Background

I didn’t come up with any clever ideas so I started with creating the diving controls and let the game take shape during the development.

Stuff to improve

• The pearls were too big, making finding them too easy.
• Make some parts of the terrain much higher to make it less plain and boring
• Add underwater ruins. Making pearl diving more interesting and challenging. Some pearls could be hidden inside the ruins.
• Some people reported they couldn’t get the radar work, actually it’s a sonar. Maybe they didn’t understand how it works or there is a bug.
• The camera is in fixed position in relation to the player’s position. It’s a lazy solution and I want to add a proper camera follow that doesn’t go behind walls etc.
• The player model is mirthless and animations of it are unwieldy. I spent over 3 hours to model the player and add animations. It’s been always such time consuming process.
• I don’t have Unity Pro, so I couldn’t add any fancy post-processed water effects.  Also I made the fog bright instead of dark as it would be logical way to make an underwater scenery. I realized that just in last hours and didn’t want to change the art style anymore because it looked good nevertheless. The abstract/low poly/minimalist style allowed the artistic freedom.

Stuff that was alright

• I believe this is my best ludum dare  graphics wise.
• I’m still proud of diving controls even though I just tried to mimic super mario 64 diving controls.
• Randomized sea plants and creatures look cool!

What next

I’ll consider making a post compo version. Depends if I have enough motivation, time and if I see it valuable. I’m also making a minimalist strategy game prototype. Follow me on twitter for updates www.twitter.com/samoojam

Play and rate!

Pearl Diver