Depthe by SleepyStudios
In Depthe, the crypt reacts to every move you make.
Navigate tiny rooms, pesky snakes and dangerous traps to eventually make it out alive.

Controls:
Click and drag the player in a direction to move
R - Restart
F - Fullscreen
Esc - Quit
If you manage to escape the crypts feel free to post a screenshot of your stats at the end!
| Link | https://sleepystudios.itch.io/depthe |
| Link | https://sleepystudios.itch.io/depthe |
| Link | https://sleepystudios.itch.io/depthe |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/depthe |
Ratings
| Overall | 88th | 4.146⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 79th | 4.104⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 265th | 3.729⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 143th | 4.271⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 189th | 4.229⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 127th | 3.955⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 688th | 2.636⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 277th | 3.854⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 33🗨️ |

The graphics were an absolute standout, super nice and wonderfully coherent. The audio was minimalistic but fit the game very well.
What impressed me the most was the seamless introduction to the game. The difficulty scaling and gradual introduction of mechanics acted like a tutorial without feeling like one. Elegant design at its finest!
But aside from that, I liked the levels that I did complete. It was a nice little puzzle game with interesting mechanics and cute graphics, intuitive enough and difficult enough. I liked it ^^

The game does a masterful job of revealing the rules through "oh it must be like that" and not having to explain itself. And I can always experiment through trial and error. Took a few experiments to get down with how moving onto a currently-showing hazard is okay, for example stepping onto a fully-extended spike, is okay because the hazard will cycle away before you step. Snakes were the only tricky bit because stepping into them is NOT okay if you step in toothward, which took a few experiments to get right (did I get it right?)
I know from experience that the timing of multiple "simultaneous" turn-based actors moving on a grid like this are NOT in fact simultaneous, and that different orders-of-execution of the actors can cause certain subtle counter-intuitive side effects... but this game did a great job of sidestepping that problem and making it super easy to pick up and play.
Only timing weirdness corner case I was able to generate was moving into a ladder as a snake was going to bounce off a wall and enter the same space. I think both the level-complete AND the snake-killed-you executed, because I climbed up the ladder, heard myself die, and started the next level with a skull underneath me on the starting square:

Even the drag-move controls, as opposed to WASD, ended up a nice choice. In these plan-then-execute games I often find the lag of animations annoying if I'm spamming WASD controls to execute a plan, and the mouse-move forced me to be as slow as the animation, which sidestepped this problem, too.
With such nice polish and zero splinters, I really ended up enjoying my time with this game and played the whole thing in a trance. Very well done.
Did you make all the sounds and music, too? I know it's jam so either way is fine, just curious. I rated you for "yes" because there was no credit to any sourced sounds/music. If so, really nicely done, and if not, really nicely selected. They were a great fit.

My only minor nitpick is that I would've preferred the option to use arrow keys or WASD, but I got used to the controls quickly regardless.
I love the little ladder climbing animation as well. Very cute. Well done!
11:55 time
15 deaths
429 steps
8/8 apples