I absolutely love digging into game lore, and your development story completely captivated me! The tomb-raider/debt-collector premise is truly unique, especially how you tied the core mechanics directly into the narrative of being an unwitting guinea pig. It’s truly clever.
Your thought process actually mirrored ours a lot. Like you, we initially considered making an unfair platformer to "trick" the player, but it felt a bit too safe and not quite exciting enough. We spent our entire first day just brainstorming. We flirted with a "sheep and wolves" concept but got stuck on making the mechanics actually fun. Eventually, the theme "Trust no one" led us to think about Papers, Please. We quickly realized that matching that scope in a week was impossible, but it sparked our core mechanic: what if, instead of checking documents, you were a scanner checking machines?
That led to researching and designing a sonar system. Our first prototype had players checking which submarines were safe to let into a base. The problem? Differentiating them by images or electromagnetic waves was too easy and just wasn't very fun. So, we flipped the script: instead of choosing trustworthy targets, the game defaults to treating everyone as an enemy. Players then have to earn upgrades to literally "learn to trust."
I completely related to your struggles with the art! We aren't brilliant artists either (though for what it's worth, I think your game's visuals turned out great despite the time crunch!). To keep the scope manageable, we designed the game to rely on minimal graphics without sacrificing the atmosphere, which meant I spent a huge chunk of the jam learning pixel art and other UI stuff on the fly.
I'm so glad we both managed to survive the week and get our projects across the finish line. That’s a brief look into the lore of Sub Sonar. We're currently working on a post-jam update, and given how thoughtfully you designed your own gameplay loop, getting your analytical feedback would be a massive help. I'd be thrilled if you gave it a try when you have the time. Thanks for sharing your story, and for reading mine!