FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Abyssmall

Abyssmall

By vladimperator

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1933.8534
Fun1463.8333
Innovation3513.3833
Theme814.2634
Graphics3253.8934
Audio2253.6733
Humor4452.7731
Mood3463.7133

Comments

online-play 2025-04-08 05:05

Great game. Enjoyed every second of it

olegator0270 2025-04-08 17:00

👍

bulba 2025-04-08 17:16

👍

alvaroromeral 2025-04-08 18:12

:thumbsup:

indiealesha 2025-04-08 20:38

Gorgeous visuals and physics. 10/10!

wolfier 2025-04-09 01:58

The tutorial was a little annoying because you're blocked in by invisible walls and I though the pearls were air bubbles for some reason.

I absolutely love everything else about this though.

I will point out that pearls are functionally useless as things become to expensive to really justify going for them over other things. This by extension makes the hook upgrade a bad upgrade.

notexplosive 2025-04-09 03:19

This is super cool. The soundscape is incredible! I also tripped over the tutorial due to the invisible walls (I ran out of air but I couldn't come to the surface because the tutorial wouldn't let me). I also agree that by the mid game I was ignoring pearls all together. They were just obstacles that were in my way for collecting the real treasures.

Also nice to see a fellow custom engine dev! You love to see it!

vladimperator 2025-04-09 14:23

@wolfier @notexplosive I really appreciate both of your feedback. The tutorial was kind of rushed and I didn't think the invisible walls through. I didn't have time to really balance the game, that's why pearls are so cheap. I'm glad you guys liked it, your games are great too.

keely-brown 2025-04-09 16:18

Tutorial menu stuff could be in the center of the screen. The mouse moving things around and having to go to the edge of the screen felt a little awkward.

Some of the text in the tutorial could be simplified. The flavour is neat but it does make it harder to know what information is important to know for playing the game.

I have to admit - I forgot the goal immediately lol. Having a little text reminder in the corner of what you're trying to do might help with that?

The overall mechanics of the game felt good. Swimming around felt a little clunky but as you get upgrades it felt better which I think is actually good in terms of progression. Good sound effects. The visuals were pretty solid.

Having some music would be nice to give some atmosphere as you're moving around.

Fun game!

lllarso 2025-04-09 16:20

Very cool little game you've made! :)

As the other mentioned, the visuals are great. I like the main character. His suit and swimming animation remind me of a penguin, which is nice.

The sound effects contributed to the atmosphere of the game.

After my first dive, I also ignored the pearls, because they were so cheap. Thus the hook upgrade was not needed. On the other hand, the other upgrades felt important and you could feel your character becoming better. I think having some obstacles or enemies would improve the gameplay.

The hook and the overall controls felt very good. The screen turning dark without oxygen was a nice touch and I also appreciate that you added a UI scale, because my monitor is quiet big and thanks to this feature I could read everything well. Congrats to this game! :)

fancyreckless 2025-04-09 16:32

Looks like a mix of dave the diver and dome romantik. Surprising amount of content for a jam, especially one person. My only complaint is that progression is a bit slow for a jam, but for a full game it would be great and I feel like this could be succesful at being one if expanded. Overall good job and pretty impressive for a jam.

stratcat66 2025-04-09 16:33

Very nice game! Addictive, nice upgrade mechanic in combination with cave exploration. I reached the end (although there was not enough oxygen to go back)

drfoxxx 2025-04-09 16:55

amazing, the effect of the screen darkening when oxygen is low is really impressive.

magicstunts123 2025-04-09 17:08

This game is waaaay too addicting :D As a Dave the Diver Fan i fell in love. Like some other comments i have to say that the pearls get more useless as the game progresses. But great work! Love the gameplay! P.S: The ending was sad... :(

dominic-graziano 2025-04-09 19:03

enjoyed it, had a lot of fun once I got the hang of it. great work!

jamesgames1000 2025-04-09 21:35

This might be my computer and I wouldn't be surprised but every time I open it, it closes almost immediately.

platonenko 2025-04-09 23:09

The fact that this is done on our own engine commands respect, great job!

vegasword 2025-04-09 23:48

Very intense gameplay for a 2D game that kind. Nice job with your handmade game engine!

rhill 2025-04-10 00:28

I think I'm getting the same issue as JamesGames. It crashes if I try running it. Latest.lelog doesn't give an obvious error. Last thing it logs is: [Titan.Core.ResourceManager] [Get] Deserializing Core/Meshes/Quad

thisyc 2025-04-10 01:51

Cool game, nice upgrade loop, and the fact that this was made with your own game engine makes it even cooler!

alex-servirog 2025-04-10 01:55

Impressive all-round quality. Lost count of time I spent playing it, seems like more than 40 minutes. Nice art and progression.

I encountered a minor bug: as I was swimming up (away from the platform) I released hooks very close to the surface and Ancient Tablet with its momentum flew off into the air and stayed there, being unretrievable.

vladimperator 2025-04-10 11:44

@jamesgames1000 @rhill I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. Are you sure your gpu supports vulkan 1.3? That's the only reason I can think of why it would be crashing.

vladimperator 2025-04-10 11:58

@keely-brown @lllarso @fancyreckless @stratcat66 @drfoxxx @magicstunts123 @dominic-graziano @platonenko @vegasword @thisyc @alex-servirog Thank you all for playing my game and all the feedback. I appreciate it a lot.

matthewdrake 2025-04-10 13:23

Nicely done! Really solid gameplay loop, finding new treasures felt nice. The swimming felt a bit clunky but that encouraged me to focus on upgrading my swim speed as well as oxygen. Solid game, well done!

broco 2025-04-11 03:18

First of all, Love the water effect! The execution is great on this one, feels pretty solid. I love the character design, it's very simple, yet it looks great with the little swim animation.

I just think it needs some tweakings. Prices rise extremely fast, there's a lot of pearls on the map, and their value is worthless. The early paths are very small, moving through them is annoying because you get stuck pretty easily, specially when you're on a rush. It can be quite annoying having to go back up every 10 seconds, specially when you're just starting. Finding my way down to the bottom was also very frustrating, because there are a lot of dead ends, and everytime you find a dead end, it's almost time to go back up, so it's really hard finding the way having to go back up everytime.

Anyways! Managed to complete it, after passing the first half I just went for it, I ignored every collectible below 50mts and luckily got on the right path. This is a very good entry!

beebster-games 2025-04-11 17:42

Buddy, you nailed it. Out of all the games I have played this one had me the most. I played yours the longest.

The only suggestion, I had no way to exit the game. I had to use Task Manager to kill the process.

Did you use Microsoft's Framework because your folder looks like Stardew Valleys with all the dlls.

It is too bead that a great game like yours may never make it commercially because there is really no way to get the word out how good the game is.

Thanks for the great play

velis69 2025-04-12 19:30

Pretty water! like it pixel game! Check my game too comrade!

botch-frivarg 2025-04-14 08:50

Simple but very effective!