Submarine Souls

Had fun to manage precision and o2 supply!

I was able to get a sub 36 second completion using an out of bounds glitch. I think sub 34 is possible if the specifics of how to clip out are better understood.
The sfx are easy on the ears, they do a lot for the experience. Too bad about the high score table, next year for sure?

Overall a nice little game !

Skill issue from my part, I couldn't finish the game, I keep taking damage from the wall.
I was expecting the chest to do something, did I do something wrong ?

The game was fun, may be a little hard to play, but fun either way.

Keep the good work !!

@Jeffez : Yeah I also recognized that most of my level decorations are looking like collectables... there a for real no collectables in my game. Just reach the goal in a good time, avoid any collision :)
Thanks for playing :)

@Psedera: Yes that glitch is well known. Thought I was able to fix it cause it was much easier to glitch through walls earlier. Thy for playing and rating :)

Cute entry, but I wasn't able to finish it. The two issues I had:

* The wobbly movement of a submarine is a bit unfavourable for a pixel game, because you can't immediately see tiny movements your vehicle is still performing
* The hitboxes seem to big for me

But the graphics were nice :smile:

I loved how the game had a similar element to mine (Swimming to avoid collision :))

- The arcade style is really cool!
- Great theme implementation
- Overall fun and functional game.

It is a bit on the hard side, though. After 10 tries, I decided to give up. But I definitely had the feeling that just one more try and I'll get it haha!

Great work!!

A bit of critique ***
The jaggy movement of submarine/camera/screen threw me off.
In my opinion waiting to get oxygen at the air pockets would be better as an instant fill. It was a bit hard to sit and watch the oxygen meter go up slowly.
As you mentioned already, I was sure some of the floating objects were collectibles.

I'm not a big fan of PICO games, so if anyone suddenly gets stuck on the main menu as well, press Z or X :D

Anyway, cute entry. I like this camera shakes, it's give more feel about ship status and collisions.

Good game, I love the water theme, cool

@Benski: 10 tries. Nice to hear it could get you for so much time. Yeah the oxygen-refill should make players think about how many they should recharge to get to the next cave. But yeah, maybe it was a bit overthinking thx for playing and share your opinion.

@Scrawach: totally forgot to instruct the pico controlls to new players. And also thanks for playing and giving feedback :)

@OnnGD: thanks for playing :)

When I first seen a screenshot from the game, i Dont know why but remembered some Pokemon Game on GameBoy. Cool game and nice entry :)

Pretty great entry for the first Jam! It was simple, but fun, quite challenging too. I'm such a noob and I couldn't reach the harbor :( . But I like the concept, and graphics are well done. Sound design is also fitting.

It reminds me the good old NES games :)

It's a solid game but the controls and colliders are too unforgiving for me to really enjoy it :D I also don't really like having to wait for oxygen to fill up. But other than that, good stuff!

Love the pico-8, games made on it are very pure in terms of gameplay, overall game is solid, only disappointment is that chests are just decorations.

I really like this kind of game, with those "lander-style" controls where you hold the button and the thruster slowly pushes the sub, and you have to keep correcting the movement. I had fun with it. The only thing I didn’t enjoy much was how long it takes to refill the O2. You have to sit still in the air pockets for quite a while, and that gets a bit annoying. Other than that, it’s really solid. Cute graphics, nice sounds, fun gameplay. Great job! (Could not beat it though! Last time I thought I was getting far, then hit a wall too fast, last 3% gone)

You had me at the name. Had a great time! Controls were a bit rough sometimes but I'm sure if you had more time they'd be amazing!

I beat it! My time was 3:02:655.


This was a nice, simple, fun game. I really was slamming into walls, it was always better than touching a jellyfish. I was a bit confused by the green animal- I thought at first it would heal me, but it didn't, but it also didn't do as much damage as the red one. Great submission, it must have been fun to make that maze. I wish the movement would be a little tighter, I understand it is thrust-based but I felt like something was slightly off even with that in mind.

I think you could really juice it up with having a wake behind your sub, some bubbles etc. I would have liked having a health pickup (I too fell for the treasure chest) but I get why you didn't. It would be good to replay to see how far you could push it without needing an oxygen pocket. Great work!

I appreciate your hidden message as well.

Cool game! Simple but functional mechanics, enjoyable old-school gameplay. Felt perhaps a bit too tedious at times though - maybe it would help if the tunnels were wider and in return you could move faster with more punishing mistakes? The walls should probably bounce you back at least, scraping along felt off.

I liked the visuals a lot, very colorful and joyful to look at. Well done!

Very cute looking! Nice presentation and surprisingly immersive world. Art is done with taste. Camera work is a bit chaotic, way too much screen shake :D Overall a complete game with nice art and sound effects!

Your game brought me back to my childhood.

very cute! great game

Great art and sound, really love the vibe! The controls were a bit fiddly for a low res game, but it's good as a rage inducing speed run game. Great work

Felt very retro. Feels great to play. Well done :clap:

@sayeg Thank you so much, nice to hear you had a little fun. The name was about the hard difficulty i recognized at some point in the dev phase :)

@yossarian thanks for your review. It means a lot for me. Nice that you recognized the hidden message. Your best time is much better than mine. Thank you also for the recommendations. Yes even if it was just a simple game, i totally ran out of time at last :D

@bad_fetus Thx for reviewing. You're right, the tunnels should be a bit wider and that bouncing from wall is also a great idea. Thx a lot

@nyxkn Thx... Somebody said "there cannot ne too much screenshake" :D But yes, maybe a bit less would be better :)

@haokai-xu-1999 That is really a great compliment. Thank you!

@dan-whiffing thank you a lot. Yes the speed run part was an idea of my daughter, she said it would be a better reward as only arriving at an win-screen. She was right.

I like the retro visual, the camera shake. This is really well made. I think your decorations are fine in terms of being misunderstood as collectibles, the only thing I thought was a collectible was chest. The other ones are great additions to already good visuals. Gameplay wise I couldn't finish the game unfortunately, the difficulty is a bit too steep for me in terms of controls, but I was totally vibing with this in the duration I played. Well done!

A super cute Pico game! So straightforward to understand from the start, although I was a little disappointed the chests dont do anything (as far as I can tell?) It was nice to explore the area and dodge the jellyfish, although I get the point is to get to the end as fast as possible. Again, super cute, really love the art and its a fun little project, nice job ^^

God this one is hard (and I suck lol). I'm obsessed with trying to finish it. This is a cool entry.

ITS PICO-8! MAD RESPECT!!!

Game is very nice!

Really charming little game! Loved the atmosphere and the sound design especially. The controls took a bit to get used to—felt a little floaty at times—but that kinda adds to the tension. I agree with others about the oxygen refills being a bit slow, but overall it’s a neat experience. Nicely done!

Retro vibe is very lovely!

Oh, it’s tough — in a good way! 😄 Cool graphics, and I really like the idea of using simple controls. I think it would feel even better with some kind of background ambiance — it felt a bit too silent when I wasn’t using thrust.

I had a bit of frustration at the start with the steering. It took me a little while to understand that I was drifting even after I let go of the controls, and gravity would constantly try to pull me down. I think it was the snapping movement that made that less-than-obvious.

Once I realize that though, this was good! I think you nailed the sweet spot on tight spaces to make sure it wasn't too easy, but it also doesn't require absolute perfection. Nice one!

@oduvan Thanks a lot for your feedback. Maybe I'll create a postLD-Version with improvements of refilling and stuff recommended here.

@dywanix Retro4Ever

@captAndrey Right. Originally I have planned animations, Parallaxe-Scrolling, Music and some sort of a shadow-mode, where you can hunt your self from a former run. But Time was running out fast creating a playable level, doing arts and stuff. But I'll do a post-LD version maybe ;D

@mhorth Thx a lot for your review. It was indeed not as easy as I thought to create a level, that fits to the drifting mechanics and collision detection. I totally know the collision boxes where way to picky :)

I'm totally overwhelmed of having so many good feedbacks. Thank you all a lot :)

Can't belive you woke up and deicded to make a water level :laughing: Controlls felt a bit nonresponsive, but rest of the game was pretty great. Especially liked how happy the vibes im getting from the art, lovely beaches, blue water... big summer holiday feels :smiley:

Like simplicity of art assets, but player controller feels some cranky.

Controlling the sub is hard but I guess it's the gameplay. I couldn't find the harbor but ended up in wrong spot thinking that it's a harbor.
I wish it's more clearer how a harbor would look like.
that being said, nice diving game.

Good entry! The style was simple but it fit the game, and I liked all the decorations around the level. I didn't finish the game. I appreciate hard games, but this one tipped over into frustration for me. 30% HP punish for hitting those red jellyfish hurt sooooo much. The damage when hitting walls wasn't consistent. sometimes I'd hit the wall and it'd only do 1 point. Sometimes a corner of my sprite touched a corner of an obstacle, it'd register up to 10 points of damage. Overall great game! Welcome back!

@knatt yes the hitboxes were very over the top. I totally missed the point in the polishing phase.
The wall-damage has at least 1% dmg but it gets extra dmg regarding the velocity. Maybe also a bad design decision cause it took also a lot of time to create the dmg system this way.
Thx for playing

Wow PICO 8 + Submarine... we're both very close... I like your interpretation and the graphic design is cool, but the hitboxes are wild...