Tout au fond (at the very bottom) by PieRo_PBeS_studio
With your submarine equipped with missiles, you must reach the bottom to do what you do best. Shoot things and collect diamonds to gain health and upgrades.
"Tout au fond" is a tiny submarine adventure that can be completed in a few minutes by defeating the game's boss. I look forward to your feedback and hope you have a great time playing. Thank you for playing our games.
Move with the keyboard or a pad and press C or a controller button to fire missiles.
Upgrade 1: The shield that revolves around you Upgrade 2: Shorter cooldown for firing missiles Upgrade 3: Vertical missiles that fire on their own Upgrade 4: Super missiles pass through enemies.
| Link | https://pbes-studio.itch.io/tout-au-fond |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/tout-au-fond-at-the-very-bottom |
Ratings
| Overall | 100th | 4.031⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 57th | 4.102⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 519th | 3.115⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 98th | 4.224⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 161th | 4.214⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 161th | 3.813⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 334th | 3.067⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 156th | 4.021⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 79🗨️ |
Congrats !
@mauzart hey thx, it was super boring to do this whole tutorial phase so it consoles me that you think it's cool!
@notnasiul hey i'm a pico lover de l'est ! Thank you and you know it's not easy to balance a game alone, I didn't want it to be too hard... but I didn't want to put save points... the ideal would be to make at least two difficulty levels... maybe in a post jam version
@ghettobastler i want to be better and délicieux... merci mec
Absolutely loved this entry! The upgrade system gave me flashbacks to Gradius, where you'd lose a life at the hardest part, and suddenly had to beat it without any upgrades, but this version felt way more fair, because of how generously placed the diamonds were! The fact that enemies dropped diamonds also meant that if you lost an upgrade to a group of enemies, you could likely get it back by defeating them, which made for some really fun tension :)
I also loved learning the enemy patterns and figuring out how to bait/react to them - At first, I thought certain enemy attacks were impossible to dodge, but by the end I felt like I was well-equipped to tackle any of them. Great difficulty curve :)
My only real constructive critique is that the controls took some getting used to - It would have been nice if whatever button you pressed most recently overrode any other button presses, which would maintain the uni-directional movement that you have going on, but make it feel a little bit more intuitive to control. At first, I lost a lot of upgrades to the fact that I would tap down to dodge an attack while also holding left or right, and the sub would ignore my down input to keep moving left/right.
Overall, great job!
Small (really small) nitpick is I wish that afterhit invincibility would not prevent player from collecting diamonds/yellow spheres.
@breadley thank you, so kind, i'm thinking about a post jam release with another type of enemy that i don't have time to implement : the evil big shell !
@milq I'm not too proud of the last boss and the ending, but I didn't have much time...and yes it's a game design choice not to have diagonal movements I wanted the submarine to be not too practical to handle... without being painful either and thank you very much for your comment
@monogatari hey thanks a lot, in fact i made the game in two days because I worked on Saturday... otherwise I would have preferred to present it in the compo category but hey, that's life
@mod-wiz thank you i like the idea of an old nokia game... so cool, and you're right the invicibility frame that prevent you to collect diamonds is an error that i forgot to remove ----- i'll make it in the post jam version
@gamedevtraum yeah that's a game design decision...thanks for your time !
Love the enemy movement/attack patterns.
Things that could be improved:
Diagonal movement
Checkpoints
Final boss could be less bullet-spongy.
Weapons are not as interesting as enemies.
After a while, extra picked gems are wasted.
I think last three issues could be solved together with giving some expendable weapons (bombs?), which could be useful against boss.
That was very fun and challenging experience.
Also graphics, music and level design was nice, great job! :thumbsup_tone1:
I agree with everyone else about the enemies being well designed & having interesting attacks. They were a lot of fun to dodge and fight around!
I will say that I started to get a little fatigued as the levels went on, after the tilesets & music repeated a few times I ended up tabbing to the page to see if the game was actually endless.
I respect that this is a pico-8 game though, and it's actually pretty impressive that you managed to pack so many enemy filled levels in.
I think some more breaks in combat would help improve the pacing in this case.
I scored most of my hits on the boss with my downwards missiles while it was off-screen, so I'm not sure how difficult it would've been, but I did manage to get down there to look it in the eye before I finished it off. >:)
J'ai bien aimé la ref au boss poisson de Link's Awakening!
Je n'ai pas trop compris pourquoi il y avait toujours une jauge qui se remplissait alors que j'avais toutes les upgrades il me semble ?
Je ne sais pas si c'est la palette de pico 8 mais les couleurs choisies sont super :thumbsup:
@baturinsky thanks for your time and your comment I understand what you're saying but it's really a design choice not to put the diagonals to limit the movements... it almost makes me want to try a kind of game like this again but with a tile-by-tile movement... for the boss it's clear that he's not great I did it at the end and I was exhausted... I should suspend the weaponry until the encounter with the boss.... that it is a little more scripted but it's really the lack of time... on the other hand the saves are voluntary and that's why the game is not difficult and not punitive so that it can be done in one go...
@shadyshade thx you're nice too
@mr-field Thanks for the comment and I agree about the boss, it needs to be corrected and as the game isn't very difficult...(although it depends on who it's for) I understand that you might find the time long...
The downward missiles aren't removed on collision so when multiple enemies are lined up - I found the screen shake too much.
I wish there were no screen shake when vertical missile hits something cause it gets annoying. I rather hear unique SFX instead.
That being said, I did complete this game.
@marudziik thanks for your comment and for your tips, I'm glad that the polish is visible because it's very important to me. I choose to make short games but with a satisfying experience (at least for me).
@leorean thanks a lot ... and your game is so cool !
I wish there was diagonal movement, but otherwise it plays super smoothly. The soundtrack is great too.
When you dont allow diagonal movement I would recommend to let the last pressed key take priority. Currently horizontal movement always overrides vertical input, which can lead to inputs without feedback to the player. Overall fun game! The only thing that was missing are checkpoints. I died at the boss fight and didn't want to replay the whole game :smile: But at least I saw how nicely you incorporated the tutorial at the beginning!
@oadt thanks to you ..; yeah yeah too more screenshakes i will correct this in the post jam version and i think i would make some save points...and the priority in the key
I had a lot of fun. It's really well done. I know how hard it is to make music in pico8 and yours is really good. SFX too. You used the color palette very wisely.
Congratulations
PS : fullbuff ment, je suis allé bien plus loin que le deuxième écran...