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You will know you caught a fish by the crunching sounds they make. After a few captures, you hear some bubbling and you level up to a new place with even more confusing sounds XD

Among all the chaos of underwater ploosh and blips, as you turn to the sides, you will hear some percussive sounds that repeat.  The louder you hear them, the more centered they are. Move towards them and their beat will become faster and faster. Get close enough and you will hear the crunch of having captured them.

Agreed. I think a better handling of the sound once you pass a hazard would be the easiest big time improvement.

Turn around like in a one-button 180?

Thanks! :)

The general state of the audio is chaotic and would require some work from someone with better ears and tools. So I'm afraid this is where this stalls as a tech demo until some sound person wants to collab.

A clear edge of the level cue does sound like a much needed addition. Especially since the other fish often leave the level at the edge and you just don't know where your meal went all the sudden.

But yeah, more than 3 days could mean lots of improvement here. Thanks again for playing and giving feedback.

Just getting close enough will get you a capture. Just keep swimming until the clicks get super fast and then you'll hear crunching sounds meaning you got your fish. You can also lunge forward with the up key for a short burst of extra speed to catch the more evasive ones. Ignore the drops, they are just to distract you. Go for the thumps and clunks that repeat at speed. Thanks for playing and commenting.

Yup. There's an annoying bug that I can't figure out that freezes the game when the level loads. There's also another that messes up the echoes volume modulation at some random point and stays until a new level loads. Work In Progress eternal.

Fishies are evasive little things and I do get lots of misses myself. I have discovered that swimming in long S curves gives me a better chance to capture stuff. Also, when I have a miss like you describe, often a quick circle round gets me a meal.

A quick round down of the types of fish present in a level would be a great idea. Or maybe just the new one? Solid suggestion. Thanks. And thanks for playing and commenting :)

What is this color thing you speak of? Right now the game is at the tech demo stage. I do have ideas for progression but they are unlikely to happen unless I find a sound person who wants to give this some love. Controller rumble is currently broken for me and not an option until I figure it out again. Wind sounds for speed are there but get lost in the mix. Success sound is such a good and obvious idea that I'm almost embarrassed I didn't do it and hadn't thought of it until just now XD

Thanks for playing and commenting.

Got the new version. Still damaged :(

is an og but wal

Surgery is never fun but after it you get a lot of time to play games! 

ogwals unite!

6 stars across the board. 

...

Actually, 5.9 stars. It would be better if I could read signs without having to bump into them.

I think it's the lock-on system that really makes a difference here. Especially when using a gamepad, a lot of people tend to drift to one side so it's real nice that the system eliminates that issue which is a complete non-issue when you can see you're drifting and instinctively correct it. And as you said, while lock systems have always existed for combat, it's real nice and possibly novel having it for general navigation.

Really good game. Haven't finished it yet but I take that as a good thing. 

Very minor suggestions to reduce friction. Let me switch to map from inventory and viceversa instead of Escaping my way out before choosing the other one. If using the shovel (for example) is the only interaction available in a room, let the interaction key do that instead of having to go to inventory to press the shovel.

The music for the red rooms in way louder than the others. I can easily adjust the volume levels to make it all right but I shouldn't have to.

There's a point in the moon pool and another room where the voice of the creature and the narrator overlap.

I'd love the option to have all the voiced text on screen to read.

But this is all minor stuff and nice to have things rather than must haves. You have a really good thing going here.

The Mac version tells me:

“Project Softspace v1” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

The Mac version tells me that the application "Game" can't be opened.

Well, shame on you for having players that don't follow instructions XD
This was a ton of fun. Easily my favorite all around. A very clever idea and clean execution. Great job!

I know this is a me thing but one thing I like about your game is that it is a universe discovery game that isn't framed in exploitation and conquest. Extracting resources would change that. As it is in all games I play and love, not a deal breaker even for me, much less for the rest of humanity.
One idea for a mechanic that would encourage long term play would be to complete collections. I don't know how long your lists of name elements are and how likely it is to get repeats but it would be fun to create a room of all yogurt related instruments. Or maybe it would make more sense to use the additional properties for it. All stolen instruments or some such. I think something along these lines would be much in keeping with the museum theme.

Check the referrers in your analytics. You're on the top row of itch's New and Popular page. That may be it.

More than silly or off-putting, I found it confusing. Maybe some form of clicks and rubs that sound more like drawing and cocking a gun like the opponent is cheating and getting ready to shoot before the signal? Or some... old western sounds like horses neighing or wagon wheels squeaks? Rooster crowing? Church bell ringing? Gun firing in the distance? Anything that doesn't break suspension of disbelief rather than going for silly, I'd suggest.

I really wish I had how to skip the dialogs for a replay

Abstract, polished, and fun in ways that can't really be objectively explained. 

My only observation is that it's really easy to spam the searches using the gamepad. Just twiddling sticks around for a second is enough to clear all the discoveries on any body. No idea how to "fix" that or whether that's at all a problem that needs fixing. I guess that having a cat roll over the keyboard would have the same effect. My dog proved uncooperative to playtest that.

Not sure what the deal is with the basement. Further exploration is needed.

I'll wait for it to come together. Right now it's a spacebar simulator. What's that barking sound between ready and fire?

I connect and wait but there's nobody to play with. 

Nice start. I look forward to seeing progress and trying the free roam.

Funny. It needs some balancing with the volumes, though. The first test is simple enough. 

The tones in the second test are way too quiet in relation to the voice. So I crank it up and it has some bad sound artifacts and the voice is too loud. Also, it's not really clear when a sound is front or rear. I got past mostly through guesswork.

Then the third test...  There really is no point to pressing three keys instead of one. It's ok for flavor, I guess but an unnecessary complication in a test that's already hard to parse.  I never heard the gas sound so I played mostly by looking at the time. 

All in all, a fun little minigame with great humor that can be very easily polished by adjusting sound levels.

I generally like the style and it's all quite cleanly made. I'd like to be able to get it wrong. Right now if I go to the wrong side and try to shoot, nothing happens. Also, no matter where I go, if I just wait without shooting, nothing happens until I do.

Let me run wherever, shoot at will, miss the shots, make a mess of it. 

Fun! Some mechanics were not immediately obvious but I got them quickly enough and would have hated any form of tutorial XD Great job.

Looking forward to the rest. The only suggestion I'll make is that you let me choose options with space.  I can advance the text with space but it forces me to reach Enter to choose an option.  Liking the scribbled art style.

The canary in a coal mine concept made me laugh. Nice choice. You got a good thing going. Just add some progression. I feel the game is too easy as is. You can definitely go faster and have twistier paths. Especially if you go with a land when crashing or lives approach.

No. That's not it. I meant the soundscape.

No idea what cause that glitch, really. Maybe I left the window and came back?

Sounds specific to each building is a good idea. Same for having some landmarks like a fountains that makes a noise you can position. Duck pond, playground, stables, whatever has a unique sound.

Different floors with different sounds. Crunchy gravel, swishy grass. Different footsteps sounds could help guide people.

Some times the sound for bumping into walls won't play. That doesn't help either.

It's a rhythm game. The problem is that I have no way of knowing if I'm missing because I'm late or because I'm early. Maybe a different missed shot sound would help.

Moving up/down changes the pitch of the sounds more than it's reasonable. It gets to where it all sounds like a video in slow motion.

When I finally managed to go through a gap, I got my point but I also lost a life.

I got stuck in the dialog with Tristen. It even lets me walk away but it continues cycling through the lines. Even when I reach another character, it still just keeps cycling that dialog.

Not sure how playable this would be by sound alone. Other than the pathfinder, there's no help navigating the town. 

Spamming a purple tsunami of bowling balls is fun.  

Locating the pins by the stereo panning of their clapping sounds is next to impossible to me.

I'd suggest slowing down the apparition of new pins. Maybe limit the number of pins. Start with one single pin so people get used to the environment. Once it's knocked down, two pins appear. Then three, and so on. As it is, the soundscape is dominated by the whistle of new pins and then it's too busy with too many claps at the same time which means you no longer hear the location of each. Spamming purple tsunami ensues.

Oh, c'mon! Too funny. Too good. Too wonderfully well done. I love everything about this. Excellent job. I hope you win. I mean, now I have to go and play some others but now the bar is way too high.

Funny. Proof that you can be literal and creative at the same time.

Pure joy! Love this. Amazing job. Great and simple idea, perfectly executed and polished to a shine.

Gotta love it when something is already amazing and it somehow keeps getting updates that make it even better. Stellar job.