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A jam submission

Isolating WatersView game page

Atmospheric Puzzle Game
Submitted by Vulflock (@Vulflock) — 4 hours, 45 minutes before the deadline
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Isolating Waters's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#14.4004.400
Overall#23.9503.950
Fun#33.6503.650
Originality#73.8003.800

Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Great game! It's very creepy and makes the player feel isolated. The hexagon graph puzzles are pretty cool too. Great job!

Submitted(+1)

That was awesome !

I took a good time playing it. The puzzles are great like I was playing sudokus. And the atmosphere, the story felt good !

However one thing that should be removed is the force to turn around. It take too much time for no reason. Maybe you could cap it to a maximum speed as I understand it is to simulate that you are under water, but I felt so much painful.

Good experience thanks dude :)

Developer

It really seems that the movement is really divisive - some people like it and some hate it, I'm not sure what to make of it. I probably could have made it more responsive without losing out on the underwater feel.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! :)

Submitted(+1)

I've done something similar for spacecraft, I solved it by buffering the excess mouse movement and continuing to turn to catch up, even if the player wasn't moving their mouse anymore. I think I copied this from the starfighter controls from Star Wars BF2 (2005).

Submitted (1 edit)

I took like 30 seconds to turn 180 degrees. However for looking on top and bottom it is faster and better. Maybe when you play it you don't have the same issue. I'm on mac maybe that's it ? But really I finished the game because overall that was a good experience and I loved the puzzles :) 

Developer

For some reason the web build is different from windows build. It might be the low framerate on the web build that makes looking around way too slow. Looking around on the windows build is way faster. I must have made a mistake in the code when making the effect...

Submitted

It might be that. I cannot test right now because i'm on mac (my window PC is broken).

Developer

I looked into the code in more detail and I realized I didn't make turning framerate-independant. Well.. I tried, but I didn't do it properly. I used a mix of Time.deltaTime and Time.fixedDeltaTime in Update(), when I should have only used deltaTime. That's why the turning was incredibly slow on anything less than 60fps. Even 60fps was slow since I tweaked the settings when using 144fps...
It's a pretty dumb mistake, but I already fixed it and will update the game when the voting period ends.

Submitted(+1)

sounds good that the feedback helped you to troubleshoot an issue 👌

(1 edit) (+1)

Really awesome work! The atmosphere, sound design, graphics and puzzles all worked incredibly well. It was a bit unintuitive at times, and I got suck after the big pyramid shut its doors. Maybe I should have gone inside faster? Also I get the intended effect of making the turning feel sluggish, but it just felt painful to look around. 

All in all a super impressive submision!

Edit: Read the other comment and followed the black cubes to the actual ending, which I admit made me jump a bit!

Submitted(+1)

Incredible work! The atmosphere was fantastic, I really enjoyed the feeling of not quite being sure that this little guy is a friend, and then was sad a little later. I thought the slow turning really added to the experience (I was expecting a jump scare the whole way through!) and the shake and lag on the helmet was very grounding, as was the sound. The puzzles were spaced well and grew and shrunk in complexity at the right rate for me.

I only have minor quibbles, I intuitively thought that left click was clockwise and right click was anti-clockwise, it took me a while to unlearn that - I wonder if that's a common intuition among others. Also, right at the start, I dropped down and stepped backwards and fell into an inescapable corner. Fortunately, as it was right at the start, I lost no progress when I restarted and I was on my way.

Really good job, you achieved an insane level of mood in 7 days, with solid puzzles and story to back it.

Developer(+1)

There is a setting in the options menu to swap mouse buttons, but I'm noticing a trend that noone looks at the options menu... I probably could fix that by having a little pop-up when doing the first puzzle that tells you about the available options.

Also I wasn't sure which way should be the default rotation, so I just went with what was intuitive for me even though I do remember that similar puzzles in Warframe had it the other way. That never really made sense to me.

I'm glad you liked the game! :)

Submitted(+1)

Fun game. I loved the visuals and the sounds. I do feel the player moves far too slow and turns extremally slow. I liked the puzzles but I found that the ones on a small or too large area were very hard to aim at the correct piece. Overall, awesome work!

Submitted(+1)

What a great game! The puzzles were a lot of fun and the atmosphere is just great! As already mentioned, turning is unfortunately really painful. I also wasn't sure where to go after I restored power in that first building. Maybe I oversaw some clue, but the slow turn movement discouraged me from exploring.

Developer(+1)

The intended path after the restoring the power is to follower the little drone. I added lights to it to make it seem important, but looking back I think that wasn't enough. I should have added some sound effects to it, or make it leave a trail as it was going to the next section of the game.

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

Oh, I see! Yea, I must have missed that.

Submitted(+1)

Great use of procedural generation for the puzzles! The movements were painfully slow, but the story kept me pushing til the end

Submitted(+1)

That was really good!

I found myself enjoying the hex rotation mechanic a great deal.  It's simple and satisfying with a good "first-level heuristic" so I can see how well I'm doing.  It kept me entertained between the story bits.  A solid entry.

Some things I think could be improved: (a) a targeting reticle would help.  I know the hexes grew slightly when focused, but even a small, faint little dot would help me know where I'm focusing.  (b) the movement, while deliberately slow for effect, felt like it didn't have to be as slow as it was.  Rotating in particular felt like a slog.  Perhaps a water slosh sound plus more bubbles when rotating would make it feel just as hefty, rather than slow?

As one last bit, I'm not sure if I "finished" the game at that last part.  I unlocked that last room and then wasn't sure if there was more I should do.

Developer

I'm glad you enjoyed it!
A targeting reticle is actually an option in the game in both: the main menu and the pause menu. As for the movement, I realized that the web build and the standalone build were behaving differently and I should have made the rotation faster anyway, but I only caught that when there was no more time to change anything.
Also, yes there is an actual ending. You're supposed to follow the black objects left on the ground. I had the game play-tested by some friends and finding the way to go never seemed like an issue, but with sample size of 2 I should have been more diligent.

Thanks for the detailed review!

Submitted(+1)

The movement feels awesome when underwater, maybe a bit to slow in the lab. Looks very nice, puzzles and sounds are great and I see the Witness inspiration.

Developer (1 edit)

Only after uploading the game did I see the similarities to the Witness. I hadn't played it much, but I guess it still left an impression on me.

Thanks for playing!

(+1)

Wow! what an impressive game for a jam! I think you nailed the isolation theme and had some great gameplay. Well done!