The Bends by henk

You've gone too deep, and the pressure is too high. Ascend slowly, or suffer the bends.
Controls
- Scrolling => Ascend/Descend
- Mouse => Move left/right
Tool Credits
- Ambience: Ardour, the Calf plugins, an Oxygen 49, and a guitar
- Sounds: sfxr
- Textures: GIMP
- Text Editor: nano
Tested In
- Firefox and Chrome on Linux with Intel Integrated GPU
- Edge and Chrome on Windows with NVidia
Post-Submission updates
- Fixed an issue where the player instantly dies on game start on larger monitor sizes
| Link | https://github.com/ldhenk/ldhenk.github.io/tree/master/ld57 |
| Link | https://ldhenk.github.io/ld57/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-bends |
Ratings
| Overall | 176th | 3.371⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 289th | 2.468⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 14th | 4.194⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 24th | 4.274⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 185th | 3.242⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 61th | 3.733⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 181th | 2.518⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 89th | 3.726⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
It was a good level of challenging but it was slow, especially in the beginning. I can definitely see how as the levels got harder, the movement was exactly the right distance needed for those sections. But the stretch at the beginning takes quite a while and I did not want to do that part again.
Checkpoints would have been a good addition. I got about 60% and would have pushed to the end no matter how difficult if there was even a checkpoint at the 50% mark.
Overall this is such a strong entry, well done!
It felt a little monotonous until there were objects to avoid. They felt like underwater caves, especially with the limited light. Sometimes I went up the wrong way and had to swim back down. The game really came together and I got into that flow state.
Sadly the game part is not particularly fun to me.
Btw: Are you familiar with Brazilian Baião music? It often has the same rhythm as the soundtrack.
I like it!
@andruid No, but after giving some of it a listen real quick I doubt I came so close by coincidence. I was exposed to a lot of
jazz music as a kid and a bunch of it no doubt got lodged in my subconscious somewhere.
Thanks for the pointer, though! It looks like I have some listening to do :).
i FELT like I was a diver.
so many good things about this entry. Not so much fun, or humorous, but nailed everything else! :D