The Bends

swooty 2025-04-07 04:19

Such a cool game concept, love how you made use of this control scheme. The atmosphere of this is fantastic. I love the look, and the music is really nice. All comes together with the heavy vignette to really sell the theme. Love the tutorial text. Really awesome work all together

It was a good level of challenging but it was slow, especially in the beginning. I can definitely see how as the levels got harder, the movement was exactly the right distance needed for those sections. But the stretch at the beginning takes quite a while and I did not want to do that part again.

Checkpoints would have been a good addition. I got about 60% and would have pushed to the end no matter how difficult if there was even a checkpoint at the 50% mark.

Overall this is such a strong entry, well done!

2025-04-07 04:39

I think the concept, visuals and art are great...However, I think the time it takes to decompress once you get into the danger zone is criminal. Especially since you have no way of gauging how much farther you have to go to get to the surface. I think having a checkpoint system is an absolute must as well, because I got really far, died and then felt heartbreak once I realized it put me all the way back at the beginning. I would love to play and finish it, but I simply don't have the time or patience to play through it all again.

sqqqwer 2025-04-07 05:40

Cool game!👍 Really loved the music, visuals and overall atmosphere.

untitled-studios 2025-04-07 22:45

Cool concept! I found the gameplay to be a bit slow, but the vibes were on point. I love the idea of coming up from a dive by scrolling up a web page- that's just so charming.

pincushion 2025-04-09 17:31

Nicely atmospheric. I don't often think of scroll wheel beyond zooming or selection. It works really well with this linear movement.

It felt a little monotonous until there were objects to avoid. They felt like underwater caves, especially with the limited light. Sometimes I went up the wrong way and had to swim back down. The game really came together and I got into that flow state.

jk5000 2025-04-10 07:35

Super fun idea, great music and I liked the atmosphere. I have no idea how to avoid the second box. Overall a pretty good jam game. Well done

milq 2025-04-10 18:06

Wow! Honestly, the game is pure, hard innovation; I’ve never played with a mechanic like scrolling a web page to make the diver ascend. I might slightly reduce the compression inertia, although that’s probably a deliberate design choice to encourage a slower, more deliberate pace. I have to say, the music perfectly complements the experience and creates a fantastic mood. A truly excellent entry, great game!

gargantuan-janitor 2025-04-12 12:13

The concept was pretty smart, once I realized I was simply scrolling through a website I had a chuckle. Sadly the game part is not particularly fun to me.

andruid 2025-04-12 21:17

Quite a clever idea! Great entry and right on theme too. Btw: Are you familiar with Brazilian Baião music? It often has the same rhythm as the soundtrack. I like it!

henk 2025-04-12 22:51

> Btw: Are you familiar with Brazilian Baião music?

@andruid No, but after giving some of it a listen real quick I doubt I came so close by coincidence. I was exposed to a lot of jazz music as a kid and a bunch of it no doubt got lodged in my subconscious somewhere.

Thanks for the pointer, though! It looks like I have some listening to do :).

jovialknoll 2025-04-13 01:54

I really like the concept for an in browser game with the scrolling! Looks and sounds decent as well. Unfortunately the gameplay is really unforgiving and terribly slow, felt like it would have taken me hours to complete.

holysparks 2025-04-13 16:50

The way the game is presented diegetic and innovative in ways its hard to describe

eugenik 2025-04-14 13:44

hard to play,but a nice game.

knarf 2025-04-14 16:11

Awesome concept and use of a browser... This feels very unique in term of design. I loved the main caracter design and feeling when moving, however scrolling was a bit punitive: it seems I had to wait but the cooldown didn't move so much quite often, I then zoomed trying to scroll slower but cubes became very hard to avoid, felt frustrated, try to edit the html page without success, trying to cheat executing few browser methods without success... but I had some code to read at the same time at least XD very cool and interesting concept, good job ! I wonder if all browser would make it so hard, as I never could reach the surface. Will probably try some other browser or playing around with the DOM again at some point :) Also cool music ! Well done !

p-r 2025-04-16 20:20

Never played anything that used the scroll like this, well done

adam-gallina 2025-04-19 01:35

Really fun concept, I love the "reveal" that the scrollbar is also a progress bar. Like a few other people mentioned, it did feel a little slow paced, especially the tutorial section. Once the obstacles started to move, it got a lot more interesting, since rather than just going up and waiting 20 seconds you actually had to strategize, but getting there just felt like a chore. Overall really cool entry, great job!

commanderstitch 2025-04-19 20:49

i FELT like I was going DIE.

i FELT like I was a diver.

so many good things about this entry. Not so much fun, or humorous, but nailed everything else! :D

retrisma 2025-04-21 16:34

I enjoyed the concept of physically scrolling up in a webpage to get to the surface, clever idea! I appreciated the progression of ideas you had (first just managing the red bar, then obstacles, then moving obstacles) but I thought the pacing was pretty slow. It fits the methodical nature of the game, for sure, but I think it could have stood to introduce those ideas more quickly and expand upon them more. Really fun idea though, and I like how the main character looks :)

koalabear 2025-04-23 16:27

nice concept and execution, a bit slow but cool