| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sensory | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Enjoyment | #10 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.844 | 3.844 |
| Metroidvania | #25 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Execution | #33 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Unity
Team/Developer
Joaquin Royer, Jeff Stevenson, Ryan Diaz Rousselot, Sam Valdes
External assets
N/A
Prizes eligibility
LearnIndie
Hello,
I see the great value and potential behind this game. And art direction, visuals, sound, atmosphere are really high quality.
I wish to understand: at some point, I removed room 12 with the PC, and it looks like I got locked. Could i reverse that situation?
Congratulations on the entry!
Cheers
I really loved this game! Although it was hard for me to get very far because of the enemies. I felt like it was a 50/50 chance they would pop up from somewhere without me seeing them, so I would start by taking damage, then I would launch all 3 torpedoes to make them go away, then repair my leaks, reload, then keep going, but then they would come back (or new ones I hadn't seen), and kind of repeat this process. This would make me retreat to a safe area to fix everything and reload, but then I would lose my progress and go back in again. Don't get me wrong I thought everything was great! I just felt like the enemy pressure counteracted the exploration a bit too hard, maybe I need to learn their patterns a little better. Amazing job!
Thank you so much for playing! One of our main visions with the design of enemies and combat encounters was for players to have to really learn the enemy behaviors and patterns as if they were really in the world and exploring an uncharted area of the ocean for the first time. However, I think with the smaller length and map of our game given the time of the jam, this definitely does feel a little overly confusing or punishing at times like you mentioned, as we don't have as much time and space to warm players up to how the enemies work than we would if the game was longer. Definitely something for us to look at in the future. Still, thank you so much for the feedback and I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
This is a very cool entry and could have been my favorite one in the jam if I was able to beat it and if it was fine-tuned a bit. Loved the atmosphere, the upgrade room system and how you have to manage the ship both at the console and by doing manual tasks inside it. Hope you will do a post-jam release, will definitely play it again then. Some problems and remarks:
-The biggest problem is that the dash ability seems to be broken. It's said that you can go through a specific kind of terrain and I'm pretty sure what it's meant to be but it just doesn't work. I was able to get to the current room upgrade from the very top of the map by dashing through the strong current and I don't think that is how it's supposed to be done. So yeah, can't beat the game because of that because getting PB requires using that too. Moreover, I think you're supposed to need the current room to get to PB but it's very easy to get through that current even without it, it should be made more difficult.
-The console can buggy, sometimes pressing pressing E does nothing when trying to use it.
-The enemies can push you through the doors that have to be opened with scandarts, resulting to a softlock.
-It should be clearer if your torpedoes are doing anything to the enemies, there's not much feedback to that. Their health also seems to be random and sometimes they will just stay on the map after dying, mostly they seem to disappear though.
-Sometimes the alarm might stay on even when there are no enemies nearby, loading the game fixes it.
-A question: what's the deal with the AN and FA rooms? They seem to be attached to enemies but they just fly off when I shoot at them or try to pick them up. After a while they respawn.
-The save system is not perfect as it doesn't close the doors if you've opened them before loading a save, nor does it respawn the AN and FA rooms if you've made them fly away. You have to exit back to the menu and come back to make those things happen. Might happen in other cases as well, for example, when picking up the rooms.
-No idea what the high pressure room does, the wave ability that comes with it doesn't seem to do anything.
This sounded like I've got a lot to complain about here but I still really enjoyed the game and wish to finish it!
Hi Lockstedt! Thanks so much for playing and for the kind words! The game definitely has some bugs that need to be ironed out that can unfortunately detract from the overall experience. The dash bug is new to me - could it be that you weren't fully charging the dash before releasing to break the terrain? This mechanic could have been explained better for sure, but this may have been the reason behind this issue. Not sure though. I also think the feedback on the torpedoes is a great idea. Overall, combat could be improved to have more feedback and clarity for when the player is successfully hitting and defeating enemies. The AN and FA rooms are intended to be bait and are part of an anglerfish enemy that lures you in with fake items before attacking, which is why they "fly away" when you interact with them. However, we definitely could have made this more clear, and especially with the game not being longer, it's hard for this understanding of the enemies to be built up like we envisioned.
Thank you so much again for playing and for all of the feedback! Hopefully once we can get the game updated and get bugs fixed you'll come back to finish it :)
Ohh I missed the charge feature entirely, it was indeed the reason. Played to the point you get the ability again after my playthrough and the game certainly mentions it, I probably thought of that as a "cooldown" and pretty much ignored what it said. You should add a bar that shows the charge so that it's clearer.
With that I beat the game too, got the probe and killed the boss that was actually challenging as it seemed to expand infinitely and you had to escape it while shooting it and reload your torpedoes simultaneously. Not too impossible though, nice challenge. The probe had problems though, a couple of times it made the game lag horribly and had to quit. Quitting to the menu wasn't enough, because for some reason after loading the game the probe's FOV was broken and I couldn't reveal new areas with it. Activating the boss had another hitch since a couple of times it happened on its own when I got to the end of the passage, but after a few tries I had to destroy the probe to make it happen. One last problem I encountered was a crash on my second playthrough when I was fixing leak after getting the SC upgrade.
Good job on a very unique and fun game though, it was indeed me who couldn't figure out the dash!
So glad you were able to figure out the dash and finish the game! The charge visual is a great idea to make the dash mechanics clearer. The probe was also added very late into development, so the bugs are unfortunate but make sense. Still, thank you so much for returning to our game and so happy you were able to see it through! Thank you for all of the feedback!
It’s almost criminal how few ratings your game has been receiving. This is such a unique experience and I’ve had great fun playing it!
Don’t know if you’ve played Lethal Company, but was this inspired by the ship computer from that game, at least in part? At first it seemed this would be a similar experience, since in LC you can watch your team explore the level from the ship’s computer and issue text commands to open locked doors and disable hostile turrets.
Graphics and sound were both excellent and made for a kind of eerie vibe, which I loved. One thing that could be improved is the choice of colors for some obstacles: I often could not distinguish between actual obstacles and simple terrain height differences, as they’re both highlighted in yellow by the ship’s radar. Also, it was a bit hard to figure out if creatures were still hostile after I hit them with enough torpedoes. Maybe a change in color or a special sound effect to signal that they’re backing off could help with that. As for sounds, the dash sounded too cartoony, but the rest was great.
I couldn’t figure out how to use the pressure room. Its description said that it can repel enemies, but it seemed to do nothing. Sometimes I would get stuck in a corner while running from an enemy, resulting in me bouncing between enemy and wall and taking tons of damage. Also, I’ve tried collecting that one room guarded by a creature (AN I think?), but whatever I did just made that creature run away with said room, so I either needed a specific room to get it or I was supposed to do something I just couldn’t figure out. Last room I acquired was the dash, then stopped playing as I couldn’t find a way to proceed.
When I first played this, I experienced a very weird bug. I started a new game, didn’t save, quit the game to tweak some stuff to make it run better on Linux, relaunched the game, hit Continue and found that the DO room was still there, even though the ship had already powered on and I could move in the level. When I went to pick up the map and save rooms, the ship’s layout would not change, so when those rooms got damaged by creatures, the only thing I could do was drop them to prevent the ship from getting destroyed. I then started a proper new game and didn’t encounter any other issues.
Having said that, this is definitely one of my favorite entries. Great job!
Thank you so much for all the feedback! I have played about an hour of Lethal Company, but I am familiar with the console and really like it! Wasn't something I was actively thinking about, but it was likely 1 in the subconscious.
Lots of the game map and intro wasn't done until the last day or 2 so absolutely have a whole lot of kinks to work out there. Thanks for all the feedback, definitely all things to look into. Changing color on death is a great idea. The original idea was for it to be vague, which I believe would work for a longer game where you have more time to gather information, but this format is just too short to be able to allow people to learn. Similar to the room guarded by the enemy(SPOILER: it's an angler fish, but have to figure out how to convey that information better).
Thank you so much for the kind words, and once I can update the game, definitely will take this into account!
yo this game is fucking awesome. the vibes are immaculate. the background music is fantastic especially. i haven't made it too far in but I will absolutely be playing more and have already sent it to a friend that would enjoy it. super super cool!
if i had any critique, it would be that the buzzing sound when entering an incorrect command is really loud and kind of disruptive to the vibe. i think a softer sound that blends more with the music would be nice.
that said, i stopped for now because i hit a point where any command i entered gave me the "no items nearby" error, so i think it was bugged? i'll be giving it another go soon though.
I tried really hard to understand this one. It took a while just to figure out how to pick up rooms and add them to the ship, but I never figured out how to access their commands. Couldn't figure out how to use the "Save", "Load", "Map" or "SC" commands for example. I do think that the visuals and feedback are really cool. I love the shake that happens when you bump the ship into a wall. Might just be me on getting the game controls down, but overall, definitely a neat project I'd love to finish sometime!
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