short cooldown.

@pandalk Huh, small world. Ill defo go check it out later. Thx for checking out btw!

@candlebird So essentially there is a decent sized beast in the 2nd to final chamber which you need to kill in order to finish. Altho admittedly it is somewhat easy to miss since the space is quite large. Thanks for the feedback and playing!

@morr Basically the same as the reply above, there's a final monster to fight which is slightly easy to miss
. Other than that thanks for the feedback and for playing!

@flatgub I tried to make the deadends not too punishing but guess I still made em slightly too large. Thanks for the praise, feedback and playing!

@twowolf They were infact part of the game's design, but I was worried they were malfunctioning so I did some stuff just incase.(You were suppose to find out how to kill the boss using the keypad, which would tell you the static contacts were sea-mines) As for the pacing ill probably slightly increase post jam.

Thanks for the feedback and playing!

@constantine-pallas Now that you mention it, it does look slightly like Lunar Lander in terms of art style! I also didnt wanna use audio jumpscares because I wanted the tension to build up over time, and finally release at the boss.

As for the message system you honestly make a good point, as it can probably help clear up alot of points. Other than that thanks for reporting the M bug and thanks for playing!

@rainysolar Thank you for the kind words and thx for playing!

@briibot Originally contact type was through the message system, until I though maybe I should give the player a database thing instead and let them spook themselves. Also glad that the suspense thing worked out for you.

Really sad the boss kinda broke at the end, ill try and see what causes it. That aside, thank you for the very detailed comment, feedback and for playing!

@franciszek-pyrc I semi-disagree. I disagree because aggressive fish only attack you after they get pinged by sonar, so by not using it you essentially become invisible. Combine this with the decoy and you can escape sticky situations where you need to create some distance between you and an adversary. I agree because this case is kinda rare. (still trying to find a better way to discourage spamming sonar)

Other than that, thanks for playing!

@darylsteak it locked my weapons when I entered that chamber so I had no idea what to do. Assumed it was a bug. Other than that great game.

@morr The mines! Littered all over the place. Maybe I should make it more obvious somehow

@darylsteak oh ooooh.... I thought those were just ... fish. Turns out I'm one of those oblivious gamers

Hello ! Congratulations for your entry, the game is very cool !
I liked the visuals and the mood that made me think about submarine films (the fact you call a sonar more often when there is something that attack for example).

I had some issue to understand how the contact database works, as I saw "1m", I believed this was a distance, I had to read the page description to better understand, and I think there is a bug as 5 and 32 gives no results (but I quickly understood it was not a kind small fish ^^)

I had to check comments here to understand what to do at the end. But I successfully finished game, thank you very much for the checkpoint when you die ;-).

Extremely tense game, nothing will make your heart sink like realizing one of those 32m things got triggered within yelling distance of your sub. You did everything right with the atmosphere of this game! I never ended up using the number pad though? What is that for? Anyways, fantastic work!

Great atmosphere and the sonar was a very inventive mechanic, imo. Very consistent art direction and I really liked the look. I did notice that the sonar allowed you to see around corners though, which technically should not be possible, but it's not a biggie and didn't break immersion. My only grief was the grid snapping which made movement feel a bit stuttery. Overall, it was a fun game that fit well with the theme. Good job!

Great game!

Minor nitpick: I did not know what the points eg "1m" mean, I thought they are markers you have to pass, and the number is the meters you have to go.

I really loved the atmosphere on this one, really impressive work on sound.

- This is a reaaaally slow game, sometimes, too slow imho, a bit frustrating.
- I didn't understand the targets with "1m", "32m" etc.. tried to type them on keypad but it was giving me words (not for 32m, so, weird)
- Movement of "creatures" is weird to determine therefore hard to attack (thanks you decoy haha)
- I got stuck at ~1090m because of a huge "worm" attacking me, weapons jammed, can't flee even without sonar.

That's too bad because I was really enjoying the atmosphere (visually very simple but immersive, and that sound!!), but those gameplay things took me out of the immersion.

Anyway, really great entry, those comments are mainly to give a personal feeling!
Cheers.

@sebbernery Thank you for the congratz. In regards to the database: yeah, I did try to somewhat explain it in the message but it's clear images would be better.

32m and 5m intentionally dont give results to build suspense. Overall I kinda just need to better explain the game in general. Thanks for the feedback and for playing!

@phobos001 Numpad is not very well explained, but essentially if you key in and search the size of the contact (ie: 1m), it would return what the contact was (ie: Tuna). This plays a somewhat significant role at the end of the game since it let's you know that there are mines you can use to kill enemies. Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

@quantumseagull Yeah the stutteri-ness is a side effect of the game's pixel art design. Maybe I can somehow fix it in the future. Nonetheless thank you for bringing it up and thanks alot for playing!

@jeremia The points are sonar contacts, essentially fish, sharks etc. The measurements correspond to the size of the contact (which can be used in conjuction with the numpad to the right). Probably could have explained better.
Thanks for bringing it up and for playing!

@grena Thank you for playing, to address your points:

- How slow and what browser were you using? On chrome it runs fine for most but there has been one case where it lagged significantly and resulted in very slow movement
- Those are sonar contacts, essentially fish, sharks etc. The keypad is a database that tells you what the fish is.
- That is intentional, if I made every single creature bee-line it would be waaaaaaay too easy.
- There are mines which damage the worm, basically all the 2m contacts. As for fleeing they will still keep attacking you unless you use a decoy and stop using sonar immediately after.

Really liked this game. The visuals are both simple and beautiful, the soundscape is incredibly fitting, the gameplay is a bit slow but that actually reinforces the mood and theme. Well done!

This was as good as I hoped it would be. I have a soft spot for these kind of slow burning unknown type games. Reminded me a little of Sunless Sea in a very good way. The ending was very cool, although I must admit that I died. I didn't want to try to find my way down there again so I was very glad you made a checkpoint.

I really liked the craziness of seeing the things get closer and closer, not really knowing what they were and choosing to shoot them anyway.

Nicely done!

Yes! Very nice game!
Didn't guess myself how to fight the boss, to be honest, but it was interesting and unusual.
Really liked the sonar mechanics and sfx. And the atmosphere of emptyness is so mesmerizing.
Bonus points for the cute smiley in menu :>

This was awesome! I saved a page from earlier in the Jam when I saw the awesome sonar mechanic, glad I did. You did a great job on the base mechanic, and the mood was excellent. I felt a bit slow as I dove deeper into the depths, but I could see that being on purpose or even required since you can't really see where you're going. I did find that you can spam the sonar, and it looks awesome. Slows down the game of course, but hey! Good fun and helpful being able to use it as-needed.

Again, this was so good. Loved the HUD, the art, the tension, sound cues, this is my favorite entry so far.

The atmosphere, graphics, and sound are all pitch perfect, however I feel the game is difficult to understand for a new player.

Very great atmosphere and visuals, gives me the feeling of actually being a submarine pilot (not that I know what that's really like), also of being terrified when coming on a group of big angry fish.

Submarine! Sonar! Morse! It's all so bloody amazing! I really really love the touch of having the actual messages in morse (though it didn't always *exactly* match the written text). My only problem was the final boss being a bit too hard for me. :D

The concept is really cool

I spent way too much time on this game. One of those 'why didn't I think of that' games. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Excellent game.
The look and the feeling of this game is very good. Impressive work :clap:

The only thing that can be improved is the sonar spamming.

I read the other comments and I see why it's not a bug, but the game could benefits of an input lag to discourage it.

Controls are kind of odd with firing on the mouse and else on the keyboard.
Loved the delay in the explosion sound (if it was intentional)

Amazing job conveying so much mood and feeling with such simple graphics. Really good game.

The atmosphere was amazing! I got to the end with danger near and wasn't able to find a solution. Also, the game is best played on Chrome. I played on Firefox and the sub was moving VERY slowly. It took me a very long time to get to the end area.

really impressive atmosphere! Sounds are pretty well done and the lack of an ambience makes the game more immersive. The bomb sound delay was very realistic. It's gonna give me nightmares :laughing:

Is it normal that i couldnt get info on some fish? I rly wanted to know what that 32 one was :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Crazy intense mood created by the darkness, sfx, and sonar mechanics. Top-notch entry, great work!

wow, the mood and atmosphere are incredible. it took me a bit to get used to the pacing and lack of information, but I am new to the submarine simulation genre. Is it possible to add the spacebar to sonar control in the description somewhere? The telegram-like text is hard to parse with the slashes in there. I was floating around blind for a few minutes in the beginning.

The eerie blips and the monochrome color palette really add to the atmosphere. I love having to look up what the fish were using the keypad interface, there's something really nice and vintage about that. Very unique gameplay, good job.

Really awesome experience. I love the atmosphere, the graphics, and the feeling of going deeper into a dangerous place. The only things that I would have wanted would be submarine background noise, which I added myself thanks to youtube, and an explosion effect for the missiles. I wanted to complete the game, and I may still return to it, but I found the fish mechanics to be a little frustrating. I may just need to better understand how they work first.

I don't understand why every game doesn't have a smiley option on the menu. This should be the new norm.

To add to a different commentor's suggestion about sonar spam, this is what happens when you map your mouse wheel to space:

Just being silly, overall this is a really cool game, one of my favorite from LD48. Well done!

Really nice atmosphere, cool game.

Very awesome atmosphere, well done! For just one guy this is an amazing outcome for the jam!

Made it to the rescue depth of about 1100m but my weapon was jammed and there was still danger nearby so I couldn't finish it sadly.

Hey, the game is awesome!! How did you achieve the echolocation effect and by the way, were you using unity?