Aphotic Aquatic by qqcs 2020-04-21T02:58:53Z
Cute game! You did a good job and I love the pixel art, they're some good feesh
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Cinsynate
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Unknowable | jam | 725 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.51 | 4.13 | 3.46 | 3.46 | 3.81 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Aquanomicon | jam | 840 | 3.55 | 3.07 | 3.96 | 4.00 | 4.29 | 3.40 | 3.56 | 3.56 |
Cute game! You did a good job and I love the pixel art, they're some good feesh
You've done a wonderful job on this and I'm very proud!!! I love cool_rat_games and can't wait to see their character arc explored in the inevitable hit sequel
The inventory system was definitely the most fun part of the game! I liked the trade off offered by different weapons in terms of damage vs cooldown, and it was fun to try different loadouts. One of the things I found myself wishing for was honestly just more content, which isn't something a jam game can ever be faulted for. Playing the web version, I found even fullscreening it certian UI elements were difficult to see, but it was completely playable. Overall I enjoyed playing it a lot!
It's a deceptively fun game for what it is! I think it has a lot of potential. The fish sprites were charming, but I do think it could benefit from some more work after the jam! I was able to swim into the air- and chase some fish ahead of me into it, which was interesting but probably not intended. I also found it was often more functional to lasso a bunch of fish and drag them up to the boat by swimming above it rather than using the built in wranglers knot function, but that would obviously change if you were restricted to the ocean.
@finn-tr Thanks for getting back to us! We ended up working right down to the wire, so we didn't have a lot of time for bug fixing and polishing unfortunately, but I agree that the recipe construction could be refined. It's definitely the first thing we'd like to look at after getting it out the door!
@jes-draws Thank you so much for the kind review! To a certain extent, asking the player to take a couple of runs to figure out what they needed to do was an intended design choice, but I think we definitely missed the mark on overall difficulty on first release. We're looking at some possible ways to simplify/streamline it going forward!
@owinmowe Thanks so much!
@iorena You're supposed to be able to pick ingredients up by clicking on them with your cursor- As far as I can tell, it should be working, but we'll be sure to investigate for any potential issues!
@noskro Thank you for commenting! Yeah, I think we worried the game would be too straightforward without strewing the necessary information across multiple pages, but it could do with some playtesting. We'd also love to make the construction of recipes more straightforward as well.
@quite-good I'm glad you liked the concept! The requirements for the recipes are strict on the order you add things in, but I've also gone through and noticed a few are honestly not working as intended, so you may have run into one of those bugs. We're looking into fixing those as soon as possible!
@welby Thank you for taking the time to download it and check it out! I'm not sure at this point why the html wouldn't be working for some people but does for others, but we'll look into it. As for the game, the original design called for the player to fail a few runs while acquainting themselves with their spellbook and the recipes, but I don't think we struck the right balance on how difficult it is to complete.
@leon-regula I totally agree that drag-and-drop would work great! We only had the time to iterate on one mechanic for potion construction, but it's a very desirable alternative.
@heidelbert I'm so glad to hear you were able to get it working after sticking around! Thanks for giving it a shot.
@mololo Hey, you're right that we intended for there to be a bit of trial and error! I think some things, like the pacing of the descent, and the organization of the book could use some tweaking to be a bit more forgiving, but we definitely wanted to capture the feel of someone desperately flipping through a reference manual as though their life depended on it.
@realregi Thanks for trying it out! It's really strange that you were able to pick up other ingredients but not a third bag- I'm not able to replicate it at the moment, but we'll look into possible causes and see if there are any bugs we're missing.
@joe-z I've seen a lot of suggestions for streamlining the way you put ingredients in the book, and I think it's a good idea. There are definitely a couple ways we could make it easier and more intuitive, so I appreciate the feedback!
Oh, that was a lot of fun! The atmosphere was wonderful, the music very relaxing, and it was very well polished! I think the gameplay was definitely interesting, and I found myself wishing there was more content, so I think that's a good sign you have a nice puzzle game here.
A couple things I noted that in some cases couldn't even be considered bugs: I found that whenever I landed next to a box from the air or climbed up into it from a ladder, I couldn't grab it, and needed to move and walk back into it. It's a very nitpicky point, but your game is so well polished that the smaller sticking points are more noticeable!
I also found myself wishing that I could use the w key to jump a lot, but that's just my personal preference for platformers, and I can see why it wouldn't have been included within the confines of a game jam.
Finally- I noticed when using the spacebar to try and progress the ending screen in any way that the jumping sound effect was still hooked up to it, which mostly lead to a funny moment in which you could make your character grunt while reading the ending message.
Overall, it was very enjoyable! One of the better games I've tried this jam for sure.
Oh man, this definitely managed to capture the depression feeling... Nice job on this one, guys. I had an unfortunate experience that I'm not sure can be blamed on you, it might be due to my own resolution settings, but I haven't had the problem elsewhere. When I played, the edges of the screen were cut off, which notably prevented me from reading the third line of any dialogue. The fact that I enjoyed the very story driven game despite that I think is a testament to the way you managed to capture the mood everywhere else, so congrats!
I love your take on the theme! Incredibly refreshing. It was a fun game- The allusions to different types of programs being better versus others didn't really seem to matter much in my playthrough though- I managed to win without switching my queue up from one file to another. That said, it was a really interesting take on the theme and well executed- I just wish there was a little bit more strategy to actually being successful!
I think the graphics and audio both do their jobs here- Neither of them steals the show, but they do help draw you into the fantasy of a hacker fairly well. I also thought the writing was pretty good and liked many of the jokes.