Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Echoes of the deep
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 254 | 3.00 | 78 | |
| Fun | 268 | 2.70 | 77 | |
| Innovation | 247 | 2.75 | 77 | |
| Theme | 68 | 3.88 | 78 | |
| Graphics | 237 | 2.99 | 74 | |
| Audio | 3.00 | 3 | ||
| Humor | 236 | 1.91 | 71 | |
| Mood | 155 | 3.36 | 77 |
wow the amazing water sounds. (I asked my brother create underwater sounds, and he got piano melody -- your sounds are significantly better than we could pull off)... The game was kinda short/went to game over immediately.
you nailed the atmosphere of dark/light. it felt really deep! i liked it a lot great job!
I like the dark atomosphere, you will never know where the enemy is before it approaches you. And the sound effect is amazing! It really expresses what deep ocean is. And the particles, the detail of rotation of submarine enriched the graphics. My game is about submarine too, so I'm very glad to find your game.
The sonar helps you to find the enemy, but it also let enemy to find you. However I found that I can just avoid using sonar by turn the light around the submarine. It makes my viewport much larger that I can see the enemy around me clearly without sonars. Then I always upgrade my hulls, so that I can dive as deep as I want......
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Nice combination of darkness and light. I didn't really understand why the enemies sometimes suddenly disappear as if teleported behind the map, but I enjoyed the game.
The game has a great feel, but I was a little bit lost what the objective was. First run I didn't understand that I had to press space for sonar. But that didn't seem to be an issue, I could see the enemies with enough time to avoid them.
If the main objective is to get deeper, I would expect there to be upgrades to help get deeper faster. Otherwise if I'm not using the sonar I'm just spending most of my time waiting to descend with very little effort to dodge the enemies.
The concept and feel is great though. This could turn into something great.
@dstoc totaly agree with you ! With more time I wanted to add more enemies and upgrade and make it more challenging. I might continue developing it in a full game tho! Thanks for your comment
Unfortunately it broke in my browser, and I could only ever play 1 round at a time. I like the concept with the sonar, and the atmosphere is dead on though!
@scott-r-howell Thanks for your review, weird because I fiexed the reload normaly. Maybe it wasnt up already. Progress is still save if you refresh tho!
Nice use of the theme! The idea of having to balance getting information with using up sonar and attracting enemies is really cool. Being able to see enemies and the wall without the sonar makes it easy to bypass this however so i think making the areas outside your light completely dark would make things more interesting.
Atmospheric. Unfortunately, I played with extra difficulty, as my browser only showed half of the screen, so I couldn't get very far :D
Anyway, it's pretty addictive.
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@scrawach thanks for you feedback. I couldn’t manage to reduce the size! But you can zoom out on your browser :)
@badpinkchicken Oh, that's right! It's the lack of sleep :D
Gotta try again then :)
Interesting game, really liked how the sonar works, record 300 meters, but when selecting the upgrade jammed the buttons and the boat flew to the top corner. It's amazing to make a TS game in 2 days. photo_2025-04-07_14-31-06.jpg UPD: new record - ~1500
@p3tition thanis for your feedback ! It was the first time I made a TS game. It was interesting to deal with shaders in this situation haha
Yeah, if the upgrade appears when the control button is pressed, the boat promptly wants to stop the player's progress :D
Anyway, I like the feeling of submersion and the mystery of the unknown. Makes me want to keep playing more. I think you did a good job of conveying that feeling.
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Loved the way you did the radar in this. Really good getting to select the loadouts as well. Overall fits the theme pretty nice. The atmosphere was surprisingly tense for a cute little 2D game. Great job.
Lovely atmosphere, good sounds and the controls were smooth. Nice entry!
The presentation is really nice here. I like the water and radar sounds and how it combines with the lighting effects to build the whole atmosphere.
Some things that slightly confused me at first:
- The death message seems to always be "You went too deep", which left me wondering "Huh, but isn't the point going deep? Isn't it going deeper on its own? Is it just forcing me to die and buy upgrades a few times" until I experimented by immediately slamming into the wall and saw it was the same message. - The first torpedos are "light" torpedos with no description. I assumed this was as opposed to "heavy" torpedos at first, like "not very powerful torpedos" and so fired them off the bottom of the map thinking they'd clear away enemies. Only after one got stuck on a wall did I realise that they're torpedos that exist to emit light.
Overall though, great job!
@argensis Thanks for your feedback! Very useful :)
I really liked the lighting, and how different colors blended together. It took me a while to get the hang of the gameplay but when I did it was quite fun, good work!
Amazing atmosphere here, really good sounds and effects! I zoomed out with no issues, but it makes me realise I should probably upgrade my 1080p monitor. I think the atmosphere could be significantly improved if you managed to make the whole page where the game is embed also dark, that would send it to another level! Otherwise I think some extra explaining would do this game a service, I was slightly confused from the beginning. But once you get into it, it's pretty fun! I think that there is a bug that when you're moving while the upgrade window pops up, you keep moving on your own (even with no key pressed), until the inevitable crash, perhaps upgrade window should reset the movement temporarily to 0. Otherwise definitely my favorite atmosphere so far. :slight_smile:
So unnerving! Didn't get very far (you can die while choosing an upgrade!) but tried a few times :D The loop works, and I do how there are larger and scarier creatures down there!
I really liked the upgrade systems, a nice way to have differents playstyles, well done!!
I saw your comments on my game: I think you unfairly rated me low on a broken build lol. I've posted a working version on itch.io.
Besides that, yes very interesting that we both had the same idea but the execution was different, yet similar. I really like the sounds. It sets the mood and atmosphere.
Loved the atmosphere and the sound design, super immersive. I unlocked the blast torpedoes but they seemed to just go through enemies and explode on walls? Not sure if I did something wrong or if that’s how they work.
Also hit a bug: I finished a level while holding a direction key, and when the upgrade screen showed up, my input kept going. When the game came back, my sub slammed into a wall and then a squid, lost 2 hull points without even touching the keyboard.
Didn’t really click with me overall, but it’s got a lot of potential!
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I found a little bug! When you use all your energy, it would go backward ^_^
Nice game! Wanna some goals and milestones maybe ^_^
Loved the atmosphere and I think that if the ocean had more versatility it could have been awesome :) I also found that in most cases using the mouse to detect enemies was much better than using a sonar, maybe remove the mouse light and replace it with a different indicator so the sonar would play a much more important role?
Cool concept! I like the idea of getting progressively deeper and exploring more difficult regions while slowly upgrading my vessel.
The gameplay felt a bit lacking - it was too easy to constantly swivel the light to see the enemies and ignore all other mechanics, perhaps the enemies should react to the light rather than the sonar so that you are incentivised to avoid using the light and rely on the more limited sonar?
The mood is very well done - great job on the underwater audio and the simple visuals do their job of engulfing you in the dark depths very well. Good work!
The atmosphere of the game is very cool, with the sounds, we really are in the deep ocean. Playing with the light is an interesting idea. It's quite easy and i would have liked more ennemies type but you have done a great job !
Brilliant work! I really like the idea of sonar!
nice! great atmosphere
you got the mood of going deep into the ocean! nice game
I love the atmosphere! Great play with light and darkness. It really feels like the player is going deeper. I'd try to balance it a bit more though, sometimes the enemies really seem to come out of nowhere, but it is a jam and that quick challenge factor is definitely there ! Well done !
Sonar was really cool! I found that hugging the wall and upgrading hull let you get pretty far :)
The atmoshere was great. Love that the submarine rotates when moving left/right.
As others have said, I would have loved some increased difficulty as time went on, but at the same time it was a very relaxing and zen experience to just chill and go down. (I went 3000m deep :stuck_out_tongue:)
Great job for a solo dev and in 2 days only !
Spooky, immersive, definitely nailed the atmosphere. My suggestion would be to balance towards the more forgiving side for early, and more challenging for later. On my first three runs maybe, I just died to enemies that came out of nowhere. As a sucker for roguelikes (my entry is also a roguelike), I appreciate the opportunity for builds and would like to see more upgrades if you keep working on this. Overall well done!
Intersting concept and very atmospheric!
Can't believe you die when touching a jelly fish! Anyway, great job on the game, it was fun (:
Good vibes, would be better if it has milestones and shooter mechanics
I liked the sonar scan, and the lightning. Could add more variety to enemies and maybe refill torpedos as you go down! Nice little game! We did a simmilar thing with limited vision diving but it is a local multiplayer competition, and we made some of the fishes glow to give better clarity, maybe those additional lights would benefit you aswell!
Typescript? Clean code, really cool!
This is a really cool concept. I like mechanically how you went about tracing the outlines from the sonar. The idea of having enemies only attack you from the sonar is a cool balance with avoiding collisions. This is smart
You also took a couple radial gradients and turned it into something quite atmospheric. I love the way things blend additively, and the way things fade into darkness. I like the design of the sub and enemies, but it really shines with the way you blended stuff.
Good audio design too, the water and sonar sound good.
I also like the idea of making something like this a roguelike. I've had the most fun with games like that this jam, ones with a sense of progression. And you have a cool nice set of upgrades to choose from.
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My first issue is, unless I'm mistaken, the whole "progression" thing is not working. It seems clear the intention is each run gives you more and more stuff to upgrade and improve for each run. But unless I'm missing something, it seems like things fully reset after you die. The upgrade at the beginning appears to be the only choice there is to make.
Now I'm prob totally wrong about this. In which case, it may be an information conveyance thing. Its really not clear to me what is supposed to be accumulated or earned from each run. Although good chance it's a cognitive skill issue on my part :)
With that, I don't think it makes sense to have the "Torpedo" menu at the beginning. If I am mistaken and there is a reliable way to get more torpedo types, then the menu should only pop up if there's more than 1 torpedo to choose. This is just a nitpick
Also while this was important for the game balance and mood, I did feel like the range of your flashlight was quite short. I can of course see why, but in contrast, it also seemed like the sonars range was pretty short, and sometimes the "sonar vision" would disappear right away. You did good to set up some interesting pros and cons with the sonar, but I feel like these additional issues made it often not feel worth it to use.
I think the death screen info is pretty confusing more than anything. The info about upgrades doesn't make much sense when it shows something like the number of points and then also a fraction next to it. And none of that info can be viewed or validated elsewhere. Numbers don't scare me but frankly these numbers are confusing me.
Another nitpick, it would probably have been pretty quick to add a couple different death messages than "You went too deep". At least something like "You met a jellyfish" or "Your sub found solid ground". At first I was confused by the message until I realized you can die from hitting the bottom of the screen.
Overall, I think this is a solid concept, and you executed on the gameplay well! I have really no complaints there, just some balancing nitpicks. I think really the main issue is with a lot of information conveyance. I really wanted to dive into the progression/roguelike features but I was not able to. I think if you update the info page with a clearer explanation of the upgrades and how they work, it might get more people to enjoy the roguelike aspects.
All in all great stuff!
Great idea! A roguelite for a game jam is a boss move :D really fun to play, would love to see it polished some more ;)
Great work on this. It was a lot of fun, I think inputs were still being activated when upgrade screens popped up. and when I left the upgrade screen I would be in the wall. outside of that the vibes were really good.
@swooty thanks for your feedback. The rogue like fonctionnement is already in the description : After each death, you can spend collected currency to upgrade your submarine, improving your chances for the next dive.
Only the upgrades after your death are used for the next run. The ones during the run are only for the current run
I love the use of the theme and the atmosphere is cool!
The sonar idea is pretty cool! nice game :thumbsup:
Very good idea and realization! I liked the overall atmosphere and visuals of the game. There is a bug where when I press the A/D button the button gets stuck and I fly into the wall
Nice job. It feels immersive! I like the sonar mechanism very much.
the audio in this game is epic, but, it's just a static background track. imagine the sound effects were dynamic based on things moving around nearby you, spooky! also the sub could have a low humming engine noise where the volume matches your speed
There is really no need to use the sonar when you have the giga-light. Maybe it could had some battery that you could recharge with "level up" selections, and you could toggle-on/off. Regardless, feels very good. I think it might be faster to go down as soon as possible and die to get points for meta upgrades :smile:
first -- fun game -- second -- node? dude, you like pain? -- seriously tho this was a pretty good game that went well with the theme -- thanks for making it
Oh man this game is good. Nice dark and loath set up. The game is interesting has nice music and graphics, though it was a bit harder than expected, but again very nice entry! Good job!
Not sure I can add more to what others said - great mood and seem to have tons of content, a little eneven gameplay - I would make it more forgiving or at least explainable at first. e.g make the sonar last a little longer on the walls, explain you can't just shoot anyone at sight, etc