Jellylight by Steven Garberg
Drift into the deep in Jellylight: Descent into the Deep, a serene-but-spooky descent where you play as a glowing jellyfish plunging into the darkest depths of the ocean.
Keep your glow alive by collecting bioluminescent krill, dodge hostile sea creatures, and light the way forward as you fall further and further into the abyss. But be careful—if your light goes out, you're lost to the dark.
Will you reach the mysterious light waiting 100 meters below?
Instructions
- Move: WASD or Arrow Keys to float left and right, up and down
- Boost: Press Spacebar to boost slightly
- Survive: Avoid predators, collect krill to keep glowing, and descend carefully
Your goal? Reach 100 meters deep without running out of light!
Tools
- Unity
- Procreate
- Adobe Photoshop
- Logic
- JetBrains Rider
- Fork
Screenshots

Changelog
v1.1
- Overhauled player movement
- Capped player velocity
- Added X axis randomization and direction to enemy spawns
- Added balanced randomization of krill spawns
- Increased glow drain rate from 1/s to 5/s
- Fixed overlapping audio when game ends
- Lights added to NPC jellyfish
v1.2
- Added instructions to main menu
- Fixed bug with krill spawning outside of bounds
- Decreased glow drain rate from 5/s to 4/s
- Added easter egg
v1.3
- Increased starting glow from 20 to 25
- Decreased sound effect volume by 25%
| Source Code | https://github.com/SFW-FreeDevelopment/LudumDare57 |
| WebGL | https://stevengarberg.itch.io/jellylight |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/jellylight |
Ratings
| Overall | 454th | 3.534⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 550th | 3.207⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 755th | 2.69⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 379th | 3.793⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 294th | 3.948⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 312th | 3.5⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 416th | 2.854⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 434th | 3.571⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
The first time I started I was surrounded by two other jellyfish so I had no idea what character I was lol.
I actually quiet liked it that the other fish just pushed you or blocked you instead of it being a game over event.
One thing I found was that the sound played when eating krill was a little to loud/annoying.
Awesome art thouhg, from what I've seen
I personally found the game a bit short and easy - it could do with some more threatening hazards near the end! I did die once at the beginning, but it was only because I missed the small light meter at the top - I assumed the light effect around the player/screen would dim or flicker over time. I think that might make the mechanic feel more integrated into the world, and it would make it feel more dangerous descending into the darkness.
Just wish there was more of it.
Anyway, I think you did a really great job! Very solid submission! :D
Great job for the mood!
Made it to the bottom!

I lost my first game because I didn't see the light meter, and I was trying to collect everything on the screen instead of going down. I won the second by doing only left-right and capturing only a few of the "light" food, bumping on top of the "enemy." Were some of the fish nice and some bad? I don't know.
A nice entry but some elements could be improved to make it greater
- Lack of feedback on nice/bad entities or on damage, I didn't really understand who I should avoid and when I was not avoiding thing was that bad.
- the food/light elements feel disconnected. It still fills like collected dots before the meter gets to 0. And if enemies take away your light, it becomes a "life" meter. So is it more like "air" or more like "life"? (edit: I went again, and it seems to drain faster when you touch an enemy) To make it more like a light meter, maybe it should integrate more into the overall render of the scene (making it darker). The Food should be more connected to light (have a glow effect maybe).
- the controls are a bit slow/unresponsive (normal to an extent as we are underwater), but I didn't feel I could really do something but gently float away; I don't think I understood the effect of pressing space. That's fine for a chill, nice experience, but less so if the goal is to make it challenging.
---
It's nice to have used git for collaborating on your entry; I like to dive into the commit history of LD entries.
I have starred your repository and added your game to my [github list of ld57 entries](https://github.com/stars/dhmmasson/lists/ludum-dare-57-compo). Go check the list and share some ⭐love⭐ for the repositories.
Don't forget to *add the link to your entry* to your readme so people visiting the repo can come back to jam. You can also use some of the badges I have created some shields for Ludumdare.
```md


```
Consider using these **topics** to make your Ludum Dare entry more discoverable:
- `game`
- `game-development`
- `ludum-dare`
- `ludumdare`
- `ludumdare57`
- `ludum-dare-57`
- `ld57`
[see my post on preping your repo](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/focus-hunt/preparing-your-github-repository-for-ludum-dare-57) for more tips.
Good luck!
I like the audiovisual elements of this game a lot! They all come together to make the feeling of comfy and chill in the depths. The title screen is actually just nice to idle to (I'm listening to it as I type this).
I only noticed the light bar at my third try though, and was very confused at first :D Maybe a fix could be to attach the meter to the character or make it more noticable.
The music is very atmospheric and fits the underwater theme. Good job 😊
I'm not sure if the boost that was supposed to come from pressing the space bar is so small it is not really noticeable or it is me that was doing something wrong, but I made it to the bottom regardless:P
Good job!!!