FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → DepthBorne

DepthBorne

By Yue Zhao, i-pots, Vuro, gukekeke, HopterFish, mogeko, OnionSunShield, hujis and JIUCI

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1783.8849
Fun2793.6147
Innovation2293.6048
Theme944.2250
Graphics284.6049
Audio1203.9248
Humor5102.6342
Mood984.1447

Comments

i-pots 2025-04-07 22:32

Welcome everyone to play our game! We will fully listen to opinions and feedback, and strive to do better!

i-pots 2025-04-07 23:25

There may be some bugs, and the functionality and abilities also need to be improved!

pretendcoding 2025-04-08 00:26

I feel like I'm fighting the controls more than anything else, but aside from that, this game is really good!

yibirabbit007 2025-04-08 00:43

Bro like Big fish eat small fish(;D

i-pots 2025-04-08 01:55

Yes, when we are thinking about control methods, we want players to familiarize themselves with them for a period of time. Perhaps once they become proficient, they can easily shuttle through the channel!

i-pots 2025-04-08 01:57

Perhaps it's more like a combination of survivor games, barrage games, and racing games

atoxigner 2025-04-08 06:06

The controls troubled me for a while, but once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t an issue anymore. I really enjoyed the overall vibe, the aesthetics, and the sound effects—the experience feels both consistent and comfortable. The BGM, paired with the looming shadow of a giant fish, creates a certain psychological tension that I think is quite effective. Additionally, I noticed that the game features an upgrading RPG mechanic, but it seems that there isn’t much guidance in that area (or perhaps I’m just not skilled enough or haven’t encountered a battle scene yet xd).

i-pots 2025-04-08 06:54

Yes, mastering it requires some difficulty, and we have slightly adjusted this aspect in the new update. We do have an upgrade mechanism, and the more you upgrade, the completely different experience will be! It may have been a bit difficult before, but the recent update has solved some of the problems. You can try again!

min-pan 2025-04-08 11:09

impressive art! first tier I have seen

minigor 2025-04-08 11:27

Hello! Good game! But difficult control (autofire is required)

soleyeer 2025-04-08 12:01

Laggy on my computer, and during the lag spikes the creature does follow you, but the subamrine barely moves so lag literally kills. But beside that, I really enjoyed the upgrades system and the art is pleasant to look at. The ambience is really good, the enemies are varied. I enjoyed this game

derllie 2025-04-08 13:41

The art style is breathtaking! It really sets the mood and atmosphere perfectly!

i-pots 2025-04-08 13:42

We are trying to optimize the content and control, thank you for your suggestions!

jambo3 2025-04-08 14:10

Visuals are on another level////在这么短时间里做出这么完整的游戏很厉害了,而且美术老师肉眼可见的强。不过控制上有点小问题(也可能是我的问题hhh)

i-pots 2025-04-08 14:19

You can express your ideal way of control in the comment section! We have received a lot of feedback about control, and we will try to optimize it!

nicso 2025-04-08 14:27

Was sometimes dificult to adapt to the fact that the controls are inversed from the submarine pespective 😊

Nice entry

i-pots 2025-04-08 14:32

ha-ha! We plan to add a flip control direction setting in the next update, allowing players to decide whether to flip or not!

marilou 2025-04-08 15:24

Beautiful art direction ! The game is hard but i had fun !

i-pots 2025-04-08 15:30

Haha, this is exactly what we want!

butterflan 2025-04-08 15:58

Really love the artstyle. The aesthetic with some hollow knight vibes, the ambiance, the stress. The controls make this really difficult, but really the mood is really nice.

laurynas 2025-04-08 16:55

Beautiful art and a nice concept, though it's pretty hard to control the ship, but maybe that's intended?

i-pots 2025-04-08 16:59

yes.... At first, we wanted to enhance the sense of oppression through atmosphere and difficulty to fit the theme, but it seemed a bit too difficult, and we are currently optimizing it.

nsadie 2025-04-08 17:19

I struggled a bit with the controls and got stock on the terrain in a few places. But nice art and mood. I think changing it to an auto shooter might be fun.

sleepyfikou 2025-04-08 19:30

Lovely game! Great looking, moody, good music, and engaging gameplay loop. I liked how you had to make strategic decisions based on your resources to decide whether or not you want to face forwards to clear the path ahead, or face backwards to deal damage to the monster. Was very satisfying when I managed to pull a successful run and beat the monster.

indiealesha 2025-04-08 20:54

The graphics remind me of Hollow Knight. So atmospheric!

magnesiumninja 2025-04-08 22:24

Excellent art direction! Like many others here, the inverted controls took a while to get used to, but it was cool having the pressure of this giant monster chasing you. It often felt out of my control whether I was hit by an enemy projectile since they go faster than I do.

i-pots 2025-04-09 04:27

Thank you for your encouragement! We will conduct our second update in a few hours, which will add a simple mode and support self selection of control methods! At the same time, some UI will also be optimized. I hope everyone can come and experience it!

shadow-veil-society 2025-04-09 15:52

Beautiful art direction! Great work!

alex-servirog 2025-04-09 23:53

Cool art. After couple minutes it starts lagging on my pc. As you don't see beforehand which color of the orb will spawn from the dead monter it seems like you need to avoid all of them not even shoot them. This could be and additional mechanic, either: 1) have it glow with color of orb it will spawn and player will try to chase the desired one 2) or add a block ability and player will try to block red ones in time while collecting others

i-pots 2025-04-10 11:27

We have made a significant update! Simply put, we have added a simple mode and provided the option to change the control mode! Our game interface will be more beautiful and the sound effects will be more suitable! Looking forward to everyone's physical experience!

hit3c 2025-04-11 01:46

The artwork was amazing. The music was also really great! I enjoyed the game play, but didnt realize I could show and i was driving backwards the whole time. Very cool! Really polished.

hdvr02 2025-04-12 07:30

Beautiful visual style! Very atmospheric and pleasing to the eye

lucasito 2025-04-12 10:20

Only version is for Windows ? ): (I am on Linux)

alem26 2025-04-12 10:57

This is by far the best looking game I have seen in this jam! Huge props to the artists! The style reminds me of Badland and a bit of Ori and I love both games :)

The controls are quite tricky and I just ended running from the boss forever and more or less ignored it since I would basically just die whenever I turned around. Overall a really good submission tho!

i-pots 2025-04-12 17:54

Thank you all for liking it! At present, only Windows is supported... We have optimized the control issue as much as possible. In order to ensure a relatively smooth experience with a certain level of difficulty, it may be necessary for everyone to play more times

leykal 2025-04-12 18:13

What incredible, so addictive to play i love it, the music wasn't stressfull, just laking a bit a soun feedback while geting level up or damages.

cresceda 2025-04-13 12:56

Cool graphics, especially how the halls are seemingly, seamlessly connecting. The controls weirded me out a bit but the idea of it makes sense considering the goal was killing the creature above you. It's an interesting concept for a roguelite of some kind, focusing on multiple things, separately, at the same time.

spookyman999 2025-04-17 04:05

I... LOVEE the art, the lighting, so amazing!!, the noise filter and bloom on the pause menu too!

tygrak 2025-04-17 15:44

Really pretty art style. The controls were quite strange, it was cool that I could change them, but after I died they seemed to reset to the defaults. Shooting the boss was really awkward since turning around was so slow that I got only a short moment to shoot and then needed to turn around and run away again. I like the roguelite upgrade loop. And the graphics are really amazing though.

i-pots 2025-04-17 16:43

That's right... it will reset, but data persistence will be more complicated, so considering the time, it won't be added. The slow turn setting is also intended to increase the difficulty of hitting the boss. Of course, you can choose not to turn back and keep hitting it while going backwards, haha!

jhax 2025-04-17 21:18

Really cool! Had me hooked for a while! The graphics and sounds work so perfectly together to create the sort of spooky underwater vibe. I think having to sort of always be on the run from the boss is a really cool twist on this sort of game as well even if it is tricky! I ended up in dead ends quite a few times, but not sure if that was intentional or not (I might have just been not getting far enough ahead of the boss to back out again!)

oller125 2025-04-17 21:20

Great looking and sounding game. D as forward took a bit of time to get used to but I figured it out in the end.

Was the environment/level design hand crafted or procedurally generated?

ryano 2025-04-18 07:55

Great atmosphere. Took a few plays to get a handle on the controls, but really enjoyed it once I did.

i-pots 2025-04-18 09:28

All of our content is divided and completed by group members, and most of them are students! Everyone is amazing!

i-pots 2025-04-18 09:30

The loop of the scene and the growth of level values are implemented by writing code/formulas for loop logic

cgraen 2025-04-18 16:37

First of all, I loved the game. The idea is cool and the graphics are unique and beautiful. I do have some feedback for that I hope is useful to you guys for improving it ^^: - the sound seems to set out whenever you get hit - I often get 2 times the same choice on the selections - some tilesets dont fit. You can see the line where they connect and it sticks out on oneside leaving a sharp edge. - I kinda wish I had a weapon I could aim with the mouse, since it sometimes feels kinda bad trying to steer to run away but having to dive towards a monster to kill it, but I guess thats part of the difficulty and better for controller support Overall great effort gj guys ^^

kujoen 2025-04-18 17:15

Very nice game, impressive art and amount of systems. You also definitely nailed the theme. A giant monster chasing you into the depths until you can fight it is a great idea. I also did not really struggle with the controls, it was fine for me.

The gameplay feedback I would give is that it is not exactly clear how close you can get to the boss. When the run has gone on long, it feels incredibly punishing to instantly die because you were just a bit too greedy. Punishing greed is the one thing, but there should be some clearer visual indication of at which point you will die. At some point I just never turned around to fight the boss because I was too afraid of the one-shot. Instead, I waited forever for the mines to kill him.

Only other thing I can think of is maybe more directional-audio or point lights/post processing effects, but that is also just extras on top.

Great work to you and the students! :)

vangrail 2025-04-23 12:04

Very nice graphics and atmosphere. I was a bit confused about the controls because my ship fires frontal so to hit the boss I must fly backwards. In the end I managed. Well done!

Screenshot 2025-04-23 140349.png

missfire 2025-04-24 15:29

This is gorgeous. The moray design, environments, music—hats off!

I do have a couple of control issues: no matter how I tweaked them, in the heat of the moment it was hard to know what to press or which strategy to use. Even Easy mode was tough enough that I couldn’t finish.

There’s a lot of potential here—tune the difficulty and controls a bit and it’ll be fantastic. Thank you for the game!

imnotvegan 2025-04-24 19:08

Very addictive gameplay!

Sometimes chunks stop generating on the sides and the player can go outside the play area

Screenshot 2025-04-24 211016.png

talan-huszk 2025-04-25 11:00

Really nice visuals! The controls feel a bit clunky so I felt most of the difficulty came from that and not the gameplay itself. Overall good job! Great mood for the game!

jamesdev 2025-04-25 15:30

The game looks awesome, super hollow knight-esque! Like the others I thought the controls were a little unintuitive, especially if you have to be flipped the other direction. Also it's pretty hard, after a while i found myself getting less and less upgrades while enemies were getting harder to destroy.

molpe 2025-05-03 21:29

Hello there, beautiful art and soundtrack, it was a lot of fun. Did not manage to kill the monster, but I think I got pretty far :slight_smile: I've made a let's play to share my experience: https://youtu.be/AVfIHnp0yEQ