Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

The atmosphere was by far the part I spent the most on so I'm happy to hear you liked it.

Yeah the movement is gonna be polished up post-jam, I tried to add turning while moving but it ended up being even more broken so I axed it for the time being.

The combat is very broken at the moment in a few respects. Most obviously being that enemies don't stop on the tile next to the player like they're intended to. I also didn't have time to add pain animations or sounds to enemies when they're hit. The only feedback at the moment is the little stab sound and the blood puffs, but since enemies just keep moving into the player that's often obscured. The enemies are supposed to be in range when they're almost in the center of the neighbouring tile, and I noticed a couple times in the video there were a couple hits that were just slightly too early. But of course since the enemies don't stop that's kinda impossible to tell. And due to the raycasts used for player movement and attacks not detecting any colliders they're inside at spawn time, you can't hit enemies when they're right on top of you.

The enemies clipping through objects is caused by the A* map generation falling victim to the same raycast issue as the attacks. The tiles next to those turbines detect the turbine tiles as being not navigable, but the turbine tiles can see the surrounding tiles, so a link is formed between them.

And yeah the enemy attacks aren't directional, I tried making them directional, but it somehow led to enemies just turning perpetually so I left it as is. I knew the combat was bad well before the jam ended, I just made the executive decision to focus improving everything else since I thought it would be better to have crappy combat and a great atmosphere vs ok combat with a bland game.

Also looking at the video I think I'll have to mention in-game that there's continuous movement, everyone I've seen play it presses move manually each time. I imagine it gets sore on the fingers lol. Also I really need to better explain what the ghost anomalies are, half the videos I've seen players miss the first one or two.

But thanks again for playing and the feedback! And extra thanks for the video, it was incredibly helpful!

Thanks for playing!

So regarding the combat, it largely stems from the AI navigation trying to get onto the same tile as the player when it's supposed to be trying to reach the tile NEXT to the player. The reason you couldn't hit it is because the raycast for melee attacks and the projectiles doesn't count any colliders that the raycast starts in. I wasn't able to sort that problem out before the jam ended, and in general in the last two days I decided to focus on everything else but the combat because I figured it would be better to have a strong atmosphere with weak combat, than ok combat with a boring bland world.

So for the sound effect I guess in my mind it sounded like a good stab sound for an underwater attack, but most players either didn't notice it, or as you mentioned it sounds like a miss. There is a visual indicator for a hit with the little blod puffs that come off enemies, but they end up being obscured by the enemy models, and for the zombies and mermaids the blood colour is blue which I only realized afterwards blend into the background too much.

Regarding the ghost enemies I do know what can cause that. When the game starts, an A* map is built from every tile in the game, and then each tile raycasts in the 4 cardinal directions to see what tiles it can connect to. But this raycast, like the attack raycasts mentioned earlier, doesn't detect colliders the raycast starts in. So the tiles next to a giant world object don't detect a navigable tile, but the tile holding the impassable object DOES. And because AI navigation follows the map but not raycasts, they can just walk through it.

I'm glad to hear the shark was appropriately spooky though. You weren't imagining things with it coming back to life, I saw it happen on stream actually. I'm not sure why it happens, but there's only one shark enemy in the game.

Thanks again for the feedback! Sorry the combat was so confusing, I'll have to sort that out post-jam and keep it in mind for next year,

So I just finished watching both your videos, and damn am I sorry you had to experience that.

As I mentioned in other comments, the AI isn't supposed to reach the same tile as the player, but I wasn't able to fix that navigation problem in time. And the raycasts for the players melee and projectile attacks don't detect any colliders that they start within. Meaning if the enemy is on the same tile as you, you can't hit them. So in a number of cases in your video you definitely weren't dealing damage. This raycast problem is why you're also able to walk THROUGH enemies which is definitely not intentional. Frankly I was stunned when I saw you had aggroed three enemies, because the game was setup in such a way that the player should never have to face more than one. I guess I hadn't even considered the possibility it could still happen, but reading your feedback and watching the video I can absolutely see why it happened.

I do have a few questions about the first video, was the audio out of sync when you were playing or is that just the video? And I noticed you backtracked quite a bit, did you get lost and turned around or were you just exploring to see what else there was? I thought I had laid out the level clearly enough, but the map not showing walls has been mentioned as being confusing, so it could easily be my fault lol. Also I noticed when you encountered the first Child you were clicking the weapon select button instead of the attack button, I'm guessing that was just panic?

In any case I'm glad someone got to see the death screen, just not in the way I expected lol.

I also didn't realize how confusing the bug of clicking UI buttons triggering interactions in the game world could be. I know another comment mentioned talking to a corpse while trying to attack, but I didn't realize it could be confusing with the door interactions. I'll definitely be addressing that in the next update.

I also plan to replace the unopenable cabinets, they've been confusing a lot of players since they do look interactable. And they were going to be until I realized they had no interior.

I'm very happy the shark had the intended effect, it even looked like in the video you stopped for a second to ponder the awaiting horror lol.

I really should move that second locker in that area though, it doesn't have anything inside it but it's hard to see that in it's current state.

Oh and the final child encounter is able to move through the turbines because of a bug in how the A* map is formed. Basically at the start of the game every tile raycasts to surrounding tiles to see if a link can be made between them. Since the tiles with turbines on them have the raycast starting within the collider, they detect nothing. Another fix for the post-jam update.

Also just in case you're wondering, the items on the shelf in the captain's quarters are just game boxes of other games I've made as an easter egg lol.

I also plan to add more polish and actual enemies to that second level, I decided to leave enemies out because I thought they would spoil the atmosphere with their jankiness. But it does leave the level feeling empty and tedious to navigate.

Thanks again for recording video of your playthroughs, they're incredibly valuable!

Thanks for playing, and the feedback!

I’m happy to hear that because that feeling is what a lot of my effort went towards!

This was my first real attempt at a PS1 graphics game so I’m glad you liked it. I guess it just shows the quality of the asset pack creators that I can use a dozen of them and have it look consistent!

So the reason the gun vanishes is because I never implemented saving values between levels. The inventory system in the game is incredibly hacked together, and there ended up being no enemies in the final level so I focused my time elsewhere.

I lean towards making my games easy in jams so that players can actually finish them. Had a bad  experience in a jam once of players absolutely loving my game, but never making it to the end (and seeing the complex ending sequence I worked on) because they kept dying. Hmm, the fight with two enemies is actually unintentional. Did you just run past the shark before killing it or did it come back to life? (There’s only one shark enemy in the whole game)

The map probably would be better if it was an automap, but all I had time to figure out was just pointing the camera down from above and rendering it to a subviewport. The functionality to obscure enemies until they’re aggroed exists in the game but I just forgot to add it to all enemies and ran out of steam by the end. I’ll be addressing that post-jam.

Thanks again for playing, glad you enjoyed it!