LudumData

The Depths of Gitche Gumee by Deruitda

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made by Deruitda for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Play our game in the browser on itch.io

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The year is 30XX. Climate catastrophe has struck the planet, the ice caps have melted, humanity has been pushed to the seas, and society has all but collapsed. Valuables from the Old World remain suspended in time below the surface, ripe for the taking to anyone with the right equipment.

Gameplay

The player controls an Orb-Ship submersible with the goal of exploring the waters of Gitche Gumee, a lake far to the north in the land once known as Michigan. Maneuver the Orb-Ship deep underwater in search of rare materials and special hidden valuables from the Old World. Return the cargo to the ship on the surface to collect money, buy upgrades for the Orb-Ship, and resupply.

Objective

Navigate to the deepest point in the lake to find the greatest treasure of them all: the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

Controls

WASD - Move

Hold Direction into block - Begin drilling/collect material

E - Opens the shop menu when surfaced

F - Toggle Flashlight

R - Toggle Sonar

Share your game stats in the comments below!

Credits

Senior 10X Godot Engineers

                                      Andrew Michienzi
                                      Danny DeRuiter

Senior 10X UI Engineer

                                      Nick Mikelsavage

Art Director

                                      Jacob Cole

Audio Director

                                      Wesley Reedy!
itch.io https://dannyd1221.itch.io/the-depths-of-gitche-gumee
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-depths-of-gitche-gumee

Ratings

Overall 327th 3.692⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Fun 329th 3.526⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 369th 3.346⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Theme 89th 4.244⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 441th 3.654⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Audio 310th 3.513⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Humor 480th 2.688⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Mood 437th 3.564⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Given 50🗳️ 57🗨️

Feedback

zerocomms
08. Apr 2025 · 01:38 UTC
Started launching myself into the sky via volcano bubbles and getting rocketed down to the depths and exploding. very fun. The controls feel a little sink-y :D
BatTheCat
08. Apr 2025 · 01:41 UTC
nice skill shop and game balance
Yubs
08. Apr 2025 · 02:36 UTC
Nice game!

I think the initial upgrade loop was to slow, mining felt really painful for the first bit until I got a drill upgrade. I found a big stash of gold and that sped my run along a lot which helped a ton. But I think the upgrade loop was a little slow to get going.

But outside of that I really liked it! The sonar was very cool effect! The sound and atmosphere were really well done
Jag
08. Apr 2025 · 03:31 UTC
Great job with this! I particularly enjoy upgrade systems and this one was very in-depth. I think this could be super fun if it wasn't for a few issues. I think the drilling needs to be faster earlier on so that we can gather resources quicker, and, while the movement physics were super nice with the buoyancy, it made moving around a bit troublesome. I think the only issue is the game needs to be tweaked a bit so that upgrading earlier is easier, because it was quite slow to get started. But for 3-days, this is insane work! Thanks for the game.
JulioCezar
08. Apr 2025 · 11:58 UTC
You made an excellent job here my friend, the colors and the background on the start are so cozy, I will play more.

I exploded myself at start cuz the boat engine effect are so cool!!!
tailchaser
08. Apr 2025 · 15:23 UTC
Great work, love the concept - it reminds me of some flash game about drilling I played when I was a kid
Tenzz
08. Apr 2025 · 15:27 UTC
who cares about mining, i'm here to become dolphin
boboneoone
08. Apr 2025 · 22:55 UTC
Nice game, beautiful menu art. The resolution is bigger than my monitor though and I could not find a way to resize. Maybe you don't want it to be resizable because it will mess up the pixel art though which is understandable. I did run into a bug almost immediately where my submarine got stuck in an exploding animation.
Brian Russell
08. Apr 2025 · 22:58 UTC
cool concept! liked being launched into the air with bubbles! Blowing up at the depths from hull integrity giving me some strange feels haha
Wolfier
08. Apr 2025 · 23:03 UTC
I'm definitely with Yubs that the mining doesn't quite feel right. It feels sluggish but i can't really point to why that is.

On things I can actually recommend fixes for. A QOL adjustment would be to have sonar and the flashlight stay on till the player disables them instead of them just going away on a timer. Also have the flashlight come from behind the ship.
dinosaur065
08. Apr 2025 · 23:12 UTC
fun to play as I like games of this genre, but the movement feels arduous since there's friction on the walls.
the game also feels a tad drawn out given the current features, would've been cool to see some new features as you go deeper (enemies, environmental hazards to watch out for)

overall it was a fun experience, nice work
yancharkin
08. Apr 2025 · 23:46 UTC
Such a chill atmosphere. Absolutely love the vibe!
ToKto
09. Apr 2025 · 19:48 UTC
Damn it, this is a very addictive game. you just play, you play, very pleasant, cool music, good controls, looks like a good classic
Limina Wayfarer
09. Apr 2025 · 21:54 UTC
Reminded me of Motherloade way back in the flash game days. Quite fun, if a bit grindy!
LDJam user 268934
10. Apr 2025 · 15:45 UTC
I really like the idea of your game! The controls of the sub felt great too. I actually enjoyed the mix of art styles personally, I liked the rougher style the most. The UI is clean and easy to read. I absolutely loved the screen cracking feature, and the fact that you need to repair it to clear the cracks is such a smart touch. Overall, a really good game .All team members can definitely be proud of this!
LDJam user 179298
10. Apr 2025 · 18:57 UTC
It really does remind me of motherload which I loved to play back in the day. It was fun to grind with all the upgrades but the gameplay could be a little bit more fast paced.
Defrag
11. Apr 2025 · 02:11 UTC
Core game loop was easy to grasp, and I liked the sonar ability. Was that an early feature add, or something that came up later in the design process? If you had more time to polish, I would have appreciated a little more interesting procgen map; as it was, it felt a little disjointed with all of the strange deadends. I was surprised by the UI crack that came up when I went too deep - that was a cool bit of polish. Music was great - not too intrusive, as it often the case for 48/72 hours game! Very nice work!
🎤 Deruitda
11. Apr 2025 · 02:20 UTC
@defrag thanks for the kind words! Sonar was a core idea from the get go, I agree about the proc gen needing to be more interesting!
FireSlash
11. Apr 2025 · 02:27 UTC
As others have stated, I got strong motherlode vibes. The pacing feels a bit slow but that's hard to get right during the jam.

Would be nice to get more progressive upgrades that change the gameplay a bit more.

Overall solid entry, nice work!
TROGDOR 20X6
11. Apr 2025 · 02:36 UTC
Hey got to the end.

Of course as others have mentioned reminds me of the Motherload game. I like the ship and what appears to be Paint graphics. And the sounds are nice too, did you record crushing a soda can yourself? The little random geysers were nice.

A bug or two. Digging in the tutorial didn't work for me, but the main game did. Also I somehow got stuck but that only happened once. Dirt digging animations keep playing even after you walk away.

Some gameplay stuff that I think could improve: flashlight should be more generous in size and duration, probably the graphic could fade off instead of being cut off, if only by using dithering at least. I think it'd be nice if there was a little indicator of how much something was worth when you picked it up or what your current haul was, to get you excited about gems, etc.

I made most of my money in that one area shallow enough where you can still see without a flashlight, filled with tons of gems for some reason. Barely made any money in the darkest areas.
Tsaot
11. Apr 2025 · 02:44 UTC
I thought it was boring. ...I don't know how long I played. I got lost boring through the depths. Nice relaxing game. Good balance with the battery and cargo capacity requiring returning to the surface.
Juutis
11. Apr 2025 · 16:24 UTC
I found SS Edmund Fitzgerald! The basics are nice in this game and it's quite packed with features. I especially liked the sonar effect. A full-blown upgrade system is always impressive in a jam entry!

That said, the movement felt kinda janky. Especially narrow spaces were awkward to navigate. The balance of the resources seemed off: I don't think there was ever a good reason to mine the green gems. Additionally, I think the flashlight was too weak. It provided very little help in mining in the dark areas. The illuminated area was so small and aiming it correctly was awkward. It also depleted the battery pretty rapidly so there was never really any point in mining in the darkness. Filling my trunk with gems just above the line of total darkness seemed like the optimal strategy. Also, I found a sword. That was super cool!

Overall this was still a very enjoyable entry!
Cure
11. Apr 2025 · 18:11 UTC
I could have spent three times as long in this wonderful little adventure. The mood was fantastic, the mechanics were just punishing enough to keep me engaged while being free enough that I could explore at my own pace. I love the art, the whistles, the absolutely intended lore that I totally didn't make up, it was such a great jam game.

I played your game on my stream, here is a timestamp on YouTube: `https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uvsTk0plS4&t=4880s`
AgrMayank
11. Apr 2025 · 21:50 UTC
I loved playing this kind of games as a kid, it was fun hunting for treasures buried deep!! It does have a slow pace but I guess that's by design. Nice work!
Zigtalk
12. Apr 2025 · 21:23 UTC
The story on this is fun and jam-packed with features. I was really impressed by how much you managed to not only implement but also draw. Great work getting this together, it's a testament to a lot of skill and effort!! I liked the imagery and the gameplay was intuitive enough to follow along.
jtap
12. Apr 2025 · 21:48 UTC
Great game, I really liked it, it was fun and interesting to play. The movements feel nice, great upgrades and resource extraction. The cracks on the screen are super. I would like a more interesting submarine sprite. Thanks for this game!
ScrivenerOfLight
14. Apr 2025 · 15:21 UTC
Okay. That was a fun game - and a good length of gameplay, too. I liked the overall system and mechanics. It was simple but effective. The art was good, even though simple. I like that the drill centered on the tile, but it was a little sticky sometimes if you didn't keep the ship centered in between tiles. The three-zone mechanic for darkness worked well. The last little bit of the game was a bit more challenging having to manage energy with the flashlight and radar while still gathering enough resources to make the dive worth it. Overall, great game!
Jahwffrey
17. Apr 2025 · 04:18 UTC
Really cool! I liked that you could technically go right to the bottom if only you'd started with a perfect hull. It's like water depths and earth depths working together, that was cool and relaxing but you could also push it and go deeper than you should. Cool!
Empyreans
21. Apr 2025 · 19:18 UTC
Thank you for submitting the game to the stream. You didn't caught me in time to play it so I've played it off the stream.

Had fun chill time drilling around! I like that it wasn't overly punishing and is well balanced. Though at one point high pressure almost got me :laughing:

I found the graphics nice especially the fact that they reflected upgrades.

There was a minor bug where tile showed animation as if it was still being drilled and flashlight cone could look smoother as it's very distracting so I generally avoided using it unless I really had hard time seeing anything (so basically at the lowest depth)

![brave_vuxPYnOvUb.png](///raw/e7e/c5/z/6c614.png)

I also found the sword :smile:

![brave_qZqZZL9L1U.png](///raw/e7e/c5/z/6c615.png)

Great work!

~Xp
Alvaron
22. Apr 2025 · 17:22 UTC
Liked playing your game on stream! Thanks for dropping the link!

Fun exploration game you've made