Green Shell by Kekwu 2024-10-11T23:18:35Z ♥ 3
Congrats to the team on completing your first Ludum Dare, hope you had a blast! Taking on a puzzle platformer like this with so many interactions with the world is quite ambitious! Great job on completing it.
I only had one bug, which was the animation for legs getting pulled into the shell being opposite the slam attack. It didn't affect gameplay, just looked a little silly.
LD57 — Depths (17)
This Blasted Mine by Pincushion 2025-04-11T23:20:06Z ♥ 1
Ooooh I agree with the other comments that this is a fantastic foundation to build from. The game was very fun in this state, and you have an awesome eye for making puzzles! If you wanted to keep going with this, I bet it would turn into something awesome, nice work!
View in the Depth by noagard 2025-04-11T23:00:16Z ♥ 2
This was awesome! It totally reminded me of scanning planets in Mass Effect 2. Really nicely done, and nice shader work (?) on the images going in and out of focus.
I also really liked that the UI was in game controls, even the volume slider!
P8-Sweeper by Christian Zommerfelds 2025-04-11T22:46:48Z ♥ 1
Ooooh I haven't played minesweeper in a while and this was a great twist on it. I had a lot of fun!
I did have trouble getting started, might just be getting old lol but I actually found the text hard to read and understand what the rules are, and the idea that I was looking at a side view of digging a hole. I spent a while clicking on the lighter colored tiles and wondering what the inputs where since nothing was happening lol.
Once I learned the game rules though that was very well put together and a great design choice to add the diagonals, nicely done!
Temple of Hands by coyotethursday 2025-04-11T22:34:54Z ♥ 2
Whoa this was craaaaazy unique! I always enjoy rhythm games and this one was a lot of fun.
I do feel like it was a bit harder than it should have been to see the pattern. Once I got it, I often found myself saying "oh that's it? It looked way more complex." Maybe during the demonstration phase, rather than the hands just appearing, they either translate in from the side or something a quarter or half second before they are played, letting the player know that it's about to hit. And then maybe no hands at all for the player's input phase? I'm not sure it that would do it, I just found that my brain was hurting trying to recognize the patterns.
Great job though, once I got each pattern the game worked perfectly, so the difficulty was all on me, the game felt very well made and responsive to control.
GoldenDepth by Bassilij 2025-04-10T22:59:38Z ♥ 2
Out of all the games I've played so far where we're swimming down into the depths, this conveyed the feeling and atmosphere the best *by far*. Really really nicely done!
I really enjoyed the locating mechanic, as it's a simple tool and you allow us players to figure out the strategy to use it. I also think the amount of oxygen was really well tuned, sometimes you could uncover a part in a single dive, but sometimes you had to return up for air and go shuffle the rest of the debris. In my opinion, perfectly executed on the pacing, nice work!
Belials Bellybutton by Kujoen 2025-04-10T22:46:55Z ♥ 1
I did have a bug with the tutorial text at the beginning of the game, when it says "Hit spacebar while the mini-harpoon..." The mini-harpoon UI showed up and I instinctively thought I should try left clicking when the mini-harpoon was in the yellow zone, and the text box kind of freaked out. It displayed the next text prompt multiple times and played the typewrite effect backwards. Hopefully that's enough info that you could recreate it.
Everything else worked fine as far as I could tell, and I had a good time with this one, thanks for making it!
The Chromatic Window by egawag 2025-04-10T22:36:00Z ♥ 4
Nice touch at the end, having the Discord channel names appear 😉
I think I had a smile on my face the whole time, this really was an awesome mood. I would not have expected to enjoy a trip down someone else's memory lane, but that was a great time! Thanks so much for putting this together.
Dig Deeper by tomas88a 2025-04-09T22:47:06Z ♥ 2
Whoa, serious innovation points here, this is very unique!
I do think there was a bit of conflict between the timer mechanic rushing us, and the in-depth research wanting us to take our time and fully explore. I'd be interested to see if the game feels even more fun if it leaned into just one category, rushed or chill.
House Rules by engoneer 2025-04-09T22:35:54Z ♥ 2
Like some of the other comments, I felt overwhelmed when the text was rushing by to explain the game. It truly is an awesome choice to have the game be explained in-world like this rather than just a static page. So great choice going for it, just a few tweaks: - The text going away when it wanted to, rather than letting the player dismiss it. - The text had depth in the world and was covered up by the cards in her hand. - The font was thin, combined with the shaking, made it harder to read.
Other than that, really impressive content in the game! A full card system, animated 3D models, and sounds to go along with it all. Great job!
Where I belong by un_kirik 2025-04-09T22:25:14Z ♥ 3
Wooo the transition on the fish was really really well done! I never saw a pop where the model or color changed, so did you guys do that programmatically? Really really cool.
Some of the collision detection I would recommend making unrealistic in the players favor. For example the big clumps of bags, I seemed to get caught in them when I didn't expect to. Maybe try shrinking the collision detection and see how it feels. Otherwise awesome job!
HOLE by isayneigh 2025-04-09T22:11:37Z ♥ 1
Nice one! I *really* like the touch that we don't die immediately going off the top of the screen, but instead get a little grace time. Awesome design choice. The difficulty ramp-up speed was *perfect*.
The only thing I can suggest is try having the score text at the top instead of the bottom, since the bottom is where I think everyone will want to look to see the incoming obstacles. Or off the sides may be an even better choice?
Bungee Spelunker by EvilScotsman 2025-04-09T22:05:22Z ♥ 1
Whoops! I jumped right into the game without reading any instructions, and thought the spikes were obstacles to avoid 😅 I played again once I understood the directions, and it was a lot of fun! I actually have no critiques, it worked perfectly smooth and graphics were clear what everything was. Audio was great!
Nice work team!
Krabby Asscape by KaueSilva 2025-04-09T21:56:21Z ♥ 3
As others have said, that parallax background is absolutely wonderful, nice work! I also thought the game controlled very well, it wasn't too drifty or too tight in my opinion.
I do think the timer for getting through the whole thing is a fairly restrictive choice though. Maybe a timer per layer and if they don't make it through, just reset that layer?
Oh and the art looked great overall, but it was a little jarring to see some of the obstacles at a different pixel size (the green orbs). If all the sprites in the game were the same pixel size, it will instantly tie the graphics together even more.
Depths Of Terror by Dan Davis 2025-04-09T03:53:19Z ♥ 1
When you have rapidly repeating sounds (the shots), it can help a lot to vary the pitch randomly, even just up and down by 10%. Try it out and see if you like that more. Otherwise nice entry!
A Strike In The Dark by Mateu 2025-04-09T00:13:04Z ♥ 2
Very nicely done! At first I didn't really appreciate the idea that light pulses whenever I land, but just a few screens in and it became obvious how *excellent* of a design choice that was!
The screen transitions are soooo smooth too, I'm curious how you did that.
I would be curious how the game would feel if deaths respawned you right where you jumped from, rather than the start of that screen. When I lost almost a full screen of progress it hurt, but that could be exactly the intention, especially since it seems like the hardest jumps were at the end of each room lol.
With the length of the game, I imagine you guys couldn't simply play through the whole thing very often. So I'm extra impressed that there are no bugs in the late portions of it. A long game seems like a recipe for untested sections. Nice work!
As always, the music was incredible and set the perfect mood.
The only critique I have is that it felt bad to fall to the floor in the first room with two fast-walking guys. I didn't see a way back up, but I landed on a small part with no spikes. Bit of a soft lock (unless there was a way to recover and I didn't realize it). It felt frustrating to have to jump on spikes to die and reset, I'd rather that floor be entirely covered in spikes so I'd die right away.
Submarine-Souls by psychomonster 2025-04-08T23:36:11Z ♥ 1
I had a bit of frustration at the start with the steering. It took me a little while to understand that I was drifting even after I let go of the controls, and gravity would constantly try to pull me down. I think it was the snapping movement that made that less-than-obvious.
Once I realize that though, this was good! I think you nailed the sweet spot on tight spaces to make sure it wasn't too easy, but it also doesn't require absolute perfection. Nice one!
The Trench by atsh 2025-04-08T22:10:33Z ♥ 1
Veeeerry nice visual effect with the sonar highlighting the walls, and I love the extra touch that the wall color fades out between pulses! The propeller spinning animation was impressively convincing, I would expect that to be hard to do in 2D, so really nice work there!
I think the sonar sound would have been really neat if you did some echoing or reverb on it, maybe something to try.
Congrats on your first Ludum Dare! And going right for Compo!