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A jam submission

Watery GravesView game page

Explore sunken locations and calm their haunted hulls
Submitted by BoisterousNatur (@boisterousnatur), ReapTheBlackSheep, cnharlan (@notanalien4sure) โ€” 5 hours, 10 minutes before the deadline
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Watery Graves's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Hosts' Choice#1n/an/a
Aesthetics#24.3574.357
Sound Design#63.7863.786
Story#93.0713.071
Enjoyment (Best Game)#143.1433.143
Horror#172.7862.786

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+2)

The world and view of everything was very consistent (I liked the style and aesthetic), I liked how you had to cycle through the cameras. For me personally, I'm a music person, I liked the simplicity of your tune and how it looped back it was pretty consistent, you also built up suspension by the rhythm and maybe mm9th chords? I also liked the section that contrasted against the main predominant theme. Your sound design was clean, after a bit of playing the sounds indicated directly to what was happening in the game, and you didn't need to swap cameras all the time. Great job overall! Ty for posting!

Developer(+1)

Yooo thanks for the comment, I appreciate it a lot. This was my first attempt at doing the audio for a game so I'm glad you liked what I was going for. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not a music theory guy, so it was purely intuitive in how I constructed the loops (just trying different synth patches and chords until it came together). But it sounds like you picked up on what I was trying to do with both the music and the sound design, so that makes me really happy to hear that it was working as intended.

Submitted(+2)

I love games where you play as a "background" character, who isn't in the action, and this game is one of the coolest examples of that I've seen. It reminded me of another game from a previous jam - https://aegistus.itch.io/unsafe-passage which was one of my favourite from that jam, too. I think the actual game part could do with some punching up, as there wasn't really much to do except explore, and that takes away from the horror, because then it almost feels like it's pure luck, you have no real impact. I think giving the player the option to "Pull the plug" on the operation would have put more responsibility on them to try and evaluate the situation and make the right calls. 

Developer

Wow, yeah Unsafe Passage is definitely going for a similar concept, thanks for giving it a shoutout, I'm going to be playing it for a bit to see all the ways they tackled similar gameplay beats. I'm hoping we can beef up the gameplay of our project sometime in the future, unfortunately, it was a case of us running out of time and being fairly inexperienced in working under the time crunch (only one of our members has ever done a game jam before). Thank you for taking the time to play and comment. Means a lot, and motivates us to do more.

Submitted(+2)

I really dig the concept and the ambience. At some point i even thought a monster was going to get me because i heard some noise around me. I think  it would be interesting to combine it with some fnaf element where you are actually on the map too and you're as vulnerable as your crew members

Developer(+1)

at some point it was on our list of ideas to have crew interactions trigger some events for the player. It just didn't make the cut for the jam unfortunately. glad you enjoyed it! 

Submitted(+2)

Cool game, the aesthetics and sound design were great. The writing was really good as well, which is important, because it needs to be with a game like this where so much of the player engagement comes from the text. The game does a great job making you feel all alone and responsible for your crews safety. One suggestion (take this with a grain of salt, because it might just be personal preference) is to make the enemies easier to understand. I was often in a fight with an enemy that wasn't in the region I was moving to which felt unfair. Reminds of GMTK video "Good AI is predictable".

Developer(+2)

Thank you! I agree about the enemy encounters, and I think we were aware that it wasn't super clear to the player when we submitted. If we had more time I think that would be one of the top things we'd look at fixing. Thanks a ton for the feedback.

Developer(+1)

we have definitely had playthrough tests were 3 enemies spawned at the same location and insta wiped us haha. Definitely a thing to learn from and improve on in the future! Thank you so much for the feedback!

Submitted(+2)

really cool minimalistic survival horror. The atmosphere is strong, and the simple appearance of a monster icon in the map gives me the chills when i'm out of ammo. It really has the potential for a bigger game. Also the use of multiple cameras gives the game a claustrophobic feeling that takes the player out of the comfort zone.

Developer(+1)

thank you for the feedback! I hadn't thought about how it gives it a claustrophobic feel. But now that you mention it I see it! 

Submitted(+2)

Sorry, left the comments in the page of your game.

Just Rated it is amazing!