TRENCH by toilari
TRENCH
That goddamn Frank went and got into trouble again! You have to save him - even if it takes you to Mariana's Trench.
2D shooter with 5+ different enemies, 2 bosses, 3 weapons and bunch of neat upgrades.
Play on web or Download on itch.io: https://toilari.itch.io/depths
Controls
- Arrow Keys to move
- Z to shoot with harpoon gun
- X and C for other weapons
- Mouse works in shop
Screenshots
Hints
- tba
Credits
- Lassi - Game Design / Code
- Minjaux - Game Design / Art / Animation
- Mäyräkissa - Music / Sounds / Team Mascot
- Noodle - Game Design / Art / Animation / Level Design
- inari (toilari) - Game Design / Code / Tech Support
3rd party assets used:
- Gothic Pixel font by Sparklydest
- Perfect DOS VGA 437 font by Zeh Fernando
Tools of the Trade
- Godot 4.4
- Aseprite, Photoshop
- VSCode
- Git
- Miro, Discord
Special Thanks/Mentions
- Alex - please don't abandon us for dnd
- Lucas - Cat
- Venla Faxin
Changelog
v1: - initial release
v2: - Fixed a soft-lock in tutorial, caused by player being able to jump over the harpoon unlock trigger. - Made small crabs 50% faster, to make them less annoying when they happen to be in unreachable areas. - Added Frank sprite, accidentally missing from the final boss. - Fixed last checkpoint on the final boss pointing to a wrong room, risking a soft-lock by falling out-of-bounds into the shop room after loading a checkpoint. - Optimized the shop scene to reduce performance issues on some browsers - Increased the blocker size on the store level to make it harder to accidentally fall through
| Link | https://github.com/teamjakojaannos/ld57-depths/ |
| Itch.io | https://toilari.itch.io/depths |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/trench |
Ratings
| Overall | 143th | 3.939⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 327th | 3.537⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 645th | 2.927⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 102th | 4.22⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 78th | 4.439⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 139th | 3.878⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 259th | 3.276⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 286th | 3.817⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 66🗳️ | 60🗨️ |
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to progress very far because in the browser version, only the arrow keys and spacebar worked for me, but Z, X, and C didn’t seem to respond.
The shop screen was freezing for me, and this is the only flaw I've encountered. Overall it was very fun, great job!
Wow... your artwork is on another level.
This is truly superb work- excellent level design, artwork, sfx, controls, and theme. You nailed it!
The shop screen was very laggy for me for some reason. Also I think the first shop should have appeared earlier (I died once before reaching the shop, but still. I almost stopped playing before the first shop)
Thanks for making such a nice game <3
The pixel art is gorgeous, music lovely, designed super well and awesome to play!
THe only small issue I have is dropping down and immediately hitting an enemy without anyway to avoid it, but I appreciated the generous checkpoint system, and the upgrades were super engaging and fun!
The final boss was a tiny bit mashy, but still enjoyable! Loved the photo at the end, haha!
I feel that i would bought a greatly expanded and polished version of this game with some form of metaprogression!
Also i managed to somehow drop right through the first update shop witout a chance to buy anything 🥲
I blame goddamn Frank!
There is some procedural generation, yes! There are a few hand-made level parts, which are used to create the levels. Basically, there is a "top slot" and a "bottom slot" and two parts are chosen, at random, for each level. This allows for a lot of level variety with just a few parts. Similarly, there are a few different spawn pools for choosing enemies, which are used to randomly spawn a number of enemies on each floor. These scale on difficulty and harder spawn pools are used as player gets deeper.
Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear you enjoyed playing our little game!
The gameplay is good and enjoyable, though for me there could have been less levels. It also seems that when repeating levels, I may get different types of fish. This kind of breaks the balance a bit, because sometimes I get the pink ones, which are generally harder, and sometimes eels, which my net handles well. Btw. after getting the net I rarely used the harpoon anymore - it's not that it's overpowered, it's actually well balanced IMHO. I think I would use the harpoon more if I could aim it somehow. The anchor weapon wasn't doing anything for me, I tried to use it but just died because of that.
Btw. I got some encoding problems with the letters. I appreciate "Slimak" though, being from Poland. :snail:
Spent way too much time playing! :sweat_smile: Very solid entry! Thanks!
The only real issue I had was that going to the next level was always a dice roll of do you land safely or is there a bunch of fish directly below you. It felt as if sometimes you simply can't avoid taking damage when the enemy spawns are unfavorable.
That's a very minor gripe, though. Overall you still did a fantastic job!
Also, why do you hate fish so much? :slight_frown:
When the game started, I was immediately impressed by the beautiful and peaceful underwater scenery. And the game went:
KILL
EVERY
FISH!
:laughing:
The gameplay was fun and well balanced. I struggled a bit on levels 40 and onwards, but I made it in the end. I hope Frank is grateful for the effort!
Super well made game, with beautiful art and very nice music.
I’d also love to have a bit more control over the movement. It often felt like I was just bouncing in place, trying to line up the right weapon to hit an enemy.
The art is INSANE!!! I do pixel art myself, but nowhere near this level.
This is a really impressive entry across multiple categories—it's fun, has a great mood, strong music, and you nailed the theme. Well done!
Some nitpicks - when you walk against the door the sprite jitters. Also falling into enemies feel a little unfair sometimes
All criticisms are off course null and void compared to the amazing sign animation, and you choosing the same game name as me :) Really well done!