Sonar by erikiene
"Do you want to see the world? (Or at least the Seven Seas?) Can you work under pressure and be your own boss? The Oceania Mining Co. Deep Sea Resource Requisition Unit wants you! Delve deep into the unknown, armed with top of the line equipment. Join our global work-family today!"
-Oceania Mining Co. recruitment poster
DELVE UNDER THE WAVES
You've been collecting resources for the Oceania Mining Co. for most of your adult life. With countless work assignments completed in your trusty Deep Sea Resource Storage and Processing Unit™, this one should have been a breeze! But something went wrong...
You find yourself all alone, in the crushing depths of the sea, sitting next to a dead console. Words "Critical System Failure" pulsing red light into your tired eyes. You know time is running out. You know, that your only hope of survival is venturing into the dark, deep unknown to find enough Scrap and Uranium to repair the ship.
You know the SecureSalvage™ drones are on their way.
You know what happens if they find you...
GAMEPLAY
Navigate the depths in your trusty Deep Sea Resource Collection Submarine™, using the left mouse button on your control console.
Defeat the drones sent to salvage you, and salvage them first! Break the loot boxes and bring the resources back to your Deep Sea Storage and Processing Unit™, to get it moving again, and get home safe.
Take care when navigating the deep, though.
Your DeepScan™ sonar only activates every 10 seconds, and who knows what is waiting for you just outside your field of vision.
Speaking of which, to adjust your field of vision use the mouse scroll wheel on your control console.
If you do run into trouble, do not panic! Simply point your Rapid Kinetic Disassembly™ probe towards the problem, press the right mouse button on your control console, and keep a safe distance!
Also, try not to dive too deep, or you will be crushed like a tin can.
If that sounds like too much to deal with, fear not! Your Deep Sea Resource Collection Submarine™ comes equipped with a cutting-edge modular Field Upgrade System™.
Simply divert some of the resources you've salvaged into your built-in workshop by using the left mouse button on your control panel to select your submarine, and our Field Upgrade™ system will do the rest!
Upgrade your Hull to dive deeper, Turbine to swim faster or Sonar to see further!
*On behalf of the Board of Directors, have an efficient work assignment, contractor! *
TEAM
Andrius Mackevicius - Sound Design & Wwise implementation
Egle Mikalauskaite - 3D Models
Erikas Kamaitis - Code
Kamile Korsakaite - UI, Illustration
Lauris Mazeika - 3D Models
Laurynas Vytas - Sound Design
Lukas Kleiza - Code and Game Design
Paulius Cerkauskas - 3D Models
Rytis Rukuiza - Narrative
TOOLS
Unity 2021.3.11f1 (LTS)
Wwise
Reaper
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Miro
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk 3D Studio amx
Adobe Substance Painter
EXPERIENCE
Holy cow, has it been 72 hours already? What a wonderful coffee-infused, sleep-deprived weekend it has been! Hope you all had a great time making your games! We honestly can't wait to see what everyone came up with.
It's especially nice to get a theme that doesn't restrict us too much, but holy moly, the choice paralysis was real.
11 pm BST on Friday, half of our team was on standby (the rest joining in the following morning), and as soon as the theme dropped, an intense brainstorming session kicked off. So many great ideas (some of which we might come back to after the game jam ends) were pitched, but after a vote, a favorite was selected.
And here it is! Nothing more than a concept on a board a mere 72 hours ago - now we have a nicely great sounding and pretty looking little game. Who would have thought? 😁
Working with a fairly large team, spread across three time zones (London, Amsterdam and Kaunas), was a challenge of it's own, but even under pressure we all managed to keep it positive and fun. What an honor it has been to be a part of this awesome collective of super talented people!
Alas, all great things must come to an end!
Feels like we all deserve a nap. Not too long though! Got to wake up nice and early tomorrow to fix the pesky bugs, which are sure to pop up as soon as we let our guard down.
Marking the 6th of January on our calendar already..
See y'all at the next one!
Much love,
Sonar Team
| Game Download | https://bit.ly/Sonar-Oceania_Mining_Co |
| itch.io (post-jam) | https://imagination-port.itch.io/sonar |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/sonar |
Ratings
| Overall | 105th | 4.045⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 235th | 3.782⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 317th | 3.62⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 280th | 3.973⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 20th | 4.625⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 38th | 4.264⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 522th | 2.944⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 19th | 4.455⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 55🗨️ |
- Cohesive visuals and feel
- Great presentation and lore
- Really liked the fact that drops became rarer in the starting zone so I had to go explore
- Found out very quickly I could destroy stuff for scrap
- The sonar idea is really great
Cons :
- In most games I play with the mouse, left click is for attack and right click is for movement commands, so... that was very weird.
(Maybe it's because I thought movement meant clicking a point and automatically going there)
- Holding down the left mouse button for the entire duration of the game to move gets a bit tedious
- Drops became so rarescarce in the starting zone (and its surroundings) that I had to travel for a minute left and right to get some scraps (in an empty screen)
and with the fact that the ship inventory is limited... A bit frustrating and boring.
- The sonar area is a bit small imo, I can see everything that it shows me even without it
Bugs (?) :
- There was no upgrade system for my submarine (maybe not implemented?)
- On my first playthrough, when i tried to dive a bit, I somehow died instantly (idk what happened, I went from no hp bar to red and death in 1s)
- I had to restart the game whether I won or died to play again (game just stops responding when it ends/ is not interactive anymore)
- I'm not even sure if I won, because the main ship sank a lot, and when I came to finish the repair, an animation started...
But the sound of my ship being destroyed to death kept playing (because I was taking depth damage) and... Nothing.
Aside from that you did an excellent job. Very polished game and cool concept !
PS: two of your links are broken
Good job overall.
I like that the resources and the submarine are sinking down, forcing you to update your equipment if you don't want to lose, although you can circumvent this by rushing to get as much resources as possible and upgrade your equipment a lot at the beginning. The handbook is a great addition too!
Please fix - if you die you have only one button - Quit Game.
Ty for game and greate job!
But overall impression is good
- I really liked how you implemented the theme into this, it was very clever.
- The atmosphere is top notch, it's definitely one of the most impressive looking and sounding games I've played in a ludum dare. To me, it surpassed the definition of a jam game in technical levels, it looks very polished, 5/5 without a doubt.
- Design is also fun and it's addicting to harvest things.
Some critical feedback:
- [IGNORE]* I think my game was broken, as there was no more loot or enemies spawning after the initial wave.I've tried several times but no shot, so I couldn't really upgrade my ship or deliver enough resources.
- I also would have preferred if I had started closer to the surface, on the delivery area, so I could have more time to gather my surroundings and test movement/shooting.
- When trying to aim, I tried to click in the desired direction, but the ship would turn in a weird way and I missed my shots! The only way I could properly aim was to shoot WHILE moving in a particular direction. I personally did not like that
- I thought the futz dialogue tracks were sick, but I couldn't really understand what was being said. While I understand that might have been intentional, I would have preferred for it be more intelligible. Also on audio: I felt there could be a wider spread in ambience between the surface and the depths: closer the surface it could be way more lighter and safer, and closer to the depths heavier and imposing (like it is now).
Impressive entry imo
* Edit: ohhhhh you are just supposed to keep exploring, I get it now.
I felt that the last updates were very slow to apply.
Pretty impressive for a jam game! Good job!
The design of the submarine, the lighting and and the sonar effect are beautiful. They really help the immersion (lol.)
The sonar idea is great and really make the gameplay funnier.
For the points of improvement, the fights with drones are a bit clumsy, it is hard to aim as you cannot turn without propulsion. Also if you upgrade the propulsion too much it gets very hard to decide where you go. Finally, it is a pity that there is no real menu and that the game quit when you win or lose.
Very good job
But all in all great game and awesom graphics
I'm amazed, interested, moody, enjoying, struggling, thinking and having fun.
Good job!
However, it is a bit unpolished, a few problems here and there, but other than that, amazing job.
Graphically the game was really cool for a Ludum Dare game. I think the "robotic" sound could have been a bit clearer. I didn't quite understand what it was saying
EDIT: I should have probably read the LD description first before playing the game :D
Feedbacks :
- The game is really hard at start
- No retry button
At the start of the game it wasn't clear what I was supposed to do. The game would benefit from some intro were it explains what you're supposed to do. I figured it out though and managed to beat the game. The graphics are great. They really set the mood of the game.
Thanks!
Diving deep didn't seem to have much of a purpose, I managed to win the first time just by skirting along the surface eating all the stuff that spawned in.
I really enjoyed picking up speed and launching myself into the air to do a bunch of flips. You can jump so high you actually clear the sky and wind up in space for a moment.
There was a bug with the upgrades when you get the last one, it would still appear as though I hadn't bought it.
Wish I could still continue playing after 'winning' so I could goof off a bit with max upgrades, had to play through it again and max out so I could mess around.
Well done regardless!
Then, most importantly - thank you all for taking the time to play our game and writing up a comment (or many!). I think this is what we all are here for - see folks play our games, enjoy or hate them, and articulate constructive feedback so that we can add to our understand of what a good game means to people. The team loved reading all of these, so again - thank you :heart:
@arscene @drsmey @dod108 @alexander-salkov @adamphoebe @sethios @pineapplegladiator @forik @yaroslav-gozak @igor-morgun @settings @legolula @chocolat-endive @clonze @minipeps @orionhart @nathan-loudjani @beefsock @3lstmsinatrenchcoat @khullag @rowdy3 @fedir @jirrev @suzanne-hardison @parsonb @dawnreaver @federico-delgado @sudocat @stewthepoo @erikengineengineer @pete-thorne @unprecedented @picttarge @heinz-music @der-finski @hawke-games @cslupius @zyger @picusbgames @jonathang @cogent-invalid @kenneth-augestad @lepletier @madness @cdmaniac @sohei @appleplectic @antsa @arihan10 @lejocarry @gousen-pride @nija463 @notalobster
On behalf of our audio team, I'll try to respond to comments on the audio. It's so great to see all your feedback, ideas and that at least a portion of you up until now seem to be liking the sound. I noticed that a few of you mentioned that the VOs were difficult to understand - that's very helpful and will be fixed in the future, thanks.
@melbadream thanks for pointing out the bug, where the atmospheric pressure sounds continue to play if finishing the game, whilst receiving atmospheric pressure damage. That one has already been fixed in the current SONAR_v1.0.2bugfixes build
@leon-regula Cheers! Wwise is brilliant!
@settings thanks for the feedback, I completely agree! The atmosphere actually does change and becomes 'heavier' as you descend deeper and new sounds appear as well, but I agree that it certainly could be more apparent. Glad you liked the the VOs and thanks for pointing out they are not intelligible enough. Originally, they were supposed to be coming from the sub and not understandable at all, but then during development I kept making them louder and louder until they sort of became a game mechanic. So now they're sort of neither this nor that haha. Although moving forward, especially after reading some comments, we'd make them proper game mechanics and easily intelligible.
@lepletier thanks!
@madness yes the VO should be clearer, at least that seems to be clear now haha. Thanks!
@cdmaniac Thank you! (for the feedback and the puns 😂)
@antsa the goal of the game for now at least was to try to fix the 'mothership'. I guess our spin on the theme was that the sonar activates every 10s, showing you where the materials and enemies are. Ah yes, the VOs seems to be an issue that people can't understand it, thanks for pointing that out as well. Cheers!
@nija463 thanks!
I thin the visuals were really great and sonar system was really good. Especially after some upgrades the material searching was really fun.
Also sound design was top tier and really nailed the dark underwater feel.
One this that felt bit weird was the torpedo shooting. I did not see clear indication of when I was able to shoot. I also thought first I would shoot where I point the cursor, as that was how the ship was moving.
I also maybe bugged the upgrade system, as it would not let me upgrade anymore even when I had resources.
Overall great moody jam game!
- The UI should scale with the screen size or the camera should zoom in automatically when the upgrade menu is open because doing this with the mouse wheel is slow and not really required (idk if this issue is only on 4k screens)
- The game would benefit from a clear indicator when the weapon is ready and auto-rotating towards the mouse when the shoot button is clicked, otherwise I have to move towards my enemies to fire at them which feels a bit unituitive
- I think the hull upgrades enable the ship to dive deeper? As this is only required to pick up old crates and ressources and new ones drop from the surface where they are easy to see, the optimal solution is to stay on the surface and only collect there, where the sonar isn't really needed
- Deeper in the water visibility is almost zero, so 10 seconds to wait for the sonar feels long, while close to the surface, it feels just about right, increasing the spotlights on the ship could solve this issue and reveal more from the cool underwater environment
- WASD Controls with Mouse only to aim and shoot would allow for more encounters with enemies, as well as different moving crates to further extend the experience
A very moody game that was visually very pleasing with good audio to support it.
My playthrough:
https://youtu.be/hDmNGzyt_LM