Thanks for playing!
(Obligatory spoiler warning.)
Your idea that the first treasure should be spawned sooner is a great one that I’ll look into once the jam is over. It could even happen on the first scan. I also like the idea of indicating cave entrances and giving more cues to help orient players.
A huge challenge with this game was getting the frame rate to a stable place. With the world geometry being generated in real time, it’s difficult to handle questions like “what is the closest cave entrance?” or “is this sound occluded by something else?” when so much time is dedicated to collision detection. Given more time I certainly would have found better solutions to those problems so I could solve some of the issues you outlined. But for now, if you get stuck, you can start a new game without losing any of your loot!
I understand that navigation can be difficult. By the end of the jam it really clicked for me (in one sitting I got below 7,000m with dozens of treasures) but it’s wrong for me to assume that my successful session equals an accessible experience. For now I can at least explain how scanning works:
Basically it shoots rays out from you in 17 directions (that form a hemisphere ahead or behind you), finds the nearest solid surface, and then sequences their distances into a series of tones. The sequence is from top to bottom, with higher octaves above you and lower octaves below you. Louder tones mean they are closer. Then they’re positioned in a stereo field so you can construct a mental space (like “there’s a wall to my right but the ceiling is very high”).
You’re right that this should have been outlined in the manual, but I was having trouble articulating it with text. That means it probably needs some work to be more intuitive and explainable. With more time, an audio cue screen or a learning environment would definitely help too.
Thanks again for the feedback.