xorfe 2025-04-08 08:39
I've always wanted to drive a submarine. Now here i am.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Deep Blue
By poboy
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 148 | 3.92 | 29 | |
| Fun | 541 | 3.22 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 22 | 4.27 | 29 | |
| Theme | 72 | 4.27 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 531 | 3.46 | 29 | |
| Humor | 291 | 3.20 | 27 | |
| Mood | 131 | 4.05 | 29 |
I've always wanted to drive a submarine. Now here i am.
Its a great game, I think the dot hold threshold needs to be increased, especially because you type such long morse code, and maybe its my keyboard but tapping didn't always work.
Really interesting idea ! I never though morse code could be a gameplay feature, i just wish the first words were a bit shorter. Making the difficulty progressive would have entice me to play longer. Well done !
Very interesting game and definitely felt isolated while playing it.. Great job!
Not bad, at first I didn't quite understand what to do, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly, the mechanics of sending text in Morse code really surprised me. I love narrative games and this one really got me hooked.
i've never seen such gameplay before, its very addictive 💗
This was really fun! The atmosphere was great. The storytelling was really great! I loved the feeling of learning how to communicate with morse code. I've known conceptually about morse code for years, but never actually tried to encode or send a message before. This was cool!
If there was one thing that didn't feel quite like it fit, it's having chess puzzles instead of focusing or more semantic communication. The chess puzzles felt like they belonged in a different game.
Overall, I loved this, and am really impressed by what you made!
Great work with the overall experience as well as the minute details. I enjoyed things like the sway of the submarine, the animation on the text, the submarine inside and the colors you chose for the screen, the morse code mechanic, and the sounds. I would say the combination of the audio and graphics helped sell the narrative. The final scene was also dreamlike and strange, almost awe-inspiring were it a longer game with more interactivity.
Chess was fun, been a while since I did any tactics puzzles so it was refreshing. The tiny board style puzzle was also interesting, I haven't actually seen that before. Awesome job!
Thank you for all the comments :)
@Baldurs : Yeah, in hindsight I need to increase the delay, you aren't the only one who struggled with it. It's set to 144 ms right now. Such is life, thanks for sticking through it.
@silas-reinagel : Glad you like it! I have a special attachment to Morse because I used to journal exclusively in Morse in grade school, so it makes me happy that I can teach it to others. You might also enjoy that the launch code, "What hath God wrought", was the first message ever sent over a telegram.
There's one interpretation of the game that I think is too subtle, but explains the chess connection. I'll spoil it here:
"Deep Blue" is the first chess AI to beat a major grandmaster, and the game that's printed in one of the terminals is [Deep Blue v. Garry Kasparov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov). One of the terminals suggests that the submariner "feels like he feels" and "remembers remembering." He also can recall and calculate suspiciously well, and the "Operator" gives some instructions -- especially later instructions -- in a somewhat stoic, direct way -- as if he wasn't actually addressing a human. I think you get the picture.
@poboy Thanks for explaining the second connection. I totally missed that reference, but now that you explain it, it makes perfect sense, and I could have made that connection. Your game had even more "depth" than I knew!
Super cool game! I really liked the connection with chess and deep blue. The theme of solitude is really well dealt with and the whole game + audio design is fantastic. Top notch game!
I loved the idea of talking in morse, it's quite long to do but the mechanic is well done so it stay pleasant to do. The ambiance is really good ! Unfortunately i did not know the notations for chess so i had to find the solution then look at the spoiler to enter the good code. Anyway, Good job !
ohh I really like the Morse code mechanic, and looking at your comments that you have a special attachment to it I'm glad you were able to share it with others. The vibes are on point in this game and I especially love the transition from scene to scene - the stark white along with the audio is excellent. Nicely done!
What an excellent piece of storytelling!
It's a joy to see a game (really, more a narrative experience) where all of the pieces fit together so nicely. The art, sound, and story all really complement the mood; the separate little mechanics (the morse, the chess) have great thematic interplay; and the narrative contributes to a sense of pathos that really makes this game stand out from the others I've played in this jam.
I've played plenty of games this jam made by entire teams of people that feel substantially less 'complete'--this one is all the more impressive being a one-man effort.
I expect to see this game finish very high in the rankings!
I felt the descent into madness went by too quickly and I wanted more of it, which speaks to the quality of the writing. I double checked the morse code at a few points (WHATHATHGODWROUGHT) because I thought it would have been a perfect opportunity to sneak in a hidden message, especially considering the mental state of the protagonist. A few other people noted the morse code entry was very unforgiving which was a bit frustrating, but then again that probably fits with the emotions the main character is feeling. Nice work.
Really cool idea. Definitely reminds me of games like Thirty Flights of Loving or The Static Speaks My Name - which actually started as an LD entry a while back. Great work and congrats on finishing!
Great mood and psychological aspects, very interesting even though I got a bit stuck and didn't fully understand the end (though I don't know I was supposed to). I agree with @feor about the length of the increasing madness, and that the morse code entry was frustrating at times.
Interesting!
Great in the mood category :smile: Well done!
I was a bit hard to succeed sending message, it took me a long time. Anayway nice idea and story, nice work
Solid entry for a solo dev :)
Next time, take care of keyboard layout. A lil hard to enter the text response with azerty (french) layout.
Liked the graphics and the story.