Deep Dive

rinevard 2026-10-19 02:07 ♥ 1

Great art and music as always. The card rewards after battle aren't well explained in the story, I was expecting to collect ancient tech to enhance the submersible or the cards. Also, I initially thought the card draw mechanic would refresh my hand each turn like Slay the Spire, but it wasn't hard to find out the real mechanic (drawing one card each turn). Overall I still quite like it, and I think the final surfacing sequence is an interesting twist! (I didn't participate in this jam so I can't rate your game.🫠🫠)

vidarn 2026-10-19 08:24 ♥ 1

Thank you @rinevard ! I really appreciate it :) It's always nice to get that first comment that proves the game at least works and can be played through to the end 😆

You're very kind about the art and music, I'm happy you liked them! And you bring up good points regarding the gameplay. I agree that the card rewards should have been better connected to the story. I think I might have gone a bit too ambitious with the scope of this game, and I had to rush a bit in the end to get everything together XD

Haha, I wish I had thought of refreshing your hand instead of just drawing one card each turn. I think that could have suited the game better. Thanks for bringing it up, I will keep it in mind for the future.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to play the game! Sorry you couldn't participate in this one. Hoping to play another game from you soon :)

100th-coin 2026-10-19 16:14 ♥ 1

I love this. The artwork and animations are abundant and incredible.

The deck building had some fun strategy, though I think some of the cards were a little unbalanced. The card that drops you 1 depth every turn seemed a little overpowered, and some cards seemed detrimental to include in the deck.

I absolutely adore your writing and how you made the exposition fun! I'm awarding you the **Dream Team Award**, because these two are great to be around and can solve anything.

BestDuo.png

And of course, for extra feedback, my recorded gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKOvqHXsozQ

vidarn 2026-10-19 20:21 ♥ 0

@100th-coin thank you! The gameplay video was great to watch, I really enjoyed the voice acting 😁

I'm very glad you liked the game, thank you for the kind words. I agree with you on the balance of the cards though! I kind of ran out of time in the end I guess. I never seem to learn the lesson of trying to make sure there's enough time for play testing. At least, I'm glad it wasn't too difficult or frustrating to play.

Thank you so much for the tropy, it's lovely! ❤️

emaigualmc2-art 2026-10-19 20:47 ♥ 1

Great job! I really liked the art, blend of vector art and sketching. I found it a lot of fun to play with the cards and combine them. Well done! xD

dom-harris 2026-10-19 20:55 ♥ 1

Cat and Dog in submarine!! Really enjoyed the gameplay loop, the various card designs (cat in jumper) amazing visuals lovely work:)

sanechekz 2026-10-19 22:08 ♥ 1

Really cool deck builder! The cat and dog protagonists are adorable, and the art is fantastic. Great job!

dmitriyci 2026-10-20 15:24 ♥ 1

Cool characters, good art, suitable music for the game. It was fun to play this

kanity 2026-10-20 15:58 ♥ 1

That dog really likes to eat! :)

I love the idea with the deep diving. I think this is an enchanting world (under the sea) and have made one game on the topic myself, when we had a "Limited Space" theme. Of course it was very different (more of a text adventure). I am just trying to say I really love the atmosphere of deep diving!

I also want to mention that I loved the music, it was so beautiful! Relaxing, but still pulsing with energy (to be honest, I am very picky with the music and get tired quickly of many tracks in the jams, but some are very good and this one I can listen to for very long!)

The visuals are, of course, very pretty as usual! I love seeing your animal-like creatures every time, it feels familiar and comforting now :) These ones are new to me, but they are also neat - I especially like the black cat design, but the dog is sure funny! x3

I wanted to mention, along with the visuals, that I really enjoyed how the "Mission complete" screen looks - it's so festive! ^v^/

Your entries are always super polished... And this one as well! But it also has so much in it, the system is thought through and detailed, it's so interesting! You put a LOT of work into this and it really feels like a complete game +_+ And there is a story, too!

And because being an editor is part of my profession, I can't help but point out a few typos:

This word, exciting, lost its' "c" a few times :)

typo2.png

typo3.png

And in the very beginning, at lost its' t:

typo1.png

Back to the game - thankfully, it wasn't too hard, so I completed the missions comfortably and enjoyed the card system overall :)

Then these (I am sorry) IDIOTS say "hey this crystal must be powering this place, LeT's TaKe It!" And after they did THAT, my screen shook and my game crashed xD I kinda even thought that's the intention so didn't think to screenshot the error 3_3

OK on my second playthrough nothing crashed! So I guess it was not intended...

I like how we reverse the cards we need for the 6th level, playing on ascend and balancing morale, that was very fun! I like how the game is not difficult, but that level was exciting actually, though also not too hard, it took me 3 tries (also I think luck is def a factor here! as it seems to be random which cards from your deck you get each turn; on my 3rd try I actually completed the ascend in just 1 turn!)

But they are still potatoes cause the crystal isn't working anymore!! I am curious if you thought this world through more and you know more lore behind the crystal and that structure? :)

Also, I did notice little elephants on their uniforms! A nod to the coveted Elephant in the Room theme? :)

Overall, I like your take on the theme, with the diving and also the old technology being uncovered +_+

It was super fun!! I enjoyed the card system, the music, and I would play more of this ^v^

ltyrosine 2026-10-21 03:03 ♥ 1

Amazing game, so much creativity on cards powers, you have to balance each deck and pre think strategies for many cards orders.

Very cool graphics, the game is simple yet deep (no pun intended), I saved it to try to finish it later.

Congrats!

vidarn 2026-10-21 06:55 ♥ 1

Wow, thank you for the comment @kanity! I really appreciate the detailed feedback, that's fantastic :)

First of all, I'm sorry the game crashed! Funny that it was at such a perfect moment 😆 Thank you for taking the time to give it another try! Good to know that the difficulty level was all right. That's always a concern, especially with such limited time for playtesting.

I'm glad you liked the music! The Ludum Dare compo is what pushed me to try and learn making music. I didn't want my games to be silent and since you have to make everything yourself for the compo, it was my only option 😆 I'm so glad I started on that journey, it's been so much fun. I'm still not entirely confident so I'm very happy to know you enjoyed it.

Haha, well spotted with the elephants! 🐘 The world is not that well thought out I'm afraid. I initially wanted them to find a hidden city in the ocean, and the game being about exploring that. I agree with you that the deep sea is so exciting! I think the animated Atlantis movie was in the back of my head. I kind of wanted the characters to have this modern instinct of wanting to find out how the city worked and extract that power. But in doing so they would destroy it. Obviously (in hindsight), that was way too ambitious, so I had to cut back on it a bit.

Thank you so much for spotting the typos! That's very helpful, I think that's how my brain wants to write exciting (I noticed while typing the paragraph above) I will have to teach myself to spell it properly ;)

I'm very much looking forward to trying your game but it's a busy week for me so it might be a couple of days before I find the time to sit down and rate games. From the screenshots, it looks absolutely beautiful.

kanity 2026-10-21 09:34 ♥ 0

@vidarn Haha yeah I was almost convinced the crash was intentional! Replayed just in case and was even surprised there is a continuation after all x) And I do appreciate the difficulty not being high, sometimes it really is a challenge to complete a jam/compo game ^^'

I think my reasons for learning music were quite similar xD I wanted my games to have my own music, and not stock music (and definitely not silent). It is definitely a good motivator when you are learning a skill for a specific goal!

And your initial idea certainly is ambitious!! At least as I imagine it in my head, that would be crazy to attempt in just two days! I think the result is great still, I didn't feel like anything was cut or anything, it felt like it was intended that way :)

And no worries, we have a long voting period! I just wanted to get a head start right away and then concentrate on my work xD It is a bit more flexible as I have deadlines, not office work hours, so I can move things around a bit. And, thank you! <3 It was super fun using paper drawings for the game ^v^

aune 2026-10-23 17:48 ♥ 1

Yet another impressive entry 👏

I really liked the difficulty balance. Complex enough to appreciate the gameplay mechanisms and lax to not lock the progression.

Levels are well integrated with the story. Gameplay temperature and morale give two different value to manage, at two different tempo, very well tuned.

What I loved is the how story is integrated to gameplay with card illustrations and plot twist design. My favourite aspect is that objective are card itself.

And of course everything is supported with such lovely arts! 😸

sudocoffee 2026-10-23 23:51 ♥ 1

I haven't played many deck building games, but they can be time consuming once you start digging into them. So it's refreshing to see a small, bite-sized deck builder I can finish in 15-20 minutes. It was simple enough to pick up right away, but complex enough that I needed to design the deck for each mission.

The visuals are lovely as always! The UI was clear about what was going on. The only visual change I might suggest is the yellow borders when selecting cards in the library -- the yellow-on-yellow made it hard to tell at a glance which cards were selected.

My playthrough was mostly spent descending as soon as I had each descent card, so I could end the mission as early as possible (before morale or temperature were lost). By the end I was mostly ignoring upgrade cards, and just using action cards to dive and replenish temperature/morale.

Overall, pretty sweet entry! A couple miscellaneous things below.

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The game doesn't technically let you get lower than a depth of 6, but if you could, I think you'd be able to go from depth 1 to 10 on mission 4 with the following cards:

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Only found these while bug hunting, but there are a couple ways to softlock the game:

* If you lose the game during the tutorial level, and then open your card library, there's no way to exit the card library (since you only own 8 cards at that point). * If you use both "Energy: -1" upgrades, stay at depth 1, then fill up your hand with cards that cost 2+ energy, then the game goes on forever:

softlock.png

tomtomgome 2026-10-24 11:06 ♥ 0

Well, you already got very detailed feedback.

I personally though it was amazingly put together, I really enjoyed the music (I gently bobbed my head a little), difficulty felt nice, the story was engaging, the art style is great...

Very very cool

alexascher 2026-10-25 19:50 ♥ 0

Great game! Very interesting implementation of cards mechanics.

vidarn 2026-10-26 06:47 ♥ 1

@tomtomgome Haha yes I feel very lucky having received so much great feedback (yours included)! Thank you for the kind words :)

@alexascher Thank you! Much appreciated!

@aune Thank you, that's very kind! I'm happy the difficulty balance turned out ok 😆 And I always appreciate when story and the gameplay are integrated when playing games myself, so it's nice to hear you think I managed to pull that off :)

@sudocoffee Thank you for the detailed feedback! Good spot with the softlocks! The first one actually occurred to me right before the deadline but I didn't have the guts to try and fix it, I was too afraid of messing something else up when fiddling with the logic 😅 The second one is pretty nasty, I should probably have added a retry button. That's a very good lesson to learn for next time!

Haha, I love the strategy for going to depth 10, that's great! Some of the cards might be a bit overpowered 😆 But then again, some of the fun with a card game is trying to find ways to break it. I wanted to make a solitaire/single player game for that reason, rater than one where you faced an opponent. I hoped that if there were a powerful combo the player would feel good about finding it, rather that feeling it was unfair.

You're completely right about the yellow highlights in the deck selection screen. Yellow on yellow might not be the best combination XD

Thanks again for the comment, wish I could heart it twice ❤️

				Percentile
Category	Rank	Score	Count	LD60	Ever
Overall			14
Fun			14
Innovation			14
Theme			14
Graphics			14
Audio			14
Humor			14
Mood			14

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