Innovative game and quite addicting. I got to bottom, but could not defeat him.

Very nice, I wish my game had this much polish!! I particularly like the sound effect when you die

Incredibly fun entry, I kept drowning because I... am too greedy and wanted to carry as many as I could lol this could be a fun game to play on mobile while chilling. I wish there were more maps, enemies and upgrades though lol I understand it is a LD submission but still- I enjoyed it quite a bit! Thanks for sharing :)

Fun game! The movement mechanics felt very intuitive. It didn't really seem worth diving deep to gather since a lot of the high value thing spawned at the top, but the upgrades for going deeper were definitely necessary to complete the objective. I enjoyed the twist at the end!

Really immersive game- on top of the solid design around the game mechanics, the art created mood and atmosphere that really fit the lore. Loved the ending. ;)

very nice entry, I really liked the graphic! I have to admit that I was keep drowning as I wasn't really paying much attention at the bottom right of the screen, maybe you could add some sounds effect when you reach 30% or less on your oxygen tank to help users keeping track of the "danger" factor? Overall very good entry with a very good story! good Job!

eheh, really claustrophobic game! I felt so bad when I was about to reach the surface but took the wrong way and got stuck with rocks up my head and died :cry:
By the way, simple mechanic, well implemented and engaging entry!

Nice game! I really like the mood and the mechanic, I think you could make something great if you add more content

Love the game, has a great gameplay loop

Really pretty art and loved the concept, as a few people have said I would have loved to see some more content but it is LD after all :)

Congrats for real, quite a lot of things have been done correctly. Of course graphics is gorgeous and parallax really boosts the atmosphere, though its movement doesn't seem realistic at some moments. Physics is smooth and well done.

But what a loop. The game keeps expanding as you start by being scared of 20 meters depth but after some boosting end up a nimble mermaid and a brave explorer. Constant tension, was close to death so many times by oxygen limit alone. Haven't died once so far, I guess that big pocket was the end of many, but it's all about keeping a cool head. It was a good call to make mines colliders as forgiving though, I'd lose the will to play by now if they exploded on me touching a single pixel. Unless that's a glitch and mines don't actually work, well I hope I'll never find out. I've located the boss clamp and just $2 away from buying the net.

Ok I hit the land mine and died for the first time, was in too much of a hurry to get the boss shell. Good call to not have a permadeath. Total time 46 minutes, haven't even noticed. The final screen is a chilling reminder about nature of revenge. So perhaps not the best game of the LD52 but definitely my favorite so far, I'll make a post about it.

Loved the moood, the running out of air part is almost as stressfull as from sonic games =). I just feel that the move speed is a bit inconsistent, sometimes the player went slower for no aparent reason, and I think the go up speed should be a bit faster. Anyway great job!

Cool game, nice visuals, intro and showing the controls is a great touch. Swimming back to the ship was kinda slow and annoying, very easy to miss low oxygen levels and die. I didn't finish the game because 666 seemed a lot and grindy. Still a cool game tho!

Also, reminds me of my [LD48 entry](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deepest-treasure) :smile:

A very polished entry! I especially liked the subtle parallax effect, it worked really well together with the pixel art. A few events ago we had a "Deeper and Deeper" theme, where I feel like I've played 50 different games with this general premise, but I tried to not let that trauma influence my ratings here, heh. In fact, I think this was quite a nice take on the harvest theme.

Man the ambience in this game is phenomenal, absolutely loved it

So, I got really involved in this game and I came away with a lot of questions.

I seemed to kind of get "locked" in that I needed a lot of money to keep upgrading, but carrying enough money to the next upgrade caused me to go REALLY slow. After a few deaths I changed my strategy to not pick anything on the way down, but gather on the way up. So, I am at my slowest near the surface.

While it's a cute strategy that works, it's not intuitive and goes against the players nature of trying to collect and keep enough gas to the top.

I also found the depths were not more lucrative than the shallows. I expected to see larger and larger clams as I improve my oxygen and speed and can come away with more money.

Also I was confused by Agility. Is that truly my ability to redirect and change direction? Or is it perhaps related to carry weight? I was getting weighed down so quickly with the clams I was carrying, I expected that upgrade to improve my "Purse" or the amount I can carry without getting slowed.

Additionally, there were a few instances where I was ~50% gas, but very deep and slow. I knew I couldn't reach the top. The optimal strategy is to check my phone and wait to drown. Perhaps there is a mechanic in order to preserve the run by ditching some of my clams. Unsure how I'd exactly implement it, but I am imagining players tossing clams desperately trying to reach the surface, but of course they are ditching their money. So, that greed vs survival tension would be at it's highest.

Great game. Helped me too calm down from work a little bit with its sound and game. The pace is exactly right, even if it seemed slow at the beginning.
Maxing up speed fast was not the best idea :D Costed me some lives going into mines
One bad thing though: It crashed randomly after 30 min of gameplay, was nearly before collecting the net for the oyster :/

This is without a doubt my favourite game so far.
Graphics are great, sound effects are great, the game in general is just very well put together.
The upgrades also scale pretty nicely imo, it felt quite difficult to make money at first but with a few upgrades it suddenly felt like you could stay down for ages and pretty soon you're almost comically fast and it's just alot of fun.
Also the quality of life in the game is nice, with the little extra time after your're oxygen runs out and the fact that you don't have to restart the game after dying once is nice - this is something I've found quickly kills the enjoyment of other games in the jam.
Took me 30 minutes to finish the game but it really didn't feel like it.
Excellent work!

This is without a doubt my favourite game so far.
Graphics are great, sound effects are great, the game in general is just very well put together.
The upgrades also scale pretty nicely imo, it felt quite difficult to make money at first but with a few upgrades it suddenly felt like you could stay down for ages and pretty soon you're almost comically fast and it's just alot of fun.
Also the quality of life in the game is nice, with the little extra time after your're oxygen runs out and the fact that you don't have to restart the game after dying once is nice - this is something I've found quickly kills the enjoyment of other games in the jam.
Took me 30 minutes to finish the game but it really didn't feel like it.
Excellent work!

Game fills finished, that's very good :)

I also liked sound effects, though game felt a bit boring. Like i didn't feel that I have a reward for exploring and more valuable stuff wasn't there. I could simply swim to closest point of oysters spawn and get back, as random was mostly on my side

But anyway, the game felt nice

Pretty sweet game. I really like the gameplay loop, it is simple but very satisfying. As someone who is afraid of deep water, I felt this game more than others maybe. It was intense, especially with the water sound effects.

Pretty good graphics too! Good job on this entry my friend.

It's not often I spend more than 30 minutes on a jam game, but with this I just had to keep going... possibly over-leveling an upgrade or two, I made it in 35 minutes. :smile: A solid mechanism, the slowing down when carrying a lot of clams gave me some anxiety but it thankfully never resulted in death.

I enjoyed the graphics, they were simple but clear and well executed. The air bubbles were a nice touch, it feels like you balanced polish and gameplay well. All in all, I was entertained for a good half hour, so thanks!

Great game! It was fun diving down again and again and finally catching the oyster "Mega Jug". ;)
I particularly liked the atmosphere (interplay of sound and image) while diving!

The name of the game is cool too!

Cool game , you nailed the atmosphere and mood, would be good if it had some kind of oxygen pockets somewhere to let you explore, i think that the extra weight of the oysters is too brutal. There is a ton of stuff you could add to this kind of game from fish to extra gear to whatever. Good work for working completely alone.

LD52 #1

@marcoming Yes maybe a visual warning for low oxygen would help make it more accessible :)

@kr4ft3r I am glad you enjoyed it ! I love your comment :)

@BurnsDesigns Let me answer some of those questions :)

You slow down based on how many oysters you pickup, so many players felt like they went slower up, when its only due to them having more oysters on the way up. I agree the depths should be more lucrative, the RNG matrix I created can easily be adjusted but I can't change it now that its past deadline. Agility is your ability to change direction, at max agility you will have zero gliding movement lol. I agree with all of your ideas, I wish I could incorporate dropping mechanics in time for submission :(

@Achilnos Thanks for playing! Happy to have made your favourite game so far!

Great game, I liked the pixel art and the parallax effect adds to the impression. The pace could be improved, it is too long and feels like a crawl when a dive can't even get you un upgrade. Got me with the ending !

This is very cool! I like the art a lot (especially the flipper animation).

I think some of the mechanics could be explained better -- I didn't really realize picking up oysters slowed me down until it was too late (;-;) and I wasn't super clear on what the agility upgrade did. It also felt like collecting oysters often slowed me down an absurd amount, which would be an interesting tradeoff, but maybe it would be good to let the player jettison some oysters rather than just dying if you pick up too much :p

Overall though this is great. The graphics, audio, polish are great. I like the moody color palette and soundtrack. And I think the core loop is pretty fun and satisfying. Thanks!

Nice game. The pixel art is great.

The game is very slow, maybe some tweaks could be made, like making the sea a bit shallower so that less oxygen and time is wasted on the rising and diving

ops, my browser got stuck and made me send two comments, sorry

I played a game very similar to this one several ldjam ago when the theme was "deeper and deeper". I liked this version of it better. Good job.

Really enjoyed this one; there's something compulsive about upgrading the equipment (I got everything to level 6) and then landing MegaJug. The movement felt just right, even when overburdened with oysters. I'd second people's suggestions about some visual feedback about how much you're carrying and to offer the change to eject oysters to give you a bit of a speed boost, but apart from that, fantastic game.

30 mins well spent! Mechanics were great. Starts off really feeling like you are swimming underwater.Lovely story too! Well done.

Really nice and atmospheric game with the underwater sounds and parallaxed background. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the mega oyster. I was ~12 minutes into the game and for some reason my diver went down quite fast, but when I swam up again, he was basically crawling and I didn't make it up in time. Did you add a mechanic like real diving where you have to dive up slowly so the gases in your blood can equalize or was I maybe carrying too much weight/too many oysters?

this game is really nicely designed ins several ways: controls are really good, and when i discovered i was slower when carrying more oysters i was really pleased (maybe because my game kinda have a same mechanic i guess), the verticality of the level is well exploited, there are many fake ways and i love that, upgrades are really balanced in my opinion.

about the art, i think it's really polished. i really felt immersed (haha), the diver's animations are incredible and the bubbles are such a great addition.

Great great job!

Looking forward for the sequel next ludum dare, where you play as the little clamp to get revenge on the human

Addicting game, the deep pop of collecting the big oysters was really satisfying

What a fun game! The storyline is very effective for me to keep trying. Awesome that the weight of the oysters is affecting your swimspeed! I learned that the hard way though. It would be awesome if there was a button to throw away oysters to gain speed. Or did I miss something?

Thanks for submitting your game on the stream!
Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/y26fNN5FUi0?t=14115

Really loved the pixel art, great work!

Hey, thank you for the game! I reached the end in 28 minutes! It started kinda slow, but after I got a few upgrades, it got really fun. I loved the background sounds, the bubbles and the sounds when you take the shells. The movement of the dude is also really neat. Getting slower when you got more coins gave the game a nice "Risk or Reward" feel -- although it would be nice if this effect had a visual feedback (a big bag, or something like that). Finally I really liked the maze design. Keeping the maze the same while changing the positions of the items was a neat idea!

The only think I missed was a short range radar to indicate the closest group of coins! It would have been nice!

Cheers!

I really liked this game! The progression is fun, the story is simple but sets the tone immediately, and I liked the idea of travelling deeper and deeper into the depths. I think the environment could use some more variation, such as environmental hazards and puzzles, and going deeper didn't really produce any more challenges. I didn't end up getting to the end, but if I had more time to play it I could see casually chipping away at the upgrades until I get there. Good job!