FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Tidehold

Tidehold

By outstar and titos2k

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1024.0263
Fun2293.6863
Innovation2413.5963
Theme2543.9663
Graphics684.4764
Audio484.1362
Mood534.2662

Comments

d-demetori 2025-04-07 21:12

Good job for making a game, would be nice to have a tutorial, i was pretty lost on what am i doing, nice art and sound! Also with 3 difficulties its hard to tell what intended difficulty was

anstabo 2025-04-07 23:59

What the hell! This should be a released game, I would 100% buy that day one on the spot. I'm glad I followed you so that I can play your entries

kawair 2025-04-08 09:34

Nice game with high completeness ! I think you should release it on some platform, I'll take it into my wishlist!

kawair 2025-04-08 09:34

Nice game with high completeness ! I think you should release it on some platform, I'll take it into my wishlist!

hope42morrow 2025-04-08 10:21

Love the concept :heart:

fusionnist 2025-04-08 13:46

Wow, congrats on the entry! Impressively polished and pretty engaging idea - great art, music, and for some reason your UI is sooo clean??? - could totally become a full game! I won by spamming o2 tanks and salvaging them, but I *was* on easy mode out of caution :p Cheers!

titos2k 2025-04-08 16:14

yeah o2 rush is an exploit but i will fix it after the jam (somehow)

meowcuz 2025-04-08 17:00

Really fun and slightly cozy. I was slightly overwhelmed at first with not knowing what to do but as soon as I started pressing stuff it felt really easy to learn and start to get into it. Great job!

bananplyte 2025-04-08 17:19

I loved it! What an amazing game!

bjornstenlund 2025-04-08 18:14

This was great! I've played this for about 40 min now :D The graphics felt really cohesive and I really loved the feedback placing buildings and hovering over the square. I sort of lost track of time popping out building and expanding the base

I was sort of missing a +4 house tile, but maybe I just never found one. I think it could be nice if the o2 buildings would discover tiles over time but without limit (like culture in civ 5) instead of a fix size where you can build them in a grid.

Really cool game!

busisen 2025-04-08 18:51

looks amazing, super polished! checked out the stream for a bit, very nice itch page!

jhonny111 2025-04-08 18:56

This was amazingly polished for a 72 hour game. Almost a full game colony builder. Really liked the deep sea setting.

nsadie 2025-04-08 19:15

Really nice entry. Excellent art and mood, I enjoyed it a lot!

angelalb 2025-04-08 20:02

So polished. I love how everything looks so cohesive. The game feels a bit repetitive, but probably because it looks so nice that I can't help expecting more. Great job!

no-firing 2025-04-09 08:22

Good Job ✨

freamdev 2025-04-09 08:44

Great job, I love the atmosphere super impressed by the music and art. Was a bit confused about why I can't build something sometimes, I think the UI didn't update when I had the build menu open and waiting on resources.

At one point some of my buildings started to shake and glow green, i punched a radar next to it but I have no idea what it was supposed to counter/do.

Good fun overall :smiley:

guillaume-cleenewerck 2025-04-09 09:03

Nice work, the game have a lot of stuff that we did not got the time to implement. You got there fast and the final product is really nice.

sonnybone 2025-04-09 09:04

I just love the absolute fuck out of this. This is already so good but I'd love for it to get some post jam love. Games like this just tickly my dang brain real good and I gotta say thank you. THANK YOU!

kahztein 2025-04-09 09:16

Really well made game, the gameplay is simple but there's a balance you need to get on things to keep the production of each resource up, which adds a fun little challenge to it. The mood, graphics and sound were very nice too. You both did great with this!

morepixels 2025-04-09 10:19

Extremely beautiful and polished, but so extremely hard for me haha, I couldn't finish it. Absolutely loved it though!

badpiggy 2025-04-09 16:42

Unfortunately I don't know much about strategy or city builder games, so there isn't too much constructive criticism that I could give, but I thought this was pretty interesting

I'm not sure why I was unable to build anything other than a house at times, but I thought needing to place the oxygen tanks to uncover the area was cool, and the radar pointing the way kept things interesting. It definitely made me consider which buildings to place and where.

It also goes without saying how amazing the presentation was. Both audio and visuals were great and eally set a good atmosphere as well.

Extremely solid game all around here

sevadusk 2025-04-09 17:13

The UI level of polish for 72hrs is crazy. Usually for UI based games like this, the mechanics bloat difficulty to a point of being overwhelmed, but the final product ended up quite nice. If anything, balancing and tutorializing would be helpful to take this game to the next level.

tobaccoleopard 2025-04-09 17:50

I love the graphics and the audio, it really creates a great atmosphere! It's easy to understand what you need to do and the elements are presented very clearly. It's really enjoyable. I just wish there'd been an objective or something to help me decide how to expand. Well done!!

shadyshade 2025-04-09 18:43

So beautiful art style, really like it! And the gameplay is pretty good too. Nice entry, nice job! :heart:

alopar 2025-04-09 19:09

It's really great for such a small amount of time. I've always wondered how people manage to make strategies. The game is just great! 🤩

clymm 2025-04-09 23:20

Great artwork and fun game in only 3 days! Really loved it. Only wish there was a setting to turn up the music as it sounded great setting the mood!

thisyc 2025-04-10 03:02

A simple city builder strategy game with some depth. Very nicely done! I dig the atmosphere alot.

mremmele 2025-04-10 17:33

The game looks fantastic—great pixel art and sound design! I also want to highlight the UI—it’s really well done. That said, it would be nice to have a clearer objective or goal to work toward in order to 'beat' the game.

johnnysix 2025-04-10 19:25

Very cool - I enjoyed trying to balance the resources - I didn't find the signal sadly. :cry: If you develop post-jam - it'd be cool to see some deep-sea creatures that are attacking the base and some ways to fend them off - I kept having sections blow up but wasn't sure if it was seismic activity from over-mining an area or some "Kaiju" advancing across the sea floor. :smile:

profugo-barbatus 2025-04-10 19:52

Cool stuff - I didn't make it far enough to find the signal, but I love a little settlement builder. I found the best way around the attacks was to just delete them, wait for it to blow up, then place them back in.

talif-moor 2025-04-11 05:20

I really enjoyed this. The only issue I was having is that the radar was pointing me straight into the depths. I tried going around multiple ways, even removing buildings to try to get my 02 to reach further until I finally gave up. If I were to follow the radar directly, it seemed like it wanted me to hop past 2 tiles to reach the signal. Otherwise, it was very clever.

richardstampdev 2025-04-11 12:22

Tremendously cool, excellently done! Especially considering the timeframe. Should be very proud!

lev-ramburg 2025-04-11 13:50

I loved how intuitive the building placement felt, really satisfying clicks and visual feedback. Totally kept me engaged longer than I expected!

quasilyte 2025-04-11 14:20

The game looks, plays and feels quite polished. I wonder if it's the little details, like click sounds, that make it whole.

It's a bit hard to start playing as there are many building options and the map seems big, but easy difficulty was somewhat forgiving.

I really like that the tiles look 3d-ish, with a shade. This is probably what I would like to have in my game too, but I wonder if it would fit the environment (probably if being careful?). It makes the tiles much more clickable, like they're waiting for you to click. As a result, even a game cover with tiles is much sexier.

I may need to play this game again to cover its content as 10 minutes were not enough, which is somewhat unusual for a ludum dare game :D

xivo 2025-04-11 14:24

Nice game! The sounds and visuals gave the game a pretty good ambience, and I liked the balance of the resources, I felt I had to think well when placing buildings, and had to remove a lot of them to get to a stable income of resources. The only things I would point are that in the beginning I felt really lost in the game, it took a while for me to understand what was going on; that the radars in the end started not pointing towards the same place, which made me feel a bit lost; and that I could just reach a position where I could idle farm a lot of resources then spend them all at once putting O2 tanks and radars, and then repeat the process (I was playing in easy, maybe that's why). Other than that, I had fun playing your game!

aurel300 2025-04-12 11:40

Quite fun :) I haven't seen a strategy quite like this, where to build things you balance not only the current amount of resources, but also the income/spending of those resources. (Then again this is not really my genre so what do I know.)

The graphics were simple, but pretty and consistent (and with a nice colour palette!); the music was suitably calming and "deep" feeling. Some bits of the music reminded me of Startopia's OST, in particular the [Biodeck themes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHi2fDzJrS4).

It took me a minute to understand what exactly I was supposed to be doing: I should have read the description, but the text in the menu/pause screen was actually enough. I never quite reached whatever the radar dishes were pointing at, even though I built like 15? O2 towers reaching towards the signal (on easy difficulty). I wonder how the terrain generation is balanced? In some places there was mostly space for houses and very few spots for mines, in others there were *only* "depths" for mines but no houses.

Finally, the random danger that attacks you is cool but somewhat inconsequential. Losing one building doesn't change all that much, and even then it's sometimes possible to temporarily put up a radar.

adamsmccall 2025-04-12 21:41

I had to stop myself from playing at some point cuz I would have spent the whole evening on this game. Its flawless, there's nothing to add, great work !

mikeliosus 2025-04-13 14:58

Monosnap Tidehold by outstar - Google Chrome 2025-.png Hey! It is awesome Entry! I had a lot of fun!

It is interesting and well polished small management game. Great accomplishment to do something like this on a jam! Good job!

paulhocker 2025-04-14 02:43

very well polished game -- the game fits well with the theme -- i played for about 30 min but got stuck so i plan to play it again and learning more about it -- great entry

defrag 2025-04-14 02:43

Someone wrote 'slightly cozy', but I disagree. I felt like I was constantly shuffling around trying to find more places to stash my aquanauts. It took a few minutes to figure out what the core game loop was, but once I got there, it all made sense. The radar dishes might have been more useful if they could protect a larger area. The mysterious random damage seemed quite ominous at first - I was expecting some kind of giant sea monster, but never saw anything except my buildings disappearing. I was able to complete it on easy after about 15 minutes.

Nice mood, and especially nice work balancing the economics of the three resources so well!

oddmes 2025-04-14 12:35

Obviously super polished for LD. I felt that (on easy) there were no events I needed to deal with. I never changed my playstyle, never got new ideas to test out.

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-14 20:05

Wow! This seems so simple at first until all of the different buildings come together and make sense. You REALLY capture the chill vibe of building in the depths, but also the (minimal) danger of losing buildings along the way.

This was a really fascinating game that explores the theme incredibly well!

PS: I forgot I was playing on easy lol, and it sounds like the other difficulties get less "minimally" dangerous 😅

titos2k 2025-04-15 13:17

Some post mortem notes

Things people probably have not noticed

- The game features spatial sound effects. Tiles farther from the camera sound distant and are positioned in 2D space.

- Maps are created using PNG files, where each pixel represents a tile, and its color determines the terrain type. This approach saved us time, allowing map editing directly in Aseprite.

- The map is 64x64 tiles, but stress tests successfully handled 256x256. This is achieved by destroying tiles outside the visible area and redrawing them when they re-enter the screen.

- If you clicked fast enough, you could destroy your end goal, potentially breaking the game.

- Radars at the map’s end act erratically because their "mistake" ratio isn’t scaled based on distance from the goal. I found the effect funny, so I kept it in the code.

yancharkin 2025-04-15 14:33

Super chill and meditative. The gameplay, art, music and sound all work together really nicely.

justcore 2025-04-16 09:41

I really liked the graphics and sound effects - they work great together to build the atmosphere and set the mood!

hexstart 2025-04-16 22:12

Made it! tide.png

The game is put together super well. Audio, art and gameplay compliment each other perfectly.

I particularly liked that since most buildings balance each other, a larger tremor does not result in an unstoppable catastrophe, but is sometimes able to even bring your balance up. Yes, I played very light on radars :sweat_smile:

perrin 2025-04-18 17:21

Beautifully polished and great vibes. I didn't super connect with the core puzzle, I found it a bit more frustrating than engaging balancing the numbers but I think maybe I'm not the right player for this game.

randomhuman 2025-04-19 15:00

Nice, I enjoyed this a lot. Looks and sounds great as well. I didn't really bother with protecting anything, I just rebuilt what was destroyed if necessary, and having things lose access to O2 didn't seem to stop them producing, so it could maybe use something to make the attacks more impactful, but other than that, great gameplay and I was compelled to play it to the end.

schlock 2025-04-20 13:28

Very nice! Played it way too long but had a great time. Almost deleted the end portal and now wonder what would have happened.

blubberquark 2025-04-23 07:04

This is really similar to a game I made for the theme "deeper and deeper". I don't think you ripped me off here. It's much better. This is the game I *wanted* to make. This is the game I wish I had made. Well done!

outstar 2025-04-23 21:00

@blubberquark I just played your game after the comment you've made to check, and you're right, we had very similar ideas! I love how we both made the houses under domes :D I couldn't quite understand how to keep building in yours, but I think it's because I kept on confusing the two games and waited for the timer to update my resources!

joror 2025-04-23 22:21

Really neat little builder! I saw the Dawnfolk connection for sure. :ocean: Got the economy a bit wrong the first time I played, but after a second attempt it worked out. The graphics area really tidy and polished. Mood strong with good tunes too. The explosions were sometimes a bit harsh, but could recover. Nicely done! :star: