chevie i was already afraid of playing subnautica, you didn't have to convince me further, but i appreciate the effort!
seriously tho this was so cool!! so creepy!! so mysterious!! felt like the opening to a full length horror game. i know the whole theme of the jam is a fractured/incomplete story but this left me wanting to know more so much aaaaa.
(SPOILERS)
i love how many concepts and mysteries are presented within such a short amount of time; the sea creatures critters, the crystals, the (i'm guessing) AI that gives the warnings, the mission the divers were trying to do, the dead diver and their message, what happened to the red diver by the end... it's all so intriguing and there's so many elements that the plot can be interpreted in a million different ways and that's awesome. i'd love to hear what inspirations you borrowed from when making this, the intrigue and atmosphere are super strong! :>
oh my god the sounds??? probably my favorite audio design of all your games. the watery and the crunchy and the echoey and the BWAAAAAAM and the voice distortion at the end! and you recorded all of it yourself?? friggin hell that's impressive. i can only aspire to be as insane as you /pos. and your use of colour and designs is amazing! love the cyan-ish blues and rusty browns and gross yellows, everything being (relatively) bright and saturated despite being in the depths of the ocean kinda gives the visuals a fairytale vibe? if that makes sense? and the creature critter designs woah!! they're so cool! i love how they're just like, in the background, or they'll sometimes react to the diver but not attack them. they look scary but we're the intruder here so it almost seems like they're more scared of us than we're scared of them (either that or they don't mind the divers' presence that much, which is fair cuz they're very tiny in comparison haha). they look almost recognizable, somewhat similar to real animals, but not quite, and that makes them all the more intimidating. honorable mention to the shadowy fin right at the front of the screen, i audibly gasped when i saw it haha. aaaaa the atmosphere is so goddamn cool!
at the shipwreck part i got a bit confused, since the scene was taking a long time to continue and i kept thinking that i needed to do something? and i didn't really understand what was happening (though maybe that was intentional). and tbh by the end i felt that i wanted more out of the story, another hint towards the plot or characters or lore. though to be fair, like i heard one time, "if your biggest criticism of something is that you want more of it, it must be doing something right" haha.
idk if this was just a one-off for you or if you're thinking on continuing it, but i'd love to sea (get it?) more from this world! this got me hooked (get it?) and if you make more games about the ocean they'll reel me in (get it?) every time, they're always bangers. always love to see another game from you! <3 (also idk if you could tell but i could not think of a single sea pun for the entire comment until the end so i'm using all my arsenal here haha)