Submergence by TomekS

Submergence is a game in which you navigate a submarine vessel through deep underwater caves in order to collect rare fish species.
Your goal is to collect 5 different species of fish, and return to the starting pod, and dock. The docking is done automatically you just need to approach it slowly from the bottom.
Keys:
WSAD or arrows - move
Space - catch fish.
L - Toggle lights (no in game functionality)
The vessel picks up inertia pretty fast so be careful, slow navigating is the best way to complete the game.
Recommended to not play full screen as game is unoptimised.
Tools used: Unity 2020.3.4f1 Blender Photoshop GarageBand Rider
All assets except the font have been created 100% from scratch. Sounds recorded using One Plus 7T.

| Link | https://tomeks.itch.io/submergence |
| Link | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U2GPQeZCIvJXfm7SkAQsAecEHsls9RHb/view?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/submergence |
Ratings
| Overall | 249th | 3.7⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 405th | 3.383⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 510th | 3.1⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 229th | 3.917⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 43th | 4.283⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 92th | 3.879⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 458th | 2.455⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 120th | 3.862⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
At first I thought I was playing a 2D game - it was neat to notice that in fact the surrounds were in 3D, and my vessel too (only visible once I crashed into something though as I seemed to rotate around the Z axis somewhat)! I would say that the map is too close in color to the background - it wasn't always easy to see what I could collide with and what I couldn't. I wasn't sure why my vessel was destroyed by the bubble stream thing. Maybe something to signal it's dangerous?
I'm not a fan of canned choir sounds in music, but actually, it suited the overall pace and vibe of the game.
Well done and keep up the good work!
Also - any game with some boid behaviour gets a +1 in my book... ;)
Great job!
It's a little hard to tell how far away from the cave walls you are though. I wish that the sub had more lights around it to give a better idea of the distance between the sub and the surroundings.
It'd make a really cool mechanic as well if the cave got darker as you went down. Slow and steady indeed.
The presentation is nice. Good work!
Gameplay could easily be improved with a more forgiving collision or perhaps a submarine HP system.
Overall, nice experience!
(Regarding the performance, optimization, the game ran great in fullscreen on my end!)
But it is nevertheless a very nice game, the sounds were on point as well and the atomsphere really fits ! Great job !
I caught almost all fish, but crashed as I was attempting to catch the last one
Like others have mentioned, slightly more forgiving crash mechanics would be nice (maybe only crash if you're going at least X m/s, or a healthbar or something?), but certainly not a deal breaker.