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A jam submission

Under Water TacticsView game page

My first Game for the Game Jam, Playing Two levels, in a turn based Game
Submitted by TheBookOfT — 3 days, 14 hours before the deadline
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Under Water Tactics's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sounds/Music#13.7503.750
Graphics/Visuals#24.2504.250
Fun - How fun is it?#23.5003.500
Controls - How well does it control?#23.5003.500
Overall#23.2143.214
Tactical - How tactical is it?#23.2503.250
Innovation - How unique are the mechanics?#52.0002.000
Theme - How well does it match the theme?#52.2502.250

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How large was your team?
1

What tools/engine were used to build the game?
Unity

Will you continue to work on the game?
Until the end of The Jam

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Well done, really good job, especially for a single person team. We felt that your game was the most "tactical" of all the submissions to the jam.

The graphics were probably the best of the jam, even the clutter decals like blood splats and newspapers added a lot to the ambience. The video screens, some partly off the walls, were good too. 

The sound was good, but also restrained, so it was in the 3D space, but you could pan away from it to lower the volume. Sound effects for gun shots, explosions and footsteps were all nice additions.

The AI, for the most part, was competent. It was nice to see enemies moving into cover when they didn't have enough action points to keep firing. We did see the AI seem to get stuck in a corner at one point though, seemingly trying to move to a unit that wasn't there.

The camera angles were good, and the controls worked well, although a bit of mouse interaction for camera movement/rotation would have been nice. Sometimes the scenery got in the way of camera angles, for example when you moved the camera into an unexplored area the camera went black. Having the fog of war was nice though so you didn't have any idea what was through the next door until you opened it. The third person shooting sequence was a nice touch too. It was slightly frustrating only being able to see 1 AP of potential movement at a time, meaning you couldn't assess whether you could reach an enemy, and fire a pistol for the last AP, without committing to the move to find out you would fall short.

On the weapons, the grenades felt like they were underpowered, compared to the rifle, although they both seemed to take the same AP. Is this because they were unlimited? We had no idea what the area of effect of the grenade was and which units it would impact before we threw it, making it a random decision. There was no feedback on the damage, chance to hit or action points needed to fire, for weapons which made any decision you made arbitrary and uninformed. We missed shots with a rifle when we were on the adjacent tile to the enemy and had no idea why, or if choosing a different weapon or place to fire from would have made a difference. What was nice, and made an informed decision, was when you showed whether enemies were in range or not when a weapon was selected.

The health bar was just a bar with no scale on it so you had no idea whether you could be killed by a unit with a particular weapon or not, making it hard to know whether to run for cover or whether to run into the fight. The damage from weapons was unknown on the health bar scale and also, it wasn't clear if the damage varied with each shot, or whether it was fixed. All these things help you make an informed tactical decision, like choosing whether to attack with a knight or a bishop in chess.

There seemed to be cover provided by some parts of the scenery, but it wasn't obvious which places were more in cover than others. This meant you couldn't make an informed decision about the safest route to move, while not being shot at the end. An explicit cover mechanic would have made this valid to reason about.

 The environment "Interactables" were a nice touch with the doors and health pickups. Also having to destroy crates with a grenade as a puzzle to progress was a great addition to the level. This might also explain why grenades are unlimited because if you'd run out it would be game over. Perhaps you should be able to shoot the crates with a rifle or pistol as well?

Character animations were nice, with what looked like rag-doll deaths, and the enemy were clearly aquatic which was on point for the theme, although you weren't actually engaging in combat underwater. The theme was overall only paid lip service, with no specific under water related mechanics that we saw in the 44 minutes we played the game on the first level. If it was after this then we'd suggest putting jam theme content earlier in the play through as many people won't spend more than 10 minutes playing before moving on to the next game.

We did find the game very hard. We steadily lost units and felt as though they were stacked against us. With this level of enemy opposition, you might want to have some single use superpowers, or the Bravado mechanic from Hard West 2, to redress the balance.

Congratulations on completing your submission, and best of luck with developing it in the future. You might well have a real game on your hands here.

Host(+1)

Great job!  I really liked the music and I loved the cinematic shooting camera! I agree with tcinteractive about level one being hard because of the lack of cover, I lost a soldier!

Submitted(+1)

I liked it, very neat, and aesthetically, the game looks excellent. The first level was more challenging for me than the second one; the first firefight in a narrow hallway doesn't provide much room to maneuver, making it difficult to take cover. The second level I liked much more; there's a good distribution of cover and enemies.

(+1)

it was okay but book level 2 i was thinking it was going to be longer it was quick and easy and the box thing was confusing also add a way to turn down the music or block it