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Pearl of the Deep's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Relevance to the chosen theme(s) | #9 | 4.105 | 4.105 |
| Genre Interpretation | #10 | 3.947 | 3.947 |
| Overall | #13 | 3.544 | 3.544 |
| Enjoyment | #16 | 3.474 | 3.474 |
| Creativity | #16 | 3.579 | 3.579 |
| Sensory | #16 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| Gameplay Polish | #29 | 2.737 | 2.737 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit either (or both) genres?
It is a Metroidvania about Magical Girl (sorry!)
Chosen theme(s) and relevant explanations
Pearl is the most relevant, but others are also used to some extent
Team/Developer
matte, Mechanika Charlotte, krillbat, Shiro13, Temakichi, Maladaptive_M, 0x22, Hoohoo, fdreger, Saraa, Dré Ayala, Michelle Goff, Ren_, CD-RR0M
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Comments
Oops. I played it a bit, thought Iâd come back later to finish it, but I forgot to come back and rate it. Anyway since it was in the category of âpearl mermaidâ style entries like our game I got a particular interest in it (it was the first I saw to implement the swimming mechanic that we dropped, although I found another one later)
From the little I played, I liked the fact that enemies are just animals living in their environment and just doing their things. You donât feel like killing them all, only if they stand in your way, and you feel more inclined to preserve nature as much as possible.
Unfortunately I got lost in a loop in the bottom-right corner of the map and couldnât proceed. The tile-precision minimap looks great though, it should help me going on when I resume the game later. Now that rating phase is over, Iâll wait a bit for all teams to upload whatever patches they prepared for their game.
I finished the game! And then again at 100%!
Only thing I havenât tried is a different reply at the Celestial Guardianâs question. I should probably restart the game once to see the initial lore text anyway, because I saw it a while ago and forgot about it, and apparently itâs important to understand the Dream Guardianâs story. Maybe it would be better to split lore more across the story and remind player of previous events when meeting Celestial Guardian so we remember what we fight for (although I understand that the jam game was meant to be finished in one session).
Speaking of which, while the game looked super long and collecting pearls looked daunting, once I unlocked fast swimming everything went pretty fast. It feels like skills were meant to be unlocked more gradually since have double jump + wall jump + flight as the end was too much. Flight didnât have an animation ready so it looked more like a âdebugâ skill to make sure player can explore the full level and finish the game at 100% (it could have been unlocked after defeating the last boss, as a cool ânow you can become Super Sonic anywhereâ bonus). Maybe it was meant to be a true skill like gliding (with some slow descent like Knuckles). For a proto animation, I think the Swimming left/right animation would have been a better placeholder (although probably even funnier to see her swim in the air). Anyway, it did help me to get all the pearls including those tricky ones in the tidal area.
Very impressive dialogue boxes, I didnât remember them from my first run (maybe they were added in a later update, or I was confusing them with the first lore text which was very barebone unlike dialogues). And would probably require a lot of work on localization (but might as well not care too much about it for the jam).
Now for some issues Iâve encountered:
Dialogues
Level
Combat
App / Input
Daaaaaaamn just finished the game 100% and I have to say, I really fell in love with the story overall, the mechanics, the level design and the charming voice acting + borders for the dialogue-boxes!
I am a sucker for Metroidvania and platformers, so this game really brought a lot of joy to me! A big plus for this game was the pearl counter and minimap so for me as a completionist made it a lot easier to find everything! The enemies were super cute e.g. the WIWI-Cat and the snake <3
I really loved finding the water-pearl that made swiming so much more satisfying and the flying abbility was just funny overall to use, even though it seemed sooooo OP XD
There are some minor issue I can talk about just to let you guys know (it really isnt much and nitpicking on a high level):
Putting enemies at a start of a screen, when transitioning (sea area) is a risky choice.. I nearly died and this could cause some frustration if you actually die!
I've softlocked myself in an area where I needed the double jump to proceed. The bat enemy just flew up and I wasnt able to hit it anymore unfortunately. Thanks to the reset mechanic I didnt need to restart the game though so... much appreciated <3
Like stated the flying ability seems kinda busted, was still pretty funny to use!! xD I would have turned it into a more "floating" like ability. But other than that it seems fine, becuase needing it for the story progression!
The only "big" complain I see in this game is the endboss.. Its pretty easy to defeat and rather boring in comparison to the rest of the game.. But I dont mind at all, because the rest was really really enjoyful to play!
In summary:
Overall a very charming gaming, awesome artworks, really nice story and I enjoyed to play through it and beat the game!! <3
Much love, keep up the good work and game designing and I hope I can play future games of you guys again! Also.. on a side note really quick.. I wanna voice act something now.. xD
(Sorry for some spelling mistakes, I am from Germany LMFAO)
~ Alucifex
Pretty cool game! The character portraits were beautiful, and the music was quite serene and soothing. The voice acting was nice, although the tone of the writing was kinda all over the place, and the constant cracking of jokes made it hard to take any of the story seriously.
The player sprite looked like it was a different resolution and art style from everything else, but the sprite itself and the animation were very nice. It reminded me a bit of old school point and click adventure games for some reason.
The tileset looked a bit generic, and a lot of the areas felt a bit empty and unnecessary, especially since I was pretty much zooming past everything anyway as soon as I got the water pearl upgrade. I think the deep water areas were my favorite, since the darkness effect made the emptiness feel more ominous.
The movement was pretty nice and responsive, and the heavy focus on swimming sections was a cool twist on the Metroidvania genre! Entering and leaving water felt a bit awkward and abrupt, though I guess that's kind of inevitable without dedicated player animations for those things, which is obviously a tall order in a gamejam.
The combat was... functional, I guess? Truth be told, I didn't really bother fighting much of anything outside the scripted ambushes and the final boss. Most enemies were far too slow and predictable to ever hurt me anyway, and bats were kinda annoying to hit due to the player being unable to direct her swings upwards on land, so I just opted to leave them behind. Underwater combat was more interesting thanks to the directional swings, but it was still far easier to just swim past everything.
The final boss was a bit underwhelming, being basically just a regular enemy, but I guess that's gamejam limitations for you! (And hooray for nonbinary representation!)
Overall, the game's a bit rough around the edges and maybe somewhat overextended, but there are definitely signs of greatness in the character artwork and the snappy controls. Good job!
The sound effects are pretty solid overall, but the movement sounds felt a bit off with the reverb, might work better if it was cleaner. I really liked the soundtrack though. Making 9 tracks in that time is honestly super impressive.
The thumbnail looks great, and I had a lot of fun with the water mechanics and having full voice acting was really cool and added a lot.
Also, the crabs and bats made me laugh haha felt like our worlds were kinda connected, especially with the swimming and transformation đ
Great stuff overall!
Loved the portrait and protagonist art, as well as how her appearance changed as you got upgrades. Platforming is solid, but melee attacks felt a bit strange. Maybe it was due to lack of time, but the final boss felt underwhelming.
The experience was complete and solid though. Great work!
Having a fully voice acted story in a game jam is really impressive, but unfortunately I really did not enjoy said story. Leilana was incredibly obnoxious and I found myself skipping through every line of her dialogue - her snarky, overly modern dialogue did not fit the rest of the game's tone at all. The dialogue art was well done but I do have to wonder if the game might've been better without the dialogue sequences and with more dev focus on the game proper.
Visuals are fine but clearly unfinished - lot of undecorated rooms, janky animations and a complete lack of backgrounds. I do also just feel like I'm generally not a fan of this kind of high-res pixel art style - this kind of resolution is high enough that it makes pixellated artwork just look kind of crunchy and aliased since you can't easily make out individual pixels.
The platforming felt fine but unexceptional. I feel like I didn't get much of a chance to explore a lot of the abilities since they get thrown at you in big batches and there didn't seem to be many noteworthy platforming challenges. Combat felt really bad though - I can't really put my finger on some of the issues, but I did notice that the cooldown between attacks seemed weirdly inconsistent - I'd sometimes be able to do two attacks in a row, but I'd then have an awkwardly long cooldown before I could attack again, and then other times it would only let me attack once in a combo? It all felt really confusing - I think if there was meant to be some kind of proper combo or stamina system or whatever it was that was blocking me from attacking that clearly wasn't communicated at all.
Boss dying in three hits after being massively hyped up was a pretty big anticlimax. I take it there wasn't time for a proper bossfight?
Most of the art looks great, but the protagonist sprites look like they were shrunken down too much, they give the impression that they were intended to be bigger proportionally with the rest of the game.
A really calming main theme for the music, very fitting with the whole underwater thematic of the game.
Very cool, fast to 100%, i did however never found the 20th pearl, so i can only assume it was a trick and there was only 19 pearls to begin with /s
The game, however, made me kill a kitty, and thus that makes it the worst game of this jam, sorry i donât make the rules.
First off, wonderful art for the portraits and character design! The Message box UI being unique per character was also really nice. The armor changing every upgrade was also great. I love the crab and I did not hit a single crab. They're my friend. I was not expecting voice acting the whole way. Really wonderful job there. I liked the traversal by water and air. Swimming up waterfalls is a crazy feat hahaha. I also appreciate the map and pearl tracking! Overall had a good time playing through this! Thank you for making this game!
Amazonian Olympic swimmer in the making.
Great game. I enjoyed it voice over and story are cool things. due to short attention span I didn't skim though story, and I guess lost at the end. After beating purple guardian is it end of the game? Game didn't ended so I confused but map and all powerups was unlocked. Cool idea of char changing cosutume remided me heavy metal f.a.k.k 2 lol. I noticed only few issues with sounds when and idk character animations scaled weirdly? Diagonal swimming blures character. Over perfect entry not too long not too short.
Accidental blurring turned out to be a clever implementation of the feeling of rippling water without using a special shader đ
After completing the adventure, the game continues so that people can discover all the rooms and collect the remaining pearls if something was missed (current progress can be viewed by pressing the Tab key). Or just have fun running and swimming around.
This is a really outstanding and complete entry! It really shows that you had a full team behind this game. I really like your use of water to gate the progression of the player both in breath and current. You've got great pixel art with plenty of characters and multiple sprites for the player and familiars! Voice acting really stands out in a jam as well, it's very impressive that the entire thing is voiced.
I think my two only real pieces of feedback for you are I think the sound that plays when the player takes damage is a little too loud, and I think the double jump gated jumps need to be made just a tad higher. With how Leilana brings her legs up in the jump animation it looks like you should be able to make this jump.
Outstanding job! I haven't played many submissions yet, but I won't be surprised if this turns out to be one of the top ones.
I was trying to jump in there too đ Thank you for the helpful feedback.
I felt a bit lost when I ran around in circles twice. The waterfalls as a one-way system are an interesting concept. As a platformer, itâs quite solid.
If you feel lost, hold the Tab button to view the map đ
Nice work! the voice actress for Leilana was great and i liked the different costume changes as well. I like the different powers, but I really enjoyed the challenge of balancing coming up for air in the water sections so i was a bit sad when it got taken away from the dashing through the water power. Pretty good use of the pearl theme and i think i see unity theme in there as well?
I got two powers, but on the way to the third i got stuck in a wall sorry, but overall a pretty fun time : )
You can press 5 to get out of the wall if you get stuck đ