badpinkchicken 2025-04-07 11:17
Love it! We had the same idea! Love your sonar and the small tutorial zone i wish i thought about it! Wish it was a bit darker quicker and more things to do but overall great job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Echoes of the Deep
By nyxkn
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 177 | 3.36 | 59 | |
| Fun | 178 | 3.16 | 59 | |
| Innovation | 197 | 3.07 | 59 | |
| Theme | 74 | 3.87 | 59 | |
| Graphics | 262 | 2.78 | 59 | |
| Audio | 92 | 3.51 | 59 | |
| Humor | 216 | 2.27 | 55 | |
| Mood | 67 | 3.81 | 59 |
Love it! We had the same idea! Love your sonar and the small tutorial zone i wish i thought about it! Wish it was a bit darker quicker and more things to do but overall great job!
reminded me of the Subnautica vibe, cool!
@onngd best comment I could receive <3
Thats so cool! love it
Surprisingly calming for a game about diving into the creepy depths of the ocean :smile: The ambiance and sfx were really well done. The sonar mechanic was a nice addition to make it more than a regular maze game. I think the pacing could use a bit of work, the sub felt really slow (which was thematic, but I found myself wanting to speed up a bit :sweat_smile:). Nice job!
Very creepy. The game really shines when you reach the depth where it's impossible to see without the sonar. I think it would be better for the pacing to reach this point a bit sooner. I also would have liked to spend a bit more time in the 'natural' terrain especially when it is pitch black. Just some minor nitpicks, overall fun game.
loved it! The sound, the mood and that ending really gave me such a nice time playing it. Amazing job!
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The controls felt very submarine - like :ok_hand:, and the mood was great. :smile:. I also liked the sonar effect. The 'bad' fish did not feel very intimidating - they felt kind :blush: I liked the narrow natural passages more than the grid like passages in the end. The latter felt man-made, which was a bit out of place in an exploration game. Good job!
@flightless I was going for an ancient civilization vibe :D
I love the tutorial in the beginning. The game is easy to understand and fun to explore. The wave shader on the text was a nice touch!
Very relaxing and meditative gameplay! I really enjoyed the psychedelic synthesizers and the pitch-black environment where you have to move using sonar. I would add an echo effect to the sonar, though, because the sonar sound feels a bit harsh compared to the charming and mesmerizing background melody. But honestly, everything sounds really great. The submarine has smooth controls, and you can easily get lost in this game while thinking about your own things. I really enjoyed it!
Very cool game. I love the sonar effect, very creative. It had a great sound too. Mood and theme was spot on. It would be nice if the mean fish looked a little more different from the nice fish.
I like it. Got knocked out of bounds and was able to escape the level completely. Restarted around 900m. :clown: I am inspired to make a submarine exploration game in the future.
Awesome game. I liked the vibe. The audio was a nice mix, with unobtrusive sound effects. The gameplay is simple but effective and fun. The lighting is great. Looks good, makes sense thematically, and I liked how it gave a natural evolution to your gameplay systems as it gets darker. Once you're in the deep depths it becomes a different kind of game. Very cool! Great work!!!
The mood of the game is really chill, just relax and enjoy the trip to the deep
I love the music. Really enjoyed the idea behind this, even if the execution was a bit iffy.
Nice little game. I like the feeling when total darkness comes in. It would be cool if the rocks had more organic shapes, maybe pixeled like the fish. I also like the timing and how the ship behaves – not too fast and not to slow.
Awesome game! The music and SFX really set the mood. The sonar was cool.
Love the mood and audio! Very charming at the start, but felt a bit slow as I needed to navigate more strategically.
Interesting game, coool concepts! It reminds me the bat echolocation.
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@khaotom that sounds amazing! would have loved to experience that myself hahaha
audio and atmosphere made me fully immersed in the game, loved the sonar effect on the walls and the bright purple was a great pick!
Nice, it's simple, it's mood, it's zen. The sonar is such a nice touch. I would suggest having a completely dark section so it's more challenging, but I also don't think difficulty is the point of this game. Well done!sonar.png
i'm feeling subnautica
Steering the ship made me sweat a lot. I liked it =)
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I made it but took me 12 minutes; I feel ashamed looking at the other scores here :joy: jk. Great atmosphere It was fun finding out that the large fish in the darkness don't chase you so you have to dodge them in close quarters Stats at the end are fun Good audio Great polish! settings AND stats.
I wish there was more enemy/challenge variety at the end, and maybe one or two abilities or things we can do (like a dash) other than just spamming ping.
Really cool game, I like your sonar system so much, you just provide me some impressive experience about deep ocean exploring.
Great game, I'm hopping into the code to see how you handled the sonar effect :D We had some problems making our sonar in Unity
So first off I think you really killed it with the sound. My first impression was the lovely synth waves crashing in the main menu. The sonar sounds great, the music/composition/ambience sounds great. I love how everything progresses as you get deeper. And it's all processed very nicely to have a vast watery type of reverb. Well done there
Visually I think this is awesome. Very simple graphics, and yet very effective, especially with the lighting and the sonar. I love the sonar visual effect a lot, nice simple effective way of handling it. Kudos to you for conveying the mood/theme and building the atmosphere with just these tools.
I also really enjoy that you put a bunch of these friendly fish in the sea. Small touch but adds a lot
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So for gameplay, it's not too bad. I have a couple of main issues.
The main thing is the speed. I do think games like this should feel a bit slow/drifty/floaty, but I think this was too slow for the size of the level. It made me nervous every time I wasn't sure if I was going the right way, not because of any danger, but because I didn't want to sit through backtracking. Even if you have a slow acceleration, the top speed should at least be a bit higher.
Also while the driftiness was a good addition and solid to build the maps around, there were odd situations where I'd find myself ping ponging between a wall and a fish, and not escape because my acceleration was too slow. Perhaps a simple 1-2 seconds of damage immunity each time you get hit would have helped a lot.
Also with the sonar, this is the core gameplay, so there should have been some kind of resistance to make it interactive. There's no downside to using it, so the best thing to do is just spam it so it goes off as frequently as possible. Without any extra danger, the depths don't feel more sinister, just darker.
I think if you simply made it so the sonar pulled fish aggro, or maybe set a recharging "Energy" meter where each sonar consumes about 25%-50% of your charge, would have given a lot more dynamics to this core mechanic, and created situations where the player intentionally tries to use their memory while drifting in the dark.
All in all, great work, especially on building the atmoshpere/conveying the theme, and putting together some nice visuals and fantastic sound. You conveyed the theme well with the gameplay. I think the gameplay is just missing some interest that could be fixed by some increased interactivity. Good stuff!
Nice audio, the graphics were ok but I really like the sonar effect, when it gets dark it gets really tense, so the mood was strong! really good work on this!
the game was way too slow. you should let me go fast if i want, that way i can make it harder on myself if i find it too easy (and you can still go slow too).
the level design being a maze was extra annoying especially with how slow you move. i got blocked by 2 fish in a tight corridor. maybe that was a dead end? maybe i was supposed to go through? didn't seem possible, idk
audio could be improved, hearing sound effects of mysterious stuff moving in the dark could be really spooky.
overall i really liked it!
Nice one! I liked the sonar effect a lot, and it was overall quite polished. Submarine was a bit hard to move around but i feel like the controls were very submarine-y so i think it was a good design decision. Nice job!
I had thought of doing something like this too, very cool. Love how the music gets more intense as you go down. This is definitely one of the more thematic entries I've played. Well done :clap:
This is really great, probably the best I've played. I'm a sucker for a Ludum Dare game that actually ends. Really fun idea with the sonar effects, especially once the screen was totally black it created a couple of jump scares for me.
One minor critique is that I wish the "good" and "bad" fish were a little easier to differentiate from their silhouettes. I got used to it without too much fuss, but early on it wasn't totally apparent which were which.
wow, really nice mood. nice levels to explore as well.
Really well put together game! Took a novel idea with the sonar mechanic and ran with it. Tying it into vision/darkness with depth was also a great idea, and the "slippery" controls that added another layer of difficulty was also a welcome challenge that added a lot to the game. The sound and sonar ping shader was also really cool and I enjoyed spamming it whenever I could.
fun concept and levels!
Really cool game, it was fun!
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I really like the way the radar is implemented. Very good! The mazes create a bit of a challenge and completing them is quite a fan experience.
Very nice game. Id enjoy to play more of it, maybe with more mechanics. The graphics were also cute, but I would have liked if the big fish were different colour. Good job!
I love the sonar and the vibes for this! Trying to find your way through the darkness is kinda scary! Great game! I was able to finish it in 6:45
Good game! I loved the sonar mechanic and palette of this walls ^_^
Nice, atmospheric game, and a good take on the theme. The lighting and sonar look good and convincing. Ship movement was a little slow for my tastes. Also it would be more interesting to have more types of scary creatures.
What a great relaxing game, and the sfx :thumbsup: I really enjoyed the sound when bumping into something. (a bit too much) :wink: Really nice job! Also the music was very calming.
Gives you experiences of true submarine, inspite of being the arcade-like game. Fine gameplay and sounds, but i don't really like that u use mixing of pixel-art and low-detail styles. I believe it looks better, if you use one solid style. Anyway, except style choice, nice job!