FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Deep Mech Salvage

Deep Mech Salvage

By bearcage, jver422, wles, Ajores and dzr118

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2413.7953
Fun2603.6350
Innovation4463.2250
Theme3983.7650
Graphics534.5152
Humor5712.4543
Mood2853.8250

Comments

jaxrud 2025-04-08 03:12

Fun game, and a very cool artstyle. Enjoyed this one quite a bit.

pontax 2025-04-08 03:15

this oozes so much art style. as a fellow artist great palette choice. great job overall.

wheelsx 2025-04-08 03:16

The oxygen doesn't seem to fill on the web version. It has good fast paced action, and I like the ability to choose weapons.

zungryware 2025-04-08 03:43

The sprite work and environment design is beautiful!

My problem is that i never figured out how to refill my oxygen. The tutorial says that the elevator is supposed to do that, but it never did. And since I can't prevent my oxygen from going down, my run can only last a couple minutes. I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm just missing something, but I feel like I'm missing out on most of the game here. There are a dozen different weapons and abilities to try out, but it hardly matters if I only have 60 seconds to use them.

In case this is a bug, I am using the web export with Chrome.

adam-gallina 2025-04-08 03:43

The sprites are really well done, and the burst torpedoes were pretty fun to use! The audio balance could use a little work, some of the effects I could barely hear while others were turned up really high, but overall great job!

wles 2025-04-08 04:07

For anyone having trouble filling your oxygen - I just tested this in Chrome and it worked (on my machine...)

Make sure you step the whole way inside the elevator (equipment menu will pop up) and the oxygen meter should get refilled.

oxygen.png

If you were playing shortly after publication there was an accidental link to an older build, which has been corrected!

bearcage 2025-04-08 04:08

@zungryware / @wheelsx thanks for the O2 bug report! We accidentally put an old build link in the web player at first, so y'all were playing a copy from way earlier this morning... Oops!

mrs-wheelsx 2025-04-08 04:09

The sounds and music remind me so much of TMNT for some reason lol I lOVE it! I did not have any issue refilling oxygen. (Firefox) I really suck at twin sticks, but it was still fun trying. Controls and level design felt well built. Good job! See you in October?

wles 2025-04-08 04:14

@mrs-wheelsx We can't take credit for the audio beyond selecting it - big thanks to Juhani Junkala (music) and shiru8bit (sfx) for the CC0 sound assets. Glad you enjoyed trying our game!

Had a great time, hope to do it again!

wles 2025-04-08 04:17

@pontax Have to thank Qirlfriend on lospec for this color palette, it worked out great for the underwater mood. Thanks for playing!

Can't get markdown link to work: lospec.com/palette-list/bluberry-6

yanvs 2025-04-08 04:54

amazing art style

soaringmoon 2025-04-08 04:55

The shark infested waters were a nice touch. Glad to see that was animated.

mcovert 2025-04-08 05:12

The visual style is great!

dxk2294 2025-04-08 06:08

Looks like the game crashed after I ran out of oxygen :slight_frown:

Aside from that, incredible visuals, all the pieces come together nicely for a really fun shooter!

dubiousduck 2025-04-08 06:12

Love the visuals! The movement and attacks feel pretty slick. One thing I wish could be better was maybe have more feedback when the player is hurt. Often times I was not aware that I got hit. But overall, really like the vibe. Great job!

notredamstra 2025-04-08 06:24

What an amazing feat to build this in a weekend. Damn. Looks great, playthrough was fun, loving the overall feel!

nyxkn 2025-04-08 07:03

Pretty well executed! Art is nice. It takes a minute to get used to seeing things correctly but then it flows quite well. Well polished and gameplay feels nice. The music was a very good track but I thought maybe it was a little too high energy compared to the visual style. The basic gameplay plan was intuitive but the goal of the game wasn't very clear! Like should you come back to the same tower or find others? Is the goal to explore or just get scrap? There was also no counter for total scrap collected so it didn't feel like anything was happening. And how to unlock the other weapons? If you show them you will need to hint at how to get them. Overall very well executed mechanically and good polish but a clearer presentation of gameplay goals would have helped a lot!

crak 2025-04-08 07:17

OMG I love the graphics ! Love that there are multiple weapons. Love the upgrade menu and the Game Loop.

The mines were a bit overwelming, lot of them and basically invisible. The fact that it looks like the enemies respawn + the 02 meter made me not want to explore. I instead stayed near an elevator because I was constantly needing to refill my O2, and full on parts from the enemies nearby. Lastly I would have loved a little bit more feedback when killing sharks, like a little particle or have them blink when hit.

The shotgun and multi-missile felt soooo good to play. Well done !

Great Game overall !

toupaks 2025-04-08 09:26

Loved the art and sound ! The retro vibe is definitely there

keith-wang 2025-04-08 09:44

Great art and audio choice, love the shotgun. Shotguns are always awesome in games.

dywanix 2025-04-08 10:04

This game looks so good! the best one for me so far

whalejam 2025-04-08 10:17

This is so good! Love the graphics, the sound is really great, I love the massive torpedo that does loops on your enemies! The theme for this one is super cool and the animations and feel of it are just so good. I would love to see some more, maybe with more upgrades, enemies and a boss or enemy scrappers or something. Nice job ^^

frag-machine 2025-04-08 11:30

Brigador under the sea edition

I wish garages where a bit more visible, but maybe that's just me

egor-iv 2025-04-08 12:55

cool graphics

gamedevtraum 2025-04-08 13:17

loved the graphics and music, played on the web version, it would've been nice to have the fullscreen mode, the screen was a bit small to me, had difficult to see the landmines, an idea is that the radar could help to detect mines easier. Also the shark-infested waters message was hilarious :laughing:

wles 2025-04-08 14:41

@nyxkn Great feedback! I think most of those are things we'd have improved on if we hadn't run out of time.

The locked weapons in particular are 100% unfinished content, no way to access those. At one point the vision was for you to start with only basic equipment and unlock more in return for scrap, but as the deadline loomed it turned into being a loadout selection from all implemented equipment.

hope42morrow 2025-04-08 14:42

Love the visuals and atmosphere of the game! UI design is also pretty interesting and smooth

love it!

sleepyfikou 2025-04-08 21:12

Really cool game. The pixel art and music are great and the action is fast paced and fun. It's a shame the extra weapons weren't finished in time, but what is there is satisfying to use and fairly well balanced. Great work!

theyflower 2025-04-08 21:32

the music matches the pace of the gameplay well. the graphical style is really beautiful

johncoffee 2025-04-08 23:05

Nice game, impressive graphics, but horrible loading time, i think due to shading. Still impressive game. controlls were very good.

jtap 2025-04-08 23:49

Amazing style, I really like the look, thank you!

flinge 2025-04-09 08:30

Cool game with great visuals and a solid soundtrack. It’s got a lot of potential as a vampire-like experience. The only thing I missed was a clear goal — something global, or at least per level or wave.

nsadie 2025-04-09 16:16

Really nice art style, and fun to play. I liked the UI design a lot, great job!

mremmele 2025-04-09 17:28

The pixel art looks fantastic—great job!

linky439 2025-04-09 20:24

Wow, great art style and music! The feeling of being deep in the ocean is nicely done as well, as the oxygen drops pretty quickly. I had a bit of trouble aiming exactly where I wanted (especially on fishes) and I think I drove over every single landmine, they look very hard to spot. Overall a really nice entry, congrats!

wles 2025-04-10 04:15

@gamedevtraum We've built a couple missing features and balance changes into a "Director's Cut" version, if you wanted to try it out again with fullscreen mode! The engine is still set up to want integer scaling factors though, so unless you have a large screen it may not actually make the viewport bigger.

**Please use original versions for ratings, the Director's Cut has additional work after the jam deadline**

tailsgamedev 2025-04-11 00:51

I couldn't reload in the tower thing but game looks pretty great congrats!

p-r 2025-04-14 19:23

Awesome entry

ammonit 2025-04-15 08:50

Guys, the environment art is super cool!!! The vibe is awesome! I felt a slight disconnect between the visuals and the music, but I still had a blast with the game!

miroreflect 2025-04-16 16:34

I wish there was more content! My first run I somehow completely missed the first beacon and therefore didn't know what to look for but on the second one I had my eyes open and ran all the way to the ends of the shark infested waters (either the rifle was too strong or the waters weren't shark infested enough as I was able to run all the way to the edge of the map with no issues :P). The art is amazing just like everyone else was saying and the controls were great too.

The only thing I would've like to have had was some sort of indicator where the closest beacon was when you had 50/50 scraps since you could pretty much go anywhere.

caer 2025-04-17 23:57

I love the environment art and the controls! This entry feels incredibly polished, and I really enjoyed the HUD design.

I did feel like there should have been a bit more progression involved before having alternate abilities/weapons, though...it felt a little overwhelming at first. :thinking:

lordsheo 2025-04-19 13:33

Really liked the look of the game, very clean art.

Personally I only played about 2-5mins because with how dark it was + the small colour palette made it pretty hard on my eyes, and then the mines on top of that didn't feel great cause they were even harder to spot.

Overall good mood and art, not my kind of thing unfortunately.

mr-field 2025-04-22 17:52

Fun, has a great style/mood.

I played the jam version first & then tried the director's cut; it's nice to see that you'd already fixed up some of the complaints I would've had, like making the mines glow.

Like others have said, it is pretty hard to see - and I think that's partly due to the amount of noise in the environment art. While it looks good, I think reducing the amount of dithering and random detail in the environment would do a lot for making some areas much clearer & easier to navigate. That and maybe using a more consistent pixel scale for assets.

The shotgun & both missile types felt good and satisfying to use, I think the rifle feels a little too slow/limited.

Like @flinge said, I'd love to see a version of this with a greater sense of purpose.