itch.io

super polished, simple yet effective gameplay. Art is simple and works. The game actually feels like a commercial game with how good it is.

Neat, simple, perfectly executed, amazing art, fun roguelike loop. I am gonna need a mobile port ASAP cuz I wanna play this offline. My only real complaint is that the slime boss was a huge difficulty jump 

Good game, amazing art, super cool unique concept. It was pretty difficult with a bunch of mechanics getting introduced quickly and me generally sucking at puzzles. 

Overall a great, polished experience

Neat idea and fun visuals. But at first I was pretty confused about gameplay and when I understood it it became boring fast. I’d recommend making it a bit faster to get stardust 

such a fun game with amazing UI, super impressive work. On my run I almost got there with less than $500 left but as I was trying to buy some screws and stuff to spend the last bits I ran out of time…. I quite literally have 0 complaints, peak game!!

The presentation was immaculate and the concept seems great, but sadly it broke on my screen making it kinda unplayable ): 

Pretty original, said I have a skill issue ):

It seems to be infinite and pretty 2d-heavy, when the assignment specified enemies and player should be 3d. Effects look fantastic. Bit slow-paced but a neat experience overall. Enemies could use some more variety

Cool idea and concept, but the execution was lacking at points, here are some things I noticed:
-Movement was very slow and you couldn't move far forward.
- Some UI didn't scale, causing you to see the default unity sky
- Gameplay got repititive fast, the difficulty should ramp up instead of staying basically the same
- Some of the backgrounds didn't seem to fit eachother and seemed cut off

Loved the pixelated art style. And the bridges can be a very fun gameplay mechanic

I have some small issues but these can be easily fixed.
- Enemy bullets can go through objects, while the players can't.
- The art in the final boss room is very different due to it being zoomed out.
- Before the boss castle, there was a lot of empty space.
- The game is pretty slow & easy, enemies pose no real threat.
- The boss was also super easy, I don't know if its intended but he only shot forward for me.

Art and story (even if it was only in the game description) were good, the game was pretty slow until wave 9.

At first waves had little enemies which could be beat in ~1s, just for you to have to wait 5s for the next wave to start. Suddenly, at wave 9, there were a gazillion enemies and I died. I didn't get any further since I didn't know if there was a boss or if its infinite. I also noticed that I can shoot during the intermission, this isn't that useful but could be used to easily kill some enemies quickly when the wave starts.

The games art is great, though the game felt a bit slow to play.

When I got to the boss, it felt rigged against me. Its attacks just spawned with no build-up causing attacks to spawn in me and giving me no chance to dodge. It would be great if there was a warning of when/what attacks are coming.

Could you specify what you disliked about the game?

Hey, thanks for the feedback! The assignment actually specified that you could only shoot in one direction, so flipping wouldn't be possible ):

Loved the art, but the enemy screaming is a tad bit much. It's also incredibly fast-paced for a game that feels like it's supposed to be more relaxing. I also didn't like how I couldn't go forward/backward.
The story is also pretty neat.

Its an unique idea, a sort of more classic arcade-y shmup. But the execution is lacking.

- While there are plenty of enemies, their formations don't have much variation.
- some formations are really easy, and some (like the mine enemy wave) are harder. There is no build up and these are just random.
- There is no hurt cooldown, you can die within 1s.
- The goal seems to be getting a highscore, but the game doesn't include highscore functionality.

Enemies move quite interestingly, which is fun and different. The game did have some issues though.

- The movement is very strange, you start really slow and VERY quickly accelerate. This makes it hard to dodge the enemies projectiles, especially with the huge amount of them.
- Level 2 had flying cylinders and cubes in the background, they were untextured and felt out of place
- In level 3, there was a tower which shot bullets upwards for some reason and seemed to be invulnarable.
- Its unclear if the final boss takes damage, seeing as bullets pass through him. You could try deleting bullets when they hit something.
- When the game ended, the highscore just said "score" and didn't display a number.

Art looks great and the tech seems good. I do have some feedback:
- The player moved way too fast making it hard to control
- The game dragged on a bit, it felt way too long
-  For me, boss parts weren't attached and the boss projectiles were basically impossible to dodge.
- Some effects (especially the player hurt one) were way too over the top
- I couldn't see the cooldown for the parry and thus didn't know when I could use it.
- The UI did not scale to my screen size.

Overall still a good game which could become great with some tweaks.

Hey, thanks for the super detailed reply! 

The game was made for a school jam which was supposed to end yesterday at 5PM cet. But due to the deadline getting extended to 10AM today, we were able to make some quick last minute changes!

We're super glad you enjoyed it and left such a detailed comment, we took your feedback into account when making the update and have already made the following changes:
- The player now has an action pose instead of standing upright
- The players hitbox was made slightly smaller to make the game feel more fair.
- We also updated the life UI to only show how many lifes you have. Originally pick-up drops from enemies were planned, but due to us having 1 dev instead of the intended 3 this was cut. The UI showing max HP was something we had glossed over in the first public version.

The current player projectile was made at early stages of the games development. We really wanted to change it, but the artist who made the projectiles is currently MIA. We hope to be able to still change it in a post-jam update.

As we're all students, the UI will probably stay similar. The text not being vertical would require it to be reworked, and we all have other projects we have to work on and are from different classes, but we'll definitely keep it into account for future games!

Again, thank you for your super detailed and helpful comment, we really appreciate it!

Edit: There is a story which explains why the character does what he does, but to see this you have to press the lore button on the main menu or read the lore section in the games description. Originally, we wanted to make the lore always show up the first time you press on play, but then you'd have to press 3 buttons (start interface, main menu, and lore menu) which we felt was too much.

Cool game, but very easy. Amazing art but it wasn't that clear it was underwater. It looked like a normal on land stage with flying fish imo. Gameplay was pretty fun

Yeah, I should've added a tutorial. I really regret that I didn't do that.

Ah, the fish has three states. Wander, attracted, and flee. When you use the screech they enter the flee state. For a couple of seconds they run away from the ship (due to just having been scared). A fish won't enter the attracted state if its fleeing, causing it to not return. 

I realize I should've added something similar for the monster, because the monster can return as soon as it hears a couple of sounds. This can be quite confusing and causes the monster to be a bit clingy.

Thanks for the comment!

I'd love to hear what controls you found vague. I'll keep it in mind when making future games!

About the screech button, it was hard to balance. The intent was for it to be a last resort which would scare both the big fish and nearby fish, though it's a bit quirky.

I admit that the monster was a bit clingy, I should've added a small cooldown for him to return, cuz he just swims right back when he's interested and just heard another sound.

Thanks for the comment! 

I tried not to make it too confusing for players, so I added tooltips and controls in the description to try and make it very clear. 

I made it available on every platform so everybody can play it, and also because it was a great learning experience!

If I remember correctly I got somewhere between 3.5-4k points, I do remember that it I should've been on the leaderboards. I did put a space in my name, so perhaps that fucked it up? What did you use to add leaderboards? I'd love to help you figure out the problem!

Personally I wanted to take a slow approach to strategically get around the enemies, but the oxygen bar added a timer making me go faster and making me make mistakes.

Had it open in the background whilst playing other games. I found the visuals amazing and almost got everything to max level. It started really fast but got slow fast. I realized that getting fish to stay and group up was sub-optimal due to them getting eaten. Eventually I found it most effective to just spam-click the center of the screen so most fish were sold ASAP.

Good idea, good visuals, good execution, good game. Does feel like the sonar isn't that useful and the other fish are pretty fast

The art style is really good, but I had no idea what was going on

Quite confusing and really slow, art looks good and the idea is good.

Neat artstyle and concept, a tad bit confusing and got boring rather quick.

Cool art style, expected it to be easy but turns out its pretty damn hard. The shark repellent was a bit quirky to work with though, especially since it took time to change... 

Really funny game, the speaker being the antagonist is the most unique interpretation I've seen of the theme! I did find it a bit confusing on how to use my attacks, clicking didn't work... pressing right shift worked once (maybe I pressed something else and didn't notice) the solution to this problem? More fish! (or maybe a small tutorial)

Neat game, I love the idea of having to swim in the dark. But its pretty hard to figure out where to go and personally I find that the oxygen system doesn't really fit...

Interesting idea, but the lack of audio and unclear controls do harm the experience. Spear fishing doesn't work, so I'd recommend you delete the animation for it. Art looks great though!

Simple & effective, this game is great! Feels like a mobile game you'd boot up every once in a while! (put it on mobile, add advertisements, and earn that bag🤑🤑🤑🤑). Loved the addition of leaderboards, but I couldn't find my own entry?

Gorgeous art, but movement is a bit wonky. 

love the art style, how'd you create it? I did find the monster a bit annoying, as once it was chasing me, I didn't know how to get it to stop, I tried stopping and being silent but that didn't work.

The fish has three states, it can either wander around, head towards the sub, or flee. Each fish has its own 'curiosity' stat which decides how likely it is to react to sound. 

When a fish is heading towards the sub, there's a small chance for them to lose interest in the sub. In my playtests I found most of the time I had to press the button 2-3x and then there'd be some fish. Fish which weren't at the sub were more than likely nearby.

 The intention is that you track them with the radar at the bottom left of the screen. When you scare them, whilst they do gain some distance, once they exit a radius of 2.2km from the ship, they'll soon  return to within 2.2km to assure they don't get too far.

I'll likely update the game a bit post-jam to make the monster go away faster.

Were you able to finish the game, or were you unable to catch/scan all fish?

The angler fish goes away when it doesnt hear something for a while, I wanted the player to not get greedy and call all the fishes constantly.  The intention was that the player has to wait for him to lose you (which is also risky because you lose power). After playing a bit more I realized that I should've made him go away way faster. Perhaps I'll update it a bit so the angler fish leaves faster.

Yeah, I tried to make it a bit challenging by making it so the fish are constantly moving during scanning/capturing. I made it so your progress only really slowly goes down so it didn't become unfair (You can see how far something is in scanning/capturing with the outline). There are actually 3 endings, which ones did you get? I wanted to add a 4th secret ending but didn't really know what to add...