thementalsheep 2021-04-27 04:08
Had fun playing it , I just thought it was really funny for some reason :D great game , good job. Has a lot of replayablity in trying to get a better score.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Mrs. ScubaMan
By shaolin-dave
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1818 | 2.69 | 49 | |
| Fun | 1798 | 2.47 | 49 | |
| Innovation | 1729 | 2.52 | 49 | |
| Theme | 701 | 3.80 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 1631 | 2.77 | 49 | |
| Audio | 1254 | 2.25 | 46 | |
| Humor | 989 | 2.56 | 42 | |
| Mood | 1663 | 2.72 | 47 |
Had fun playing it , I just thought it was really funny for some reason :D great game , good job. Has a lot of replayablity in trying to get a better score.
I really liked the game, I found the idea very creative of you every time you play more, your equipment gets better, but I think that when it goes up again to the surface, the coins could respawn so the game doesn’t get much slow when going down to the bottom to find $ 1, and something that bothered me a little was the sfx a little high, other than that the game was very good!
Nice Game, The little scubaman is cute!
A bit difficult to understand what was going on, but a fun distraction nonetheless.
Very cute, simple but clear graphics. There were a few nice touches like the scuba line movement. It was amusing to hit your head on the way up. I really wanted to see some surprises as I got deeper, maybe some fish or bigger coins. I also felt that there weren't many pickups-- might as well have been two or three times as many to make the game feel better. There is a large oxygen bar but it never gets close to filling. Also, because pickups aren't replaced, you spend much of the game just waiting for get past the last dive.
Could not understand what I was doing at first, some instructions anywhere would be nice :dizzy_face:. Good idea nonetheless.
A very simplistic gameplay loop, nice to play nontheless. As mentioned by other people here, some instructions would be nice. Otherwise I have nothing to complain about, I really liked the artstyle and controls were nice and responsive.
Also you get an extra point for the cables jiggle physics lol
I hope Mr Scubaman gets as deep as he wish !
Nice and simple game, fun to play, although it's hard to understand the oxygen and return to surface mechanics initially
I don't really like it. The gameplay is really boring and repetitive, there's not much to the game. The character is very slow and it takes really long to get deep. I'm not really sure if the gold even does anything. Sorry but in my opinion it's just not that good.
Cute game! Could do with some controls / instructions and a bit more variety, but I like the graphical style you've gone for. Bashing my head on the way up made me laugh :)
AMONG US
I thought this was a cute little game, but I found some elements confusing. The oxygen meter starts off way too low, I didn't even register that it was a meter and that it was ticking down. I actually thought I came up on my first round from getting my air line caught on the rocks. It took me a couple of runs to realize that my gold was going straight into air upgrades. I also have no idea why I hit a game over.
When I got to the game over screen, I couldn't figure out how to restart or quit and had to alt-f4 out. On a subsequent play through I noticed I could esc to bring up the pause menu, but that didn't seem to work in the game over screen.
This game could be fun, but a little more polish on communicating how the mechanics work would go a long way. Great job!
I loved the bow <3
Cute! Love the hitting the head on way up. Could use more collectibles on the way down to keep energy up.
@thementalsheep - Glad you liked it. I thought most the replayablilty would be trying to memorize all the missed treasure.
@hideos - The non-responding treasure was actually intentional, because I wanted players to try to remember what they'd missed on previous dives, but in retrospect it wasn't a good decision. Unfortunately I realized this myself during playtesting mere hourse before the deadline. Oh well, something to remember for future jams.
@samarthmp5002 - Glad you like her. It was actually a rush job. I had a standin cylinder up until the last few hours and had to throw that together, she was originally suppose to be much more detailed (but still cute).
@edward-dassmesser - My goal is to make my games as self-explanatory as possible, I think a good game shouldn't need a wall of instructions, but in this case maybe I should have put in an in-game tutorial.
@microchasm - I wanted more surprises as you went deeper, finding new fish, skeletons, other divers, sunk ships... but I ran out of time. There are suppose to be more pickups, not sure why the RNG is making them as rare as they are. The scuba line is actually a long cloth with while blowing upwards, extra strong during ascending.
@devez - Yeah, I overestimated how intuitive it would be. Maybe even some in-game signs or alert text would have helped make things clearer. Something for me to consider next time.
@initialposition - Thanks. though I did spent too much time on those "rope" physics, I am very proud of them.
@fcvalise - He does. Look forward to ScubaMan Jr. in Ludum Dare 49! (Just kidding, that's almost definitely not going to happen).
@matif100 - Hopefully it becomes clear after a few playthroughs. I've been thinking I should have had some text pop up that says "OUT OF OXYGEN! RETURN TO SURFACE" so at least people would know why it was happening.
@gargantus - I appreciate the critical feedback, I find it to be the most helpful. Aside from what's already mentioned, anything in particular I could have done to improve it?
@leekanarchism - Glad you like it. Bashing the head was originally going to be a single-hit kill but I decided it was too challenging. Then the idea was that the player got stuck and would have to manuver around. I eventually decided on the short pause, then quickly turning off collision so the player passes through, and the effect turned out much better than I expected. I wish I had time to add in some particles and better sound to really give it personality.
@ethan-hammonds - I am a fan of Among Us, but this was actually not an intentional reference. I simply ran out of time and am not very good with Blender to begin with. I knew I wanted a yellow scuba suit with a red bow (Mrs. Pac Man reference), and threw that together quickly. I did think it looked like a crewmate as soon as it was done though. I fought the urge to spend a bit more time to add feet and a backpack, as time was running out.
@jason-wilson - Yes, informative UI tallying up the gold and showing how it increased oxygen was planned but in the end I had to cut it. Another thing I have to learn to allot time for in the future. The game over occurs if you hit too many rocks on the way up. The inability to restart a game was poor planning on my part, which is embarrassing as I've done it right so many times before.
@mockthebear - Glad you like it. It's a Mrs. Pac Man reference. Now I get to tag the game with "female protagonist" on itch.io!
@mech-alina - Hitting on the way up turned out to be much better than I thought it would be, one of the few parts of the game I'm really proud of. I can't remember if I finished but I intended to have it be 3 hits on a single time means game over, so health pickups wouldn't be necessary. I didn't have time for more visual feedback for that.
Thank you all for playing and for your feedback!
Fun game! I wish there was a way to go faster, and a way to restart after losing.
Interesting how she is a _Mrs._ but also a Scuba_Man_ :) Nice game. Some music would be great!
Fun game, the game could really benefit from some background art and a bit of music. I had a blast trying to find the different types of treasures. Good work !
Really cool game. The bow on the player character was a nice touch.
D'aww, very cute style! And Mr. Scuba is just the perfect level of derpy. I really don't have any critiques other than maybe spending a little more time on balancing but, obviously time is a factor. Great job! :)
Fun little game. Congrats on finishing. The only complaint I may have is that the treasures became fewer and fewer the further you go down. I would have expected the opposite ;)
I like you, and I like you for being a part of the Ludum Dare community, and this makes it really difficult for me to say anything about your game. For me the game idea is okay, but it felt very unfinished and super slow. I am sorry not to be very positive.
This was a fun game! Nice work!
I hate to be the bad guy, but I think a simple "Nice game" like some others have written in the comments won't help you at all getting a better game dev. I see that you already made some games for other ludum dare game jams and I assume that something was just not working out during this jam, because there are several issues that I didn't like at all. Sorry to say that, but I will also try to explain how to make it better. - No instructions at the start. If you are not making any tutorial, at least put the controls there. In your case it would just have been A and D or left and right, because no other button was doing anything for me. - Simple controls. It's nice to have simple controls and not have tens of buttons to press, but simply going from left to right is just not a fun game mechanics. You could have spiced this up by allowing the player to dive down faster or slower by pressing up and down. Or add some moving stuff the player has to avoid. - Slow gameplay. The diving speed and movement speed (left and right) was very slow and just not interesting to play. You should at least consider cranking up the left and right movement speed. - Repetitive sections. I played until 200 m then the game got to repetitive for me because I had to go through all the sections again and again without anything to do, because I collected all of the coins already. You could either solve this by having multiple levels or auto-generated levels (not sure if yours are auto-generated), but it would have been fun to have new coins to collect or start at a deeper checkpoint. - I'm ok with having easy graphics, but you should try to make your scene look more interesting by throwing some assets in the background (fish), adding some particle effects (bubbles) and maybe some post-processing. Nothing crazy, but all these small things pay off big in the end. - Playtesting. I'm not sure if anybody else than yourself playtested your game. If yes, then your testers are not honest. If not, then try to get some (honest) friends together and let them help make your game more fun (before the deadline).
Again, sorry for being so harsh with your game, but I hope my feedback helps you improve this game or your future games.
Have a nice day.
PS: My cat was enjoying your game quite a bit due to the nice contrast of the character against the background :laughing:
I was a little confused as to what I should do, and the collisions were a little buggy. It's cute tho!
@jk5000 & @backurio - Don't feel bad about giving me negative feedback. I WANT critical reviews, and appreciate the honesty (in fact, my plan going it was to openly invite people to give me the most critical feedback possible, only reason I didn't do it is because my game sucks more than I expected and I feel I already know most of what went wrong)
@leganiereinahpets - Inability to restart was poor planning and time constraints. As for a way to go faster, I planned on having an "iron boots" upgrade that would make you sink faster, but ascend slower. Then I loved the fast ascending too much and thought maybe it'd work one way, or that you'd lose the boots after one turn. I ran out of time anyway.
@toasteater - I wanted the Mrs. Pac Man reference, and thought it might be a unique title (sometimes I wind up with similar-or-exactly same named games in the jam
@clemonades - While I had to rush Mrs. Scuba's design, I think I got the intended derpiness. With even a couple more hours I would have added small animations to give her more personality.
@gamesplusjames - Thank you, feel free to criticize anything you didn't like though.
@fadex - I has hoping the goals would be intuitive and the game would self-teach, but I think I missed that mark.
It's not perfect but I think it's a bit better than you give it credit for. But, of course, it does seem like it would have benefitted from a few more hours in the oven. The whole game loop isn't all that engaging or challenging: I ended up hitting obstacles on Mrs. Scubaman's ascent on purpose at some point because I wanted something else to happen (only then I found out this game had a lose condition).
Descent mechanics aren't very good either since you'll almost always get stopped in your tracks by the platforms/obstacles, some mechanism to make movement more agile would complement making the obstacles themselves more interesting and varied than a mere annoyance you have to go through every time you touch one. You know, make a risk reward dynamic for getting gold vs. losing life, oxygen or something of the sort.
On the plus side, I like the presentation and minimalistic graphics, and I thought the game over screen was a bit funny. Jams are very time constrained and we shouldn't expect masterpieces everytime (my game suffers from a lot of easily fixed issues too because of the 3 day limit), so don't beat yourself too much over it.
Good little fishing game, simple but that pass time ! It need more polishing to make the experience better and fun, but it can work!
Cute little game with nice progression. Built heavily on navigating between platforms and remembering where there is more treasure. I think the same mechanics could benefit from two things: 1. Way more treasure. If there were about 8 different treasures in one screen, it would have been more fun to traverse the same areas again and again. Also more rewarding. 2. Shorter loops. Diving down is slow, and can be repetative given the same empty area again and again. Going all the way up without control was also a bit boring. Speeding things up or giving the player the ability to change speed could help.
I managed to reach 300m before losing. I'm a very patient and contemplative kind of player, so it was not so annoying for me (and this was fun to see what you did with the cable), but I think most of players will find it boring and repetitive, more and more the deeper they go, because there is literally nothing to do while passing by all the yet explored part. Oh, and this is not a huge thing, but I liked the little red knot on Mrs. Scubaman, sometimes an unique but unexpected detail is sufficient to add a touch of cute and humour.