FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Vertabyss

Vertabyss

By ultimatewalrus

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9293.5034
Fun11373.2034
Innovation1484.0134
Theme7363.7834
Graphics7923.7834
Audio9823.0832
Mood13883.1234

Comments

variable-enigmatic 2021-04-27 19:52

This looks interesting. I want to play it but I can't run .bat files under Wine in Linux. No ratings given.

gentlemelon01 2021-04-27 19:59

I can't seem to run the .bat files.

robinfaury 2021-04-27 21:07

Yes. Same on my side. I got this error. ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'main'

ultimatewalrus 2021-04-27 21:35

Hi everyone! Thanks for trying! Sorry about that --- there were some major compatibility issues I needed to sort out. If you re-download, it should now just be a ZIP containing a single EXE and readme file. And hopefully that EXE should work on any modern Windows computer!

@gentlemelon01 @robinfaury

wetburritosupreme 2021-04-27 22:23

Great submarine game! Incredible to pull off, thanks for uploading the exe!

linkwin 2021-04-27 22:46

Had a lot of fun with this! Control scheme was very interesting, and surprisingly not unintuitive. I found it quite hard to get very far, but I thoroughly enjoyed the visuals and the experience overall. Also am very interested in Manta... your website is incredible. holy crap.

ultimatewalrus 2021-04-27 22:55

Thanks for the kind words, @wetburritosupreme and @linkwin ! I'm glad you liked it!

@linkwin I'm glad you liked the website also! It will likely be years before Manta hits the public, unless I get investors. But I do feel confident that if it ever does, it'll be one of the best programming languages in existence. If you want to keep tabs on it, you could subscribe to https://ultimatewalrus.com/newsletter !

nyanpierre 2021-04-28 02:40

Interisting idea

goggleskitty 2021-04-28 02:50

I love the visuals! The screenshots looked interesting but I wasn't really sure what was happening. In motion though, it's great! Awesome work.

whysguy52 2021-04-28 02:54

WOW! That was very cool. Scroll wheel mechanic is weird but you can always ascend/descend so that's fine.

pierce-brooks 2021-04-28 03:02

Beautiful isometries!

deepak-kr 2021-04-28 03:16

Its nice and simple game, and its enjoyable. I like the submarine and alerting when enemy is nearby.

robinfaury 2021-04-28 03:57

Great new idea. Thanks for the exe :) And nice website!

hugimugi7 2021-04-29 17:04

I've never seen graphical style like this before, very unique! Very well done atmosphere, especially the descending was nicely made.

microchasm 2021-04-30 05:24

That was pretty cool. It's always nice when a game presents you with something that you haven't seen before. I did find it difficult to understand the space I was in, but that was part of the fun. If the cursor changed in some way-- became lighter or larger as it went up or down, I think it would have been more clear- maybe it could have also turned a different color depending on which corner it was closest to. I loved the sound effects, the frantic gameplay, it felt satisfying to interact with. Very satisfying to hit enemies. I've also found recently that game that let you use the scroll wheel are really really satisfying, probably because I have a fancy mouse. There is no sound effect or visual indication for when the player gets hit! In an otherwise feedback-heavy game, that felt like a big omission. Without that feedback, you have to look up to the top left corner in the midst of everything to check your health. Really cool and unique experience.

ryano 2021-04-30 14:48

Really cool entry. Very unique. Thanks for the game.

ultimatewalrus 2021-04-30 18:54

Thank you all for the really kind comments! I'm doing my best to sift through them and play everyone's game to return the favor :)

@microchasm Thanks for all the kind words and feedback. I do want to come back to the reticle if I make a post-gamejam version. Regarding "health:" actually, you seem to be misunderstanding the game. There is no health... one hit and you'll immediately explode. You may have thought you were getting hit, but those bullets were actually passing you by in 3D space.

What you see in the upper left is your oxygen, which constantly depletes no matter what. You have to keep killing blue submarines and stealing their oxygen tanks to keep this meter up.

microchasm 2021-04-30 19:29

@ultimatewalrus Ahh ok, that is my mistake. Because of the unusual perspective, I was assuming I was being hit without realizing. I retract my critique!

totteriludum 2021-04-30 20:41

This is really unique! Gameplay is smooth, albeit hard, and the graphics are really cool. I also like your website!

jeremy-ryan 2021-05-01 17:22

Neat entry! Saw it on stream and came back around to play it myself.

The pseudo-3D really took a while to get used to, but I appreciated the depth lines. It was surprisingly intuitive to use the mouse scroll wheel to aim up and down, and for the most part I had a good idea of where I was relative to the enemies.

That said, the game is pretty darn hard. The limited space to move around coupled with having to quickly interpret the 3D space meant that the farthest I got down was in the 80s ("JARM" in the leaderboard).

A neat mechanic may have been making subs that are farther away from your level appear darker, as an extra way to intuit relative depth. I also would have appreciated a "bullet time" mechanic or extra lives --- but that's mostly because I'm bad.

Some music would have been a nice addition as well!

Regardless, nice work for the jam, especially in a custom language/framework!

dob 2021-05-01 18:17

Cool and unique concept. I found it really hard to play - the visuals didn't work for me, and I could never tell where I was shooting. But I could appreciate the difficulty and the work that went into it.

srrinio 2021-05-01 18:42

The idea and execution was really great, i've notice some simple things in the interface (like the dashed line for something bellow, or solid line for something above) this makes a lot of difference for any program, and de difficulty was well balanced to the style. The only thing as negative was the explosion particles, that can hide bullets easily, and the enemies stay avove the HUD.

And one more thing, maybe its a bug, but when i set the aim to way below, sometimes return to my own level.

ultimatewalrus 2021-05-02 05:13

Thanks for the comments! I really appreciate it!

@srrinio I'm blown away by your high score... how did you manage it? If you're at all interested in a free Snake2 key, DM @UltimateWalrus on Twitter and I'd be happy to give you one.

Regarding the reticle, is it possible you were just clicking the right mouse button? That recenters the reticle on the player's level.

srrinio 2021-05-02 19:45

@ultimatewalrus I found a trick where you start a wave at the corner and keep shooting down while the enemies are far away, then they will get together in a single spot, making way easier to dogdge, but at depth 600+ some enemies get crazily bigger.

ultimatewalrus 2021-05-03 03:21

@srrinio Thanks so much for letting me know about that exploit! I figured there would probably be something, given I only had time for one pretty simple enemy behavior. I was able to get deeper using the exploit, but still not as deep as you did! It's impressive either way.

I hope you won't mind if I do something to fix that exploit in a future version :) And if I do, I'll likely leave your high score as is as a testament to your skill and ability to find that trick.

srrinio 2021-05-03 13:30

@ultimatewalrus If this was an exploit so i don't mind if you remove my score to keep the highscore fair :)

dawnscream 2021-05-03 16:59

A very interesting approach to the theme and a pretty cool visual style. The game is indeed hard, but after a few go-ats, it gets more and more fun. Very nice entry, thanks for providing this expeerience!

glv-p 2021-05-03 17:21

Very nice game! I loved the mechanics and the art. Good joob.

bea 2021-05-05 01:27

Wild look! The layout threw me for a second but I got used to how the info was displayed pretty quick. Neat and fast paced, got a distinctly nostalgic vibe.

dragonzbw 2021-05-08 23:02

It's cool, but I couldn't really get used to the vertical aiming. Had a hard time actually hitting enemies that weren't on the same level as me. The graphics are really quite nice though, and I like the general idea. Also very impressive that you made this with a custom programming language.

zimny11 2021-05-09 09:29

Very interesting concept for a game! I really like the approach to the art style. The controls and sound effects are nicely done too!

ddrkirbyisq 2021-05-09 09:31

Woo, third place! Was quite interesting to get used to the skill and flow of the game. I do sort of wish you could take more than one hit before dying, or have 3 "lives" or something, to provide a little more of a feeling of gradation in terms of skill.

One complaint I have is that although the red enemy ships show up very clearly, their bullets are not always as readily visible against the black background. Particularly because they are colored similarly to the player bullets, but also simply because they are rather dark. I frequently found myself "guessing" where bullets were based on enemy locations, rather than reacting to their actual visual positions, because of this.

abplayz 2021-05-12 12:22

Pretty good for a python game, and i love the concept depth for your game. Pretty cool hope i see more projects for yours :)

epb9000 2021-05-16 20:58

Watching my niece play this definitely reinforces being able to take more hits. She was struggling with the first wave so she never got a chance to really learn the flow. I'm also not very good at this.

riana123 2021-05-16 21:02

i like the game but it angers me and when you go i a corner when they are attaking you cant move the mouse

ultimatewalrus 2021-05-17 02:50

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback. I'm working on an awesome update to this game, which I'm calling version 1.0, and I'm taking all your feedback to heart. The new update will have **new enemies, better graphics, optimizations, and even music,** but it'll still be a little while for it's finished.