Into the depth by squirrelsoft

[raw]
made by squirrelsoft for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Adventure in the depths of the world's most dangerous underwater caverns!!

Find energy to fuel your sensors and hunt down abandoned mines to mark them all with your beacons. Don't get close.

Screenshot 2025-04-08 031350.png


Known bugs (fixes will come) :

movement selector freeze : turn the camera up to unfreeze

Ratings

Overall 617th 3.3⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 740th 2.85⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 83th 4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 139th 4.15⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 422th 3.675⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 338th 3.444⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 336th 3.725⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 34🗳️ 6🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 400253
08. Apr 2025 · 07:56 UTC
looks pretty cool, but a bit too complicated for me personally.
infecsean
08. Apr 2025 · 18:15 UTC
honestly, so cool. I really like the gameplay style and the uniqueness! but i do think that the controls, while can be very precise, is a bit unclear and unintuitive but that just takes tweaking! very solid base, where are the fish
LDJam user 301295
22. Apr 2025 · 12:22 UTC
Hey, so first off very impressive visuals and systems. I don't think i've seen someone try and do such a complicated game loop so far.

For feedback, I think you fell into some traps which come when making something complicated. I really tried for 15-20 minutes to understand what exactly was happening, but it just didn't click. Consider when building your main-scene to start out with a tutorial. That way players will know what to do, and you won't run out of time to add one later, as it's the first thing in the main scene you add. I just really didn't understand what to do. The energy ball things would constantly move from one place to another, unless they were a bomb, when they just exploded (I think?). I'm not sure what the beacons do, and somehow they reloaded but I just didn't understand it. Consider making a small post-jam patch so we people have a better chance to play your game for what it really is :)

All things considered it is very impressive visually and I'm sure the game loop would have been just fine too. Perhaps @ me when or if you release a patch that explains things a bit more and I'll give it another play :)
angry-cyboot
22. Apr 2025 · 15:09 UTC
thanks all for your feedback !

@kujoen the post jam version is already out ^^ it's the post-jam link just bellow the original one, it has tutorial and a lot of fixes and other improvement that we didn't have time to do originally.

but yeah the we often under-prioritise tutorial because we rarely know how the game we play before the last day, so it's often a rush-job at best, and sometime we fail to provide one. We should think our design more completely earlier, and maybe make simpler designs ^^
LDJam user 301295
22. Apr 2025 · 16:09 UTC
@angry-cyboot Damn I totally overlooked that, thanks for letting me know!
Gave it another try and this time:
![Untitled.png](///raw/fe8/94/z/6c64d.png)
That made much more sense and was more fun :D
I can also give new feedback now! But only small things because I think now that I've played it I get what you were going for and you did make it pretty well. One could think about leaving the sonared cave "greyed" out, but that might just make it too easy. I think you nailed it pretty well, only thing you were missing was that tutorial to ease people in.

Great job!
angry-cyboot
22. Apr 2025 · 16:34 UTC
@kujoen thanks ^^
Agraffs
22. Apr 2025 · 17:32 UTC
REally cool game ! Took me a bit of time to understand the mechanics but afterwards it really becomes fun. The graphics are nice. I liked how the sub was seethrough and it's color was a reminder of it's power lvl. The sonar was really usefull too. Really cool ! GG ! :)
BnWCreator
22. Apr 2025 · 20:39 UTC
Good music for immersing yourself in a mysterious underwater atmosphere! Quite a complex idea within the jam should be praised for the realization, only at 10 minutes more or less understood how to play (but I'm not sure about it)
Whysguy52
23. Apr 2025 · 00:31 UTC
Fantastic. movement is a bit weird. had my fingers stretched really far across the keyboard and depth was difficult but other than that, top marks. Seriously, really awesome in many ways.I'll have to try again later.
stephenwhoskins
23. Apr 2025 · 02:06 UTC
This is a really imaginative entry. Good/Interesting mechanics. Good environmentals. Definitely really good music. Great job!
slow chaz
25. Apr 2025 · 17:51 UTC
I like this concept! a bit hard to get a hang of the mechanics
gdman
25. Apr 2025 · 18:53 UTC
Very solid entry, with unique ideas, and nice visual design, controls are hard to grasp, but worth playing, good luck!
Texugo
25. Apr 2025 · 19:23 UTC
I tried playing the Jam version first, but after some time of having no idea what to do I decided to try the post-jam version. The tutorial really helped, but it was still incredibly complex. Even so, this was a great and interesting game and it's amazing what you achieved in such a short time. Congrats!