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Neptune's Children's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #24 | 3.486 | 3.486 |
Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
Solitude - Player is the only living human encountered in the game
Cosmic Horror - The enemies are creatures serving an unseen but powerful deity, the game takes place entirely underwater as well.
Ancient Ruins (somewhat) - There are ancient ruins the player later explores
Endless/Infinity - Referenced as part of the enemies ultimate goal
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Comments
This was quite fun, and the vibes were immaculate.
The speed of movement felt right, but I think turning could be a bit faster and a minimal action queue would help keep it merely pondering rather than annoying. The combat was decent, although it was a little hard to tell when I was in range to hit with the knife. Enemies clipping through objects also made it a little hard to line up with them, and I think one of the merfolk was stabbing me while facing other directions.
Here's my no-commentary playthrough video:
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The atmosphere was by far the part I spent the most on so I'm happy to hear you liked it.
Yeah the movement is gonna be polished up post-jam, I tried to add turning while moving but it ended up being even more broken so I axed it for the time being.
The combat is very broken at the moment in a few respects. Most obviously being that enemies don't stop on the tile next to the player like they're intended to. I also didn't have time to add pain animations or sounds to enemies when they're hit. The only feedback at the moment is the little stab sound and the blood puffs, but since enemies just keep moving into the player that's often obscured. The enemies are supposed to be in range when they're almost in the center of the neighbouring tile, and I noticed a couple times in the video there were a couple hits that were just slightly too early. But of course since the enemies don't stop that's kinda impossible to tell. And due to the raycasts used for player movement and attacks not detecting any colliders they're inside at spawn time, you can't hit enemies when they're right on top of you.
The enemies clipping through objects is caused by the A* map generation falling victim to the same raycast issue as the attacks. The tiles next to those turbines detect the turbine tiles as being not navigable, but the turbine tiles can see the surrounding tiles, so a link is formed between them.
And yeah the enemy attacks aren't directional, I tried making them directional, but it somehow led to enemies just turning perpetually so I left it as is. I knew the combat was bad well before the jam ended, I just made the executive decision to focus improving everything else since I thought it would be better to have crappy combat and a great atmosphere vs ok combat with a bland game.
Also looking at the video I think I'll have to mention in-game that there's continuous movement, everyone I've seen play it presses move manually each time. I imagine it gets sore on the fingers lol. Also I really need to better explain what the ghost anomalies are, half the videos I've seen players miss the first one or two.
But thanks again for playing and the feedback! And extra thanks for the video, it was incredibly helpful!
I think I did check for continuous movement and noted its existence, I just generally prefer not to use it in most cases.
I’m glad I got to play this before the rating period ended; this was fantastic!
The vibes were perfect. You captured both the theme and the cursed PSX aesthetic perfectly.
Usually, I would prefer movement to be quick and snappy, but this game is the exception. Considering you’re walking underwater, the slow, deliberate movement adds weight to every step and makes you feel like you’re moving with difficulty.
I beat the game, and it made me wonder if there were multiple endings.
I encountered a couple of minor hitches. I accidentally quit the game twice by pressing ESC. I had assumed the game would pause while decoding the audio from the ghosts, but I was instead killed by one of Neptune’s brats 😅
Speaking of which, they clipped through the walls a lot, making me think there were secret passages, but if there were, I couldn’t find them.
It has excellent atmosphere and visuals, and with many jam games, I wish it was longer so I could spend more time in this world you created.
Amazing job!
Thanks for playing!
This was my first real attempt at a PS1 style game so I’m happy you liked it!
Yeah the movement has been kinda divisive and frankly I can see both sides. I think it feels more like you’re underwater like you say, but it does also make parts of the game genuinely tedious I’ve found on repeat playthroughs. I don’t think I’ll make the player super fast, but the movement will at least be getting a second look post-jam. I’m definitely happy to hear you found it immersive though!
So there is only one ending but multiple were originally planned, specifically the player keeping the blood pearl and then being converted by Neptune. I decided to cut it because in every other jam game I made with multiple endings they ended up being too tedious to replay. So I decided to play it safe and focus on making the first playthrough as good as possible.
In hindsight I probably should have made the game pause while talking to the ghosts, that was just a scope thing and I didn’t wanna risk the game not resuming afterwards.
I mentioned the cause of the wall clipping glitch in a few other comments, but yeah they aren’t supposed to do that. There are no secret passages sadly.
To be honest when I was making this game I was thinking “if the biggest complaint is it’s not long enough then that’s the best case scenario”. I knew I didn’t have time to make a long game, and didn’t want to risk the game wearing out its welcome. The combat as you saw isn’t that in-depth and there’s only so long the atmosphere could realistically be kept up. I don’t regret keeping it short, but I’m 100% happy to hear you wanted more!
Thanks again for playing and the feedback!
Nice game with great vibes! First combat was confusing, I lost 3/4th of my health and I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong or not. Monster was in the same tile as me for most of the combat. Second combat I tried dancing more, but still didn't get it. Mostly figured things out after that. I think my confusion mostly comes from the attack sound sounds like a miss/"whiff" sound even when I hit, and that I needed to keep them at least a tile away from me to be able to hit them, I guess? I would have liked some clearer indication of a hit (both audible and visible) so that I could figure out if I'm doing the right thing or not much quicker =). Not sure if it's a bug, or just ghostly enemies, but one moved through some walls and attacked me through them (right after going through the second torch-able door, I think - there were a couple spaces I couldn't get to myself to the north that the enemy went through). The shark was great, and terrifying. Did I imagine things, or did it come back to life and attack me from behind? (Or were there 2?) I managed to make it through the end, I hope my sacrifice was not in vein...
Thanks for playing!
So regarding the combat, it largely stems from the AI navigation trying to get onto the same tile as the player when it's supposed to be trying to reach the tile NEXT to the player. The reason you couldn't hit it is because the raycast for melee attacks and the projectiles doesn't count any colliders that the raycast starts in. I wasn't able to sort that problem out before the jam ended, and in general in the last two days I decided to focus on everything else but the combat because I figured it would be better to have a strong atmosphere with weak combat, than ok combat with a boring bland world.
So for the sound effect I guess in my mind it sounded like a good stab sound for an underwater attack, but most players either didn't notice it, or as you mentioned it sounds like a miss. There is a visual indicator for a hit with the little blod puffs that come off enemies, but they end up being obscured by the enemy models, and for the zombies and mermaids the blood colour is blue which I only realized afterwards blend into the background too much.
Regarding the ghost enemies I do know what can cause that. When the game starts, an A* map is built from every tile in the game, and then each tile raycasts in the 4 cardinal directions to see what tiles it can connect to. But this raycast, like the attack raycasts mentioned earlier, doesn't detect colliders the raycast starts in. So the tiles next to a giant world object don't detect a navigable tile, but the tile holding the impassable object DOES. And because AI navigation follows the map but not raycasts, they can just walk through it.
I'm glad to hear the shark was appropriately spooky though. You weren't imagining things with it coming back to life, I saw it happen on stream actually. I'm not sure why it happens, but there's only one shark enemy in the game.
Thanks again for the feedback! Sorry the combat was so confusing, I'll have to sort that out post-jam and keep it in mind for next year,
Sounds good! Yeah, the combat was a bit janky, but working on atmosphere over better combat seems like it was the right choice =).
The grungy enviroment and the stillness of the audio design create a great underwater horror atmosphere.
It took me a while to relaize I was doing damage in combat which lead to an early death, but I was a lot more confident on my second try,
Seeing that shark in the middle area certainly game me the willies.
Great entry all in all!
Playthrough: Neptune's Children Pt1 by Enygmatic
Thanks for playing!
Yeah I'm incredibly happy with how the atmosphere turned out, but also the combat turned out pretty pithy so sorry about that.
I'll make sure to check out the video! Thanks again for the feedback!
So I just finished watching both your videos, and damn am I sorry you had to experience that.
As I mentioned in other comments, the AI isn't supposed to reach the same tile as the player, but I wasn't able to fix that navigation problem in time. And the raycasts for the players melee and projectile attacks don't detect any colliders that they start within. Meaning if the enemy is on the same tile as you, you can't hit them. So in a number of cases in your video you definitely weren't dealing damage. This raycast problem is why you're also able to walk THROUGH enemies which is definitely not intentional. Frankly I was stunned when I saw you had aggroed three enemies, because the game was setup in such a way that the player should never have to face more than one. I guess I hadn't even considered the possibility it could still happen, but reading your feedback and watching the video I can absolutely see why it happened.
I do have a few questions about the first video, was the audio out of sync when you were playing or is that just the video? And I noticed you backtracked quite a bit, did you get lost and turned around or were you just exploring to see what else there was? I thought I had laid out the level clearly enough, but the map not showing walls has been mentioned as being confusing, so it could easily be my fault lol. Also I noticed when you encountered the first Child you were clicking the weapon select button instead of the attack button, I'm guessing that was just panic?
In any case I'm glad someone got to see the death screen, just not in the way I expected lol.
I also didn't realize how confusing the bug of clicking UI buttons triggering interactions in the game world could be. I know another comment mentioned talking to a corpse while trying to attack, but I didn't realize it could be confusing with the door interactions. I'll definitely be addressing that in the next update.
I also plan to replace the unopenable cabinets, they've been confusing a lot of players since they do look interactable. And they were going to be until I realized they had no interior.
I'm very happy the shark had the intended effect, it even looked like in the video you stopped for a second to ponder the awaiting horror lol.
I really should move that second locker in that area though, it doesn't have anything inside it but it's hard to see that in it's current state.
Oh and the final child encounter is able to move through the turbines because of a bug in how the A* map is formed. Basically at the start of the game every tile raycasts to surrounding tiles to see if a link can be made between them. Since the tiles with turbines on them have the raycast starting within the collider, they detect nothing. Another fix for the post-jam update.
Also just in case you're wondering, the items on the shelf in the captain's quarters are just game boxes of other games I've made as an easter egg lol.
I also plan to add more polish and actual enemies to that second level, I decided to leave enemies out because I thought they would spoil the atmosphere with their jankiness. But it does leave the level feeling empty and tedious to navigate.
Thanks again for recording video of your playthroughs, they're incredibly valuable!
I did wonder about the enemies. But I did feel pretty slick dodging through the child to avoid his attacks while I composed myself.
The audio desync is me and my recording. It just happens sometimes. Not sure why.
On the backtracking I think it was a mixture of all 3. The lack of walls did confuse me a bit. There was a junction of 4 yellow tiles that confused me. I started to wonder if the map was showing the 3D side of the ground or something.
But I'd also forgotten about the door after I got the key, so I was probably backtracking a bit while I found the lead.
In the second video I think I went around searching for health packs.
Yeah, that was probably panic clicking the wrong slow.
The shark definitely gave me pause. XD I wanted to go in with a clear head.
I kinda figured about the games. I might have checked if I wasn't recording.
And you're welcome. It's always great to see a playthrough in action.
Great all-around package! The first area is very well decorated (though I can guess you were more rushed for the second one). The shelves and other furnishings really do make a difference, compared to an empty maze.
Speaking to the Offerings is very creepy, well done there. I also love Pathways Into Darkness. :)
Movement is a bit slow but I didn’t mind that as much, as it feels suitable for underwater.
Some cabinets being decorative and others containing necessary items is potentially unintuitive; it wasn’t really a problem, but I found the unopenable ones first and then almost didn’t bother clicking the others.
Combat is trivial in any place where you can move side to side, and it would do well to have some visual feedback when you damaged something, even if it’s only a flash or blink.
Thanks for playing!
The second level I did make much more quickly than the first lol. It was originally intended to have enemies and a lot more decorations than it ended up having. I’m happy the furnishings in the first level made it feel less empty though, I intentionally started making the level a couple days before end of jam so I could add more detail.
I’m really happy with how the offerings turned out so I’m glad to hear you liked them! The talking to the dead in Pathways always struck me as a better way of doing audio logs, I just wish I had more time to implement a proper conversation system like it.
Yeah the movement is definitely getting a second look post-jam, I’m glad it wasn’t too much of a hindrance for you.
The non-interactable cabinets was definitely an oversight, I was going to add them in as an openable object but of course the model has nothing on the inside. And I elected not to remove them as the level felt more empty without them. In hindsight I should have just put another table or sink in their place. You mentioned finding the non-interactable ones first, did you not open the first locker seen next to the start of the game? I may have to make that interaction more obvious.
The combat is another big shortcoming. It was an obvious issue even during development. Especially with the AI moving onto the same tile as the player rather than the tile NEXT to the player. I decided to focus on the other areas of the game to polish up, as I figured the game would probably be better having simple combat with a strong atmosphere rather than decent combat but a boring world. Definitely something to improve on for post-jam update and next year. I’ll be looking into pain animations for enemies in the post-jam update.
Thanks again for playing and for all the feedback!
One of the best atmospheres in the jam. Really well done. Very tense and very good audio work, keeping in line with the dated PS1 era (the banshee songs especially were sooo good). The game kept me tense all the way to the end when planting the explosives, I kept expecting to be jumped at all times.
Movement was well done, exploration and navigation were well laid out so that you didn't get lost. Combat was rather clunky, especially because mobs could just enter your tile and sit on top of you, making you unable to hit them. But hey, I'm not one to complain about combat since mine was very poor. I just used the knife and rifle in the game as I never actually got the spears to do anything I wanted or hit anything, but that's fine, since the knife and kiting mobs around was all you needed and it kept the tension up.
Very good entry!
Thanks for playing!
Good to hear you enjoyed the atmosphere and tension, I spent a lot of time in audacity so I’m happy it paid off! The siren songs I got from some free sample pack and just added reverb and distortion to make it sound underwater. A simple effect but really happy with how it turned out!
Yeah the combat and AI will be getting some love post-jam. I am curious though, you say the speargun never hit anything? It’s technically the most damaging weapon in the game and can kill the zombies in 2 hits. Do you mean it didn’t seem to damage enemies, or just that it fired too slowly?
Thanks again for playing and all the feedback!
The atmosphere is so so good, I found it to be very unnerving in such a great way. Alot of games really try too hard to be scary, and it starts to self-satirising, however this really hits the nail on the head tonally for me.
Sure the movement isn't super snappy, but to me that feels correct due to the setting so I quite liked it, it also added to the tension of the combat while I was frantically trying to kite the shark.
Everything is really consistent visually and I liked some of the little easter eggs in there. Overall it's really great and was the perfect length for me. Thank you.
Thanks for playing!
Yeah the atmosphere I tried to weave into every aspect of the game. Initially it was intended to be just an atmospheric dungeon crawler and not a horror dungeon crawler. Hence the lack of true jump scares.
I’m glad to hear the movement and combat largely worked for you! I still plan to adjust it post-jam since it was an issue for a number of players.
The visual consistency I honestly have to applaud the creators of the various asset packs for. I used about a dozen of them in this game and nothing jumps out as being obviously not a PS1 looking visual. And I’m happy you liked the Easter eggs, I always enjoy hiding them around. I think this is my third game to feature the game boxes of my previous projects lol. Also it’s awesome you liked the length of the game, I knew I wouldn’t have time for a long game so tried to fit everything into a couple quick levels. In hindsight I absolutely think it was the right call.
Thanks again for playing and all the kind feedback!
Found another bug. If you click the weapon to fight an enemy but has a dead sailor interactable behind it will activate him and that UI.
Now that I think about it I’m pretty sure I noticed that bug but forgot to fix it lol.
Probably the tensest entry i've played so far. Very good use of atmospheric sounds to effectively give off the feeling of being buried deep beneath the sea in a cramped ship.
The dedication the ps1 styling is really nice, and definitely helps it feel like a polished and completed package. I didn't really run into any bugs or issues besides the gun being removed after switching levels (although that didn't really matter). One thing I can say is that it felt quite easy up until I got trapped in a room with a banshee and a shark which was right at the end, but I came out of it alive so I guess that was like the final boss.
Personally I would have preffered it if the map didn't show any locations until you entered combat, it kind of ruins the suspence if you can just see an enemy on the map waiting there for you to turn around the corner.
Very solid game!
Thanks for playing, and the feedback!
I’m happy to hear that because that feeling is what a lot of my effort went towards!
This was my first real attempt at a PS1 graphics game so I’m glad you liked it. I guess it just shows the quality of the asset pack creators that I can use a dozen of them and have it look consistent!
So the reason the gun vanishes is because I never implemented saving values between levels. The inventory system in the game is incredibly hacked together, and there ended up being no enemies in the final level so I focused my time elsewhere.
I lean towards making my games easy in jams so that players can actually finish them. Had a bad experience in a jam once of players absolutely loving my game, but never making it to the end (and seeing the complex ending sequence I worked on) because they kept dying. Hmm, the fight with two enemies is actually unintentional. Did you just run past the shark before killing it or did it come back to life? (There’s only one shark enemy in the whole game)
The map probably would be better if it was an automap, but all I had time to figure out was just pointing the camera down from above and rendering it to a subviewport. The functionality to obscure enemies until they’re aggroed exists in the game but I just forgot to add it to all enemies and ran out of steam by the end. I’ll be addressing that post-jam.
Thanks again for playing, glad you enjoyed it!
Honestly i'm not sure what was up with the shark, it seemed to appear at the start of the area then float off the map, then sort of floated around randomly and ended up in the room outside the captains quarters where one of the banshee's also followed me. I didn't kill the shark the first time since I kind of assumed it was a patrolling enemy I'd have to avoid based on it's movements.
The comment about difficulty definitely makes sense, and I agree with you it's better to have an easier game for a jam like this. my own game kind of has that "fault" with being too easy as well haha.
Also makes sense about the map, I find there's always going to be something that suffers from the time-limit in a game jam and the maps probably one of the more acceptable things to be a bit weaker here.
Oh, that's strange. So the first time you see the shark it's a scripted sequence, I just didn't have time to hide the shark model leaving view lol. The shark is supposed to charge right at the player and fight you, I'm guessing it must have gotten stuck turning around. Goes to show how broken AI can be interpreted in different ways lol.
This is a very good entry, I really enjoyed playing it! I particularly liked the atmosphere and sound design. I did encounter a small bug where if you turn and move too close together it will start moving the player off the cardinal directions. If you do it close to a corner and fast enough it will let you go out of bounds and then you can walk through walls for the rest of the game, I thought that would make a cool speed run strat.
Thanks for playing!
Huh that’s weird, I’ve tried doing that so many times during development and it never worked. Maybe it only happens if you press them simultaneously, anyways I’ll check it out, thanks for letting me know!
I like the atmosphere that in the game a lot. The movement was sort of slow, but I wasn’t too bothered by that, but I would really have wanted to queue up one move/turn instruction. It left me kind of confused in the beginning about which key was strafe and which was turn because when I pressed forward and turn and I just moved forward, my mind went “I guess this is one of those games with strafe on Q/E” and then I pressed A/D to turn and I strafed and that took me a while to sort out.
The choice to show enemies on the minimap felt a bit odd. At least showing those that I hadn’t seen yet. Because the game did have a lot of suspense in the sounds and environment. But then being able to see the exact location took a quite a bit of that away.
I should also say that I though the, I’m not sure what exactly they were - things - one could click to get a bit of narration. I though they were just air or current or something like that coming up from the ground. It was only when I got close to the end that I accidentally clicked one and realized what they were.
Fighting was both nice and a bit off. It felt strange that the enemies could occupy the same tile as me. It also made the camera film out from inside their meshes. The enemies also could clip through obstacles in the world. Which felt wrong. But the here I think the slowness of one’s own movement and the long ready time after each attack worked very well with the dance around the enemy combat. And with scarcity of powerful ammo, having resort to the knife. It made for a good compliment to the suspense in the game in general.
The pacing there was also good, with a bit of a breather between the fights.
I think it could have been cool with letting loose more than one enemy after the player in the larger areas. In particular, since the end story was kind of building up towards something. The size of the final outside area was really a bit unnecessary as it is now. Why did I have to walk the last bit that didn’t have any story or enemies? There were a sequence of large rooms, and coming from a very large and scary area that felt like it could have had a shark. At least one of the last rooms could very well have had a couple of enemies that you can try and fight simultaneously or just run for it in panic. I think something like that would have been a more fitting climax.
I tried recording the playthrough but for some reason it just turned into a black screen with the sounds.
Thanks for playing!
I'm glad to hear you liked the atmosphere! If I'm honest I think of this game as more "atmospheric game" than straight up "horror game", or at least that was the intention.
Regarding the movement, I wanted to implement queued moves or allowing turns while moving, but after a couple hours of trying I didn't make any progress and decided to just move on. A number of people have mentioned it and I have it on the to-do list post-jam. I'll probably increase the movement speed a little bit too.
So initially I had started out NOT showing the enemies on the minimap until they start chasing the player. The problem was I had setup this system in a very hacky way where I had to manually disable the minimap icons, and so I just forgot to disable the minimap arrows after the first couple enemies. I agree it was confusing, because combined with the minimap not showing walls it resulted in almost everyone I saw playing thinking the enemy by the dead diver was the first enemy. I've heard arguments for and against showing the enemy icons before encountering them. A couple players described it as similar to seeing the Xenomorph on the little trackers in Alien, and other players like yourself saying it spoils the tension. I think if the AI were a bit more active than reactive like the genestealers in Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels it could have been tense, but as it stands I'll probably change it post-jam.
So the - things - are ghosts of the dead. They are the "anomalous signals commonly found near underwater human remains" as mentioned in the game page. I wasn't able to explain it well in-game so I think it confused a lot of people. But basically the apparitions are speaking to the player character in those distorted whispers you hear when first clicking on them. Those whispers are then decoded into the text displayed on screen. I should have explained those better, because I saw another video of a player walking right past all of the ghosts until reaching the Captain's Quarters. For context I got the idea from Pathways Into Darkness, an old FPS by Bungie where you could talk to dead people, but in that game you could actually type in topics to ask them about. I decided to keep the scope small and just limit it to one long line the dead say to the player and not add any ability for the player to speak back. Though from seeing the feedback it is confusing, with some players seeing them as literal audio logs. I mean functionally they are in hindsight, though they weren't directly intended as such.
The enemies being able to occupy the same tile as the player wasn't intentional, I just wasn't able to fix that in time. And the clipping through obstacles was also a bug that I only realized after release. Basically the way the map works is every tile is added into an A* map, then each point raycasts in all 4 directions, and if there's nothing detected between the points they're marked as bidirectional points. The problem comes in where the raycasts were not set to detect collisions if they spawned inside a collision object. So there's no real issues with the walls for example, but the enemies can swim through the turbines no problem because the A* points the turbines are on didn't detect any collision. I knew the combat was subpar, I just decided to focus on polishing every other aspect rather than have "ok" combat in a boring environment.
I am happy to hear the intentional parts of the combat worked for you though! I didn't want the player to be totally starved of ammunition, but I also didn't want it to be Doom. Same reason I spaced the fights out, hard to soak in the atmosphere if you're constantly fighting revived corpses.
The poor AI is actually why I never put more than one enemy in a fight at a time. To be honest I thought the eerie atmosphere of the game was going to be totally destroyed by the AI's shortcomings. I guess it's also why I continually think of the game as more of a dungeon crawler with an eerie atmosphere instead of a horror dungeon crawler. I genuinely did not think, and frankly still don't, that the mood would survive seeing multiple enemies clip into each other and turn 270 degrees to the right instead of 90 degrees to the left to face the player. As you mentioned the final area seems like it was made for a bigger fight, and it was! There was going to be sharks patrolling the area, and I even planned for some priestess type mermaids to be in the area right outside the pyramid and for some to swim out from the far distance of the deep ocean. By the final weekend I was strapped for time, and I knew the AI had issues, but I already had the level made. So I just left it empty so the player had the eerie experience of walking through the little forest of "offerings" talking to ghosts and waiting for something to happen. It was an anticlimax to be sure, one I hope to correct post-jam.
I would've loved a recording, but my best guess is the game is haunted. I saw a stream where the shark came back to life, and I personally experienced being attacked by an invisible enemy in the little area on the ship deck. I'm either a horror genius or a dunce, I'm not sure which :\
Thanks again for playing and leaving the detailed feedback!
Wow you out-wrote me here :)
Movement (and camera) is HARD. I half-failed there too even if I played around a month before the jam started and tried to get things pretty good.
I guess one relatively easy way to increase likelihood of players interacting with the apparitions would be a textprompt when facing them. Redesigning them to be less abstract and more humanoid ghost-like could be another. Finally if you want to give the player character a voice you could have a reaction event trigger if the player enters the area of one and hasn’t yet interacted with any. That when they leave the area the player character could say something like “What was that thing?”
I agree that showing enemies can be effective, and in particular if you feel like and they are in fact hunting you. But you also have a risk of players starting to play the map rather than the 3D world. And it also comes back what makes sense in the game world and with its logic. No easy answers for sure.
I agree with the struggles of the current AI, it’s probably best as you did to keep it simple and space out the encounters.
Mission status: Inconclusive
I love how everything feels super coherent, the visuals are consistent and great, enemies are interesting ones and their death animations look pretty good (I'm specially thinking about the killer whale). The game sounds great too. Movement and combat both feel not only appropriate but good too. Finally the story bits are well presented and interesting to read. Every part of the game reeks the underwater horror atmosphere so well.
Exploration is more linear and combat is easier than I like, no big deal in a short game whose main hook is definitely its atmosphere and which at least controls well.
This is a very cool game, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for playing!
I’m happy to hear you liked the atmosphere, because I built every part of the game with the intent to enhance it. There are a few little visuals I’d like to improve but I’m happy with it overall, I can’t say I’ve made too many games using a dozen asset packs that looks this consistent. The killer whale is a shark actually! I only wish I had time to make an actual death animation for the mermaid enemies.
Yeah the original idea was to have multiple floors of the shipwreck be explorable, but obviously that didn’t happen. I decided to go short but sweet with a smaller scope rather than burn myself out on a larger game.
Similar thing happened with the combat, I knew it had issues days before the deadline but decided to focus on the atmosphere and polish in other areas (i.e. the atmosphere) instead.
Thanks again for playing and leaving the feedback!
Really nicely implemented retro style, loved how I really felt retro underwater :) Atmosphere is dark and lonely, with all those grainy audio remnants were really cool.
Combat was a bit clunky, I was not sure if was hitting something, and using rifle on a shark seemingly did nothing (had no feedback from hitting).
Great job!
Thanks for playing, and the feedback!
I put a lot of my effort into the atmosphere of the game so I'm glad you liked it!
Yeah the combat doesn't have nearly enough feedback. I basically had a choice later in the jam of improving the combat or improving the rest of the game and I chose the latter. I definitely plan to update that post-jam. The rifle does do damage, but the blood puff that spawns when you hit an enemy flows out from the enemy model, and since the shark moves so fast it effectively obscures the particle effect.
I love the setting and story of the game. Underwater setting is always cool especially if you can pull it off and you absolutely did. The amibence of the game with the superb PS1 aesthetic and ambience sound is very well crafted. I especially loved the enemy design. The creepy sound effects of the enemies, glowing blue eyes, they really look scary(The shark is my favorite).
The movement didn't bother me that much but turning around could a littler faster. Afterall the game is set underwater and you cannot move the same speed under the water as you do on the surface. I think you managed to give the immersion to the player that they are really underwater perfectly. With sound effects, bubbles, particle effects etc.
Combat is intuitive, it feels very good. There's a little glitch which others mentioned as well. Enemies get to the same tile as you do to attack the player. I think you did enemy pathfinding with an algorithm like A*. You can solve this by setting the target for enemy one or two tiles away from the player, that's how i did it.
Storytelling is top notch. I love that you get tidbits of information about the story with those audio logs(?). The ending was a banger, i totally dig it.
My final thought are i think it's one of the strongest contenders of the jam especially in terms of visuals, atmosphere and setting. It plays more like a horror game than a dungeon crawler minus the grid based movement although i like it anyway. I think this is a an excellent game to complete in 9 days and it's very polished as well. Sooo double thumbs up!!
Thanks so much for playing and the feedback!
This was my first attempt at a PS1 style game, and my first attempt at something spooky in several years so I'm happy you liked it! The enemies for the most part came together better than I expected, though I wish I had more time to work on the model for the mermaid enemies. I did put a lot of time into the sound effects and ensuring they were distinct, creepy and sounded like they were travelling through water in a PS1 game lol. The glowing eyes I had thought of not only because they're creepy, but they also allow the player to see enemies in the distance. I wanted the player to find the enemies eerie, but not because they suddenly jump out of nowhere (well except for the shark I guess lol).
I'm definitely gonna be looking at adjusting the movement speed post-jam. I think it can work for when the player is actually progressing and encountering enemies, because I find it builds tension more than if the player zooms through the level. But it is clearly tedious when having to backtrack or get through the second level. I'm happy to hear the underwater effects worked, during development I was kinda worried it would feel like the player was just in a dark warehouse or field.
That's surprising actually, every other player I've seen so far has said the combat felt unresponsive, which I tend to agree with. But hey I'm happy you liked it! Regarding the AI yeah this was technically my second time using A* navigation, but I was never able to get the enemy attacks right. I'll have to try your suggestion after the jam, during development I decided to leave the AI broken so I could focus on every other aspect, which I think in hindsight was the right decision!
So the "audio logs" are technically the dead speaking to the player character directly. The distortions are effectively ghosts, or mentioned in the game's description as "anomalies", which speak in that distorted whisper which is then decoded by the players fancy hydrophone. I took the idea from Bungie's old FPS Pathways Into Darkness, where you can actually talk to dead characters by entering keywords. I wanted to trim down the scope and decided to just have the dead talk to the player once, and the player can't speak back. I wanted to have a bigger ending, but in hindsight I think the current one is more fitting for cosmic horror.
It's kinda funny to say now but I actually didn't really intend this to be a horror game, it was more intended to be a dungeon crawler with an eerie environment. I was more inspired by the Metro series and Space Hulk: Vengeance of The Blood Angels than I was Resident Evil or even Silent Hill. But I'm really happy you enjoyed it and thanks for the kind words!
Thanks again for playing and the feedback!
I destroyed the pyramid :)
Man wow, what a rich atmosphere. At first I thought the movement was way too slow, but in retrospect I think like tank controls in other games it actually added to the creepy survival horror aspect, it could still probably be a bit faster but the slow pace of moving through was on-theme for the underwater horror aspect.
In terms of visuals and audio I love it, so spooky and crunchy. Those body bags at the end are super creepy. I also got a fright the first time I faced one of the faster enemies (Siren I think?) and they rushed at me. Some interesting environmental story telling as well, like the spear in the dudes side that matches the audio log.
I was a bit confused whether or not my attacks were registering on the enemies, but they eventually died so I guess they were. That would be my primary piece of feedback, adding some more juice so I know when I connect.
Really cool entry, well done!
Hey thanks for playing and the feedback!
Yeah the movement is definitely something I'm looking into post-jam. I think it works quite well when the player is progressing and facing enemies, but is annoying when backtracking or walking through the second level. Initially it was even slower because the player was going to be in like an armoured diving suit, since the game was pretty heavily inspired by the Space Hulk: Vengeance of The Blood Angels PS1 game. I left it a bit slower partly because, as you said, it's underwater and also it wouldn't be as scary if the player could move like Doomguy. That being said, I could probably speed it up at least a little.
I'm glad you liked the crunchiness! As I was working on it I kept thinking, well this sounds and looks like a creepy PS1 game to me but will players like it or just find it annoying? Because I had never done a PS1 style game before, and I wanted it to look and feel like something that could've existed on PS1. The field of body bags is probably the area I found the eeriest too, like even when making the level it gave off the feeling that one of them is going to move. I love them as they serve as storytelling, a creepy visual, and fill in an otherwise empty area. Regarding the enemies I actually didn't really intend for there to be any big jumpscares in the game. I actually intended it to be more of an eerie shooter in the vein of the Metro series, or Space Hulk. I actually wanted to do more with the environmental storytelling and have the Children carry around the goggles of dead divers as trophies, which was partly alluded to with the goggle on a spear in the hallway leading into the first encounter.
You're totally right about the combat feedback. I only added a particle effect for like a puff of blood coming off the enemies when hit, which is hard to see since it's blue (except for the shark), and since enemies keep moving otward the player it can be obscured by the enemy model. There's also a stabbing sound effect that plays when a hit lands, but it turned out to be too subtle. I'll be addressing that post-jam with hit animations, more obvious particle effects and actual pain sounds. I knew the feedback was an issue days before I submitted, but I decided to spend the time building the atmosphere and the levels rather than the combat. Because I figured this game would either be spooky and immersive with mediocre combat, or bland with decent combat. And last year I focused too much on player and NPC mechanics to the point I never got beyond finishing a single small tutorial level, so I definitely wanted to avoid that!
Thanks again so much for playing adn taking the time to leave feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Great game! You put a some efforts into this I can tell. I played with headphones and highly recommend it.
The scenery is great and the audio engulf you into the underwater, you feel submerged. Combat was simple but effective.
You can end up on same tile as the enemy, not sure if this has to be addressed.
Holding forward to move is a thing which I really appreciate, but the movement could be faster. Some games like this you don't want to move to fast but then queuing up next move so it feels more responsive is a suggestion that I think would improve significantly.
The lost souls audio pick up was a neat thing which I think you implemented well. Story wise you did a really good job! Well Done!
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
I’m happy the effort on the audio and atmosphere side showed, because I spent a lot of time trying to make everything look and sound like it was underwater lol.
The combat absolutely needs to be addressed, the AI is supposed to stop on the tile next to the player, but instead moves to the same tile. That and the relatively feeble hit feedback were known issues as I was developing the game, but I decided to double down on the other elements rather than have decent combat but a boring environment.
The movement speed is definitely something I’ll be looking into. I didn’t want it to be too fast partly because it helped the tension, but also I didn’t want players to unintentionally slam face first into an enemy. The queueing moves is a good idea though, one I actually had thought of implementing but just decided I didn’t have time for it.
The talking dead I’m quite happy with, the audio I thought was creepy but wasn’t sure if players would just dismiss it as “cheap” or weird. And I tried to keep the writing in the Lovecraft vein without overdoing it, I’m happy to hear it was successful!
Thanks so much again for playing and commenting!
A fantastic entry! My only criticism is that the controls are painfully slow.
You can watch my playthrough here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2108733841?t=02h20m12s
Thanks for playing! Sorry I missed the stream but thanks for the timestamp, I’ll check it out after work!
Very nice! It had a spooky atmosphere; I suffer from a bit of thalassophobia even in games, so it had me really on edge, lol.
Thanks for playing my game so quickly after you promised to! Almost makes me feel lazy for only getting through a few entries so far lol.
While I apologize for the anxiety I do also take it as an achievement my game was able to induce it! Strong atmosphere was the number one thing I wanted and it’s been awesome seeing how many people like it!
Thanks again for playing and the feedback!
I really like the mood of this one. Everything tied well together in a nice underwater experience. Really good stuff. Also I got eaten by a shark which I think is very on brand! The very slow death animation of the evil divers was super fun.
Thanks for playing!
Sorry to hear the shark got ya, did you manage to make it to the end? I sadly didn’t have time to implement checkpoints or saving.
Tbh I probably shouldn’t have slowed the animations down so much but it looked good enough at the time lol.
I’m really happy to hear the atmosphere was good. I worked on building it up every way I could so it’s nice to know that paid off!
I really like the mood of this one. Everything tied well together in a nice underwater experience. Really good stuff. Also I got eaten by a shark which I think is very on brand!