swooty

Heads Up by quadtree 2025-04-07T21:44:24Z

It's a cool idea for the game. I like the atmosphere of it and enjoy the song a lot! The idea for the fish chariot is funny and cool

I also thought the look was pretty nice, especially giving off the deep sea vibe. Honestly, my favorite is the main menu, it had me wishing the rest of the game had that nice blue fog :)

The controls are the main issue with this game. The idea of buoyancy control is neat for this type of thing. The problem is this hinge-like fish just moves up and down with not too much sense of control or reason. It becomes a liability where tight sections are more about managing this physics quirk instead of focusing on your buoyancy and horizontal movement. I think the main reason for this is the fish rotates around the player instead of vice versa.

Also there was a bit of trouble with the grabbing thing. Often it just wouldn't work on the kelp/sunfish. And it seems even though you can try to grab gems, you have to collide with them to pick them up.

I think an important feature to add is just some kind of buoyancy indicator. It's hard to tell what the max float/sink speed is, and sometimes it's even hard to tell if you're floating or sinking because of the momentum. Since it is a core feature, that kind of player feedback is important

There are also some performance issues, significant lag spikes when you load certain sections. Also when you die it's a big lag spike. Those are key areas to learn to optimize around.

All in all, this is a nice game with a very cool atmosphere. Definitely sells the theme.

Echoes of the deep by BadPinkChicken 2025-04-08T18:28:56Z

This is a really cool concept. I like mechanically how you went about tracing the outlines from the sonar. The idea of having enemies only attack you from the sonar is a cool balance with avoiding collisions. This is smart

You also took a couple radial gradients and turned it into something quite atmospheric. I love the way things blend additively, and the way things fade into darkness. I like the design of the sub and enemies, but it really shines with the way you blended stuff.

Good audio design too, the water and sonar sound good.

I also like the idea of making something like this a roguelike. I've had the most fun with games like that this jam, ones with a sense of progression. And you have a cool nice set of upgrades to choose from.

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My first issue is, unless I'm mistaken, the whole "progression" thing is not working. It seems clear the intention is each run gives you more and more stuff to upgrade and improve for each run. But unless I'm missing something, it seems like things fully reset after you die. The upgrade at the beginning appears to be the only choice there is to make.

Now I'm prob totally wrong about this. In which case, it may be an information conveyance thing. Its really not clear to me what is supposed to be accumulated or earned from each run. Although good chance it's a cognitive skill issue on my part :)

With that, I don't think it makes sense to have the "Torpedo" menu at the beginning. If I am mistaken and there is a reliable way to get more torpedo types, then the menu should only pop up if there's more than 1 torpedo to choose. This is just a nitpick

Also while this was important for the game balance and mood, I did feel like the range of your flashlight was quite short. I can of course see why, but in contrast, it also seemed like the sonars range was pretty short, and sometimes the "sonar vision" would disappear right away. You did good to set up some interesting pros and cons with the sonar, but I feel like these additional issues made it often not feel worth it to use.

I think the death screen info is pretty confusing more than anything. The info about upgrades doesn't make much sense when it shows something like the number of points and then also a fraction next to it. And none of that info can be viewed or validated elsewhere. Numbers don't scare me but frankly these numbers are confusing me.

Another nitpick, it would probably have been pretty quick to add a couple different death messages than "You went too deep". At least something like "You met a jellyfish" or "Your sub found solid ground". At first I was confused by the message until I realized you can die from hitting the bottom of the screen.

Overall, I think this is a solid concept, and you executed on the gameplay well! I have really no complaints there, just some balancing nitpicks. I think really the main issue is with a lot of information conveyance. I really wanted to dive into the progression/roguelike features but I was not able to. I think if you update the info page with a clearer explanation of the upgrades and how they work, it might get more people to enjoy the roguelike aspects.

All in all great stuff!

Ctrl + Dive by thomz12 2025-04-08T21:58:31Z

I think this is a really cool idea, especially with the latency thing. Really sells the whole remote/inacessible vibe of the deep. The graphics and concept really impose that threatening presence the deep has, so well done on that. Even though a lot of aspects of the visuals are simple, it's all effectively done, and sold well by the post processing.

Overall with these visuals and the concept, I think you totally nailed the theme, while also conveying the mood of deep exploration.

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My main issue with this is with the way the sub moves. When you move left/right, it quickly depletes all of your vertical momentum, but this doesn't happen the other way around to the horizontal movement. What keeps happening is you'll be descending, you'll scootch a bit to the side, and all of the sudden, you lose all vertical speed, while your horizontal speed is normal.

It makes things often feel stuck, or "locked up". Doesn't feel great to move around. The best comparison I can think of is trying to move a shopping cart sideways, with the wheels just scraping on the floor.

This also makes it hard to get an intuitive sense of how the sub is going to move, which is an issue for your game concept in particular, because the player **needs** this sense to effectively navigate when the latency is high. All of my deaths were from the sub not moving in a way I expected.

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My other issue is just with the screen tilting effect. It is cool and helps sell the visuals, but it is tuned too high here. It's a bit disorienting/motion-sicky, and this is amplified by the issues with the sub controls when things are easily tilting while struggling to get the sub moving.

Finally my last small nitpick is I wish there were a bit more sounds here. A simple sine wave sonar ping. And also I still cannot figure out what that bloopy sound is supposed to mean. Is it a depth marker thing?

Overall I think this is such a cool concept, and when paired with the visuals, I think it's just a good piece of effective art. You should be very happy with how that came together. Nailed the theme, and is a neat idea.

I think if the sub's controls were more standard (with just simple velocity interpolation) then it would be a lot more enjoyable to play, and interact much better with your core mechanic.

Awesome stuff

Deep sea fishing by Spexxilove 2025-04-09T20:43:42Z

Super charming idea with the fish suction mechanic and Fred at the end. Just invokes a nice sense of "Aw hell yeah!"

Simple graphics but it comes together well with the black&white, fish look cute, fred looks cute and scary, and you did the atmosphere quite well with the lighting! I love how you implemented the little marine snow particles to indicate water flow, it adds a lot of recognizable deep sea atmosphere and makes the mechanic feel satisfying.

And I like the straightforward set of upgrades. Definitely impactful to get the bait upgrades, and I think you tuned the progressing cost well.

My main suggestion would be to better express the feeling of progression. I liked that the fish got more valuable over greater depths, but I bet if you gave them different colors based on their value, it'd hit that recognizable feeling of "Oh sweet now there's more purple fish, I can get even more money." I didn't realize at first that the value of the fish was changing, and was nervous that it would get grindy. You certainly balanced the values well, but a bit of variation would have boosted the dopamine.

Also I would suggest a combination of faster descent speed and much more distance with each rope upgrade. The feeling of the depths was definitely hit here, but you could have really made them feel like they're encountering the yawning depths without changing the game's duration/pace at all.

Last thing is I felt it was a bit tough to tell how the vacuum was operating sometimes. Again the particles were a great way to communicate this, but there were certainly times where I was pulling in a fish and it escaped, or other times when it seemed like I should have been hitting them. Other times I was surprised the vacuum was reaching.

Some simple feedback on the fish to indicate "this fish is being vacuumed right now" would have helped with that. You didn't have much to work with but even like a simple spin on the fish when being vacuumed could have worked :) This is just a more nitpick thing that doesn't necessarily warrant priority.

All said, wonderfully executed on a simple but nice idea. Unique take on fishing, good use of upgrades. I enjoyed the gameplay, especially towards the end. It is missing a bit of variation and progression, but you did deliver some sense of that with the bait upgrades and price scaling. You definitely hit the theme as well. Good stuff!

ABSEIL by baknik 2025-04-07T02:01:09Z

It's a nice game, I like the little guy and it looks pretty nice! The gameplay loop is pretty cool, and I like the sort of interesting challenge that goes with it. Works well with the randomness of the levels which is a solid feat on its own!

I wish there was a bit more feedback with the controls. It's hard to tell how much you're getting out of holding the direction vs tapping it. And I feel like it's a bit easy to lose all your momentum by accident. A small indicator of "Perfect", "Nice", "Ok", and "Bad" as feedback would help responsiveness a ton.

There are also situations where you find yourself wondering if you're soft locked or not, and the only way out is to either clutch it or bang yourself into a rock repeatedly to restart. A quick "Give Up" button would be great for this. But also, maybe the ability to remove your last anchor 1-2 times per run would add a lot.

Overall I like this one! Solid stuff, a well put together gameplay loop. The gameplay is just missing some feedback that would help for the player improving.

LD57 - Slappy's Reef by Scott R Howell 2025-04-08T18:59:32Z

So you totally nailed a really cool style with this. I mean it when I say this is just a really cool game.

The visuals look fantastic. Love the main guy but the water looks GREAT. Super refreshing in the same way as Mario Sunshine :) You did really well with the sound too. I like the music, the water sounds nice, it all comes together super well.

This is also a really neat type of gameplay that I can't imagine anyone else is going for. This feels like tony hawk. SUPER cool with the dive/jump leading to different tricks and such. Love the water walking. This is just a solid basis for a really fun game.

That said, I really don't think the fish collecting stuff is fitting here. The fish are pretty tiny, quite hard to see especially from a distance, and often collecting them is accidental. This is less of an issue with the idea on its own, and moreso because you put it in a game where you have me flying around doing tricks and having fun. It's unwieldy and quite difficult to intentionally go for fish and do what I'm supposed to.

If you continue to work on this game, I hope you try taking this sick control scheme into a bunch of game modes. Make a racing mode, a "trick-off", there's a lot of simple stuff you can combine it with because the bones of the movement is awesome.

I think it just in this case happened to clash with the core fish catching objective. Maybe if the fish were bigger, less numerous, and had a larger "hitbox" it would have felt better. But it also may be a skill issue

All in all great stuff. I don't mean it any way backhandedly when I say "phenomenal potential". Super stylish, solid in many aspects, and a really solid foundation. Just the core objectives were not clicking with me. Regardless, I had a lot of fun, especially when I ignored the points :). Great job

LD57 - Slappy's Reef by Scott R Howell 2025-04-08T19:54:51Z

@scott-r-howell Awesome, I'm glad :) Exciting that you'll continue to develop this

Now that I think about it, I have a suggestion. Instead of collecting fish by touching them, you should instead do it by performing tricks next to them. Each trick has a larger hitbox that "collects" all nearby fish, who then follow you around because they're so taken by your skills :)

Something like this would be a good way to lean into the whole trick thing, while also complementing the fish mechanics. Makes the player want to land their tricks next to a bunch of fish, and you could have bonuses for multiple fish in a single trick. This also gives reason to chain tricks together for larger and more powerful finishes

Depth Divers by Paroxysmal 2025-04-07T04:40:47Z

I see that you got this done in a little over a day. You did good putting together some good looking sprites, a nice cohesive artstyle. Cool screen FX too. It was a bit harsh to stare at after a while, but that may also be from me staring at a screen for 48 hours before this. The music is pretty sweet too. Sounds are good although they are quite loud

The game does get repetitive pretty quickly so some simple increasing difficulty or adding some new obstacle types (like sideways moving enemies) would have added a lot to the gameplay.

Echoes of the Deep by nyxkn 2025-04-08T18:46:39Z

So first off I think you really killed it with the sound. My first impression was the lovely synth waves crashing in the main menu. The sonar sounds great, the music/composition/ambience sounds great. I love how everything progresses as you get deeper. And it's all processed very nicely to have a vast watery type of reverb. Well done there

Visually I think this is awesome. Very simple graphics, and yet very effective, especially with the lighting and the sonar. I love the sonar visual effect a lot, nice simple effective way of handling it. Kudos to you for conveying the mood/theme and building the atmosphere with just these tools.

I also really enjoy that you put a bunch of these friendly fish in the sea. Small touch but adds a lot

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So for gameplay, it's not too bad. I have a couple of main issues.

The main thing is the speed. I do think games like this should feel a bit slow/drifty/floaty, but I think this was too slow for the size of the level. It made me nervous every time I wasn't sure if I was going the right way, not because of any danger, but because I didn't want to sit through backtracking. Even if you have a slow acceleration, the top speed should at least be a bit higher.

Also while the driftiness was a good addition and solid to build the maps around, there were odd situations where I'd find myself ping ponging between a wall and a fish, and not escape because my acceleration was too slow. Perhaps a simple 1-2 seconds of damage immunity each time you get hit would have helped a lot.

Also with the sonar, this is the core gameplay, so there should have been some kind of resistance to make it interactive. There's no downside to using it, so the best thing to do is just spam it so it goes off as frequently as possible. Without any extra danger, the depths don't feel more sinister, just darker.

I think if you simply made it so the sonar pulled fish aggro, or maybe set a recharging "Energy" meter where each sonar consumes about 25%-50% of your charge, would have given a lot more dynamics to this core mechanic, and created situations where the player intentionally tries to use their memory while drifting in the dark.

All in all, great work, especially on building the atmoshpere/conveying the theme, and putting together some nice visuals and fantastic sound. You conveyed the theme well with the gameplay. I think the gameplay is just missing some interest that could be fixed by some increased interactivity. Good stuff!

Rooted Deep by DzejPi 2025-04-08T22:09:02Z

I actually had so much fun with this one. I love these kind of farming games, and it was a neat choice integrating that with this environment.

Graphically this all came together super well. All of the plants look good, but you really sold the underwater atmosphere. Definitely feels like you're 250m below the sea. Great use of color

The gameplay loop with the farming was nice and satisfying too. I always enjoy being able to do things like upgrade profits. Overall, I really think this was one of the more entertaining games to play. Good job!

I don't have really a core issue with this, just moreso scattered feedback

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* One thing is the plants didn't have the best indication of being ready for harvest. A simple subtle color change would have been significant. It lead to me doing lots of unnecessary mashing * The movement was nice if a little slow, but it'd get annoying when you'd get stuck on the side of the planter. If you changed their hitbox from a box to a ramp, it'd help a lot. * I imagine this is hard to balance in the right time frame, but a lot of the upgrades weren't useful. For example, the final 100% profit boost at a cost of $2000 is never going to help when you win by reaching $2500. * Also, while I appreciated having a nice variety of plants to grow, I wish there was a bit of a reason to grow certain ones. The best strategy seemed to be getting the most expensive seeds ASAP, but even if there was a growth rate penalty to make them suboptimal, the strategy just becomes planting the most optimal ones instead. I think a good way to solve this is with milestones. Turn up that required $2500 to way higher, and introduce some achievements like "Sell 5 of every fruit" that give you more shmoney. * Also I hate to say it, but I did not finish this game, as it crashed. I was so close to the end. These things happen.

Overall, this was a fantastic feat for 48 hours. Very entertaining, very much sold the mood and the theme. Looked good, sounded good. I don't have major issues with this one at all, really just minor nitpicks and ideas that prob aren't feasible in 48 hours. So overall great job, you should be happy with this.

Introduce some base building and underwater construction and I'll buy a copy, not kidding you.

Saving Turtle Rainn by Ilinx 2025-04-07T04:30:33Z

This is especially good for 24 hours. I love the visuals, great colors and all of the sprites look awesome and cohesive. Cool enemies too with interesting different attacks

The audio in this one is wonderful. I love the music in this so much, so nice and laid back but conveys this nice serene bottom of the sea feel. The ambient sound too really comes together with the visuals to sell the theme. Fantastic audio. One small nitpick is the loop at the end cuts off with the reverb, and should have been turned into a perfect loop. Only noticeable because it gets you so entranced

I thought the gameplay was cool. I found the button mashing to be a bit tedious, and for long distances, I think it'd be awesome if you could hold down space and auto-move, but still make it easy to tap / mash. Would be good for accessibility too

Idk what the checkpoint situation was but I got a bit further than the first anglerfish, some more frequent checkpoints would have got me sticking through further.

All in all this is solid work, especially on hitting the theme and selling the mood, especially in 24 hours. Good looking/sounding game

DEPTH CHARGE by JovialKnoll 2025-04-07T01:44:49Z

Nice vibe and I really like the cloudy ocean setting. There's some cool gameplay ideas with the enemy's explosions persisting. Graphics and sound is all pretty cohesive, but I bet a bitcrusher on the voice would've really sold it :)

That said, at least with the Windows default layout, this game is very hard to play. I'm sure you get used to the movement keys being on , and / or Z and C but the game forces you to move right away or else you die immediately. Not much time to get bearings even with multiple resets. Also the fire button being on . and X makes this a bit extra challenging. There are a lot of accidental presses.

I appreciate the meaty and well featured menu for changing things like key binds. However, for me it was a bit glitchy with what was displayed when changing keys, and I found it a bit difficult to do controls remapping

I think you would get a lot stronger immediate impressions if you were you remap the controls to something much more accessible. I think even putting fire on space bar would go a long way, as a lot of the awkwardness comes from it being right in between the movement keys.

I also would like if the game were balanced around a limited fire rate as you can just kinda spam bullets like crazy. I bet even holding the button to auto-shoot would be a lot of fun, without requiring the dexterity.

Really neat lil game and again I think this nice menu is a sick feature to have. I think the biggest issue is the accessibility.

Clean Down by torte478 2025-04-07T21:26:03Z

Cool idea for the game mechanics, I like the idea of managing the trash pickups and everything. Love the combination with that and the fireballs, and using that for light. Neat combo of stuff

The mop mechanics felt a lil out of place to me. It was pretty easy to ignore the mess entirely. However, when trying to clean it, things would get out of control quickly if you make too much of a mess, while cleaning it back up would get tedious. If you continue this, it'd be really cool if there was some meaningful interactions between spills and fireballs, or using mop water on fires.

I like the art, whole thing looks good. I like the music too, although some of the higher pitched sounds are a bit loud. Just a nitpick, I do like the sound overall

Nice game! Why'd you have to make me kill the pizza mage though?? :(

The Bends by henk 2025-04-07T04:19:42Z

Such a cool game concept, love how you made use of this control scheme. The atmosphere of this is fantastic. I love the look, and the music is really nice. All comes together with the heavy vignette to really sell the theme. Love the tutorial text. Really awesome work all together

It was a good level of challenging but it was slow, especially in the beginning. I can definitely see how as the levels got harder, the movement was exactly the right distance needed for those sections. But the stretch at the beginning takes quite a while and I did not want to do that part again.

Checkpoints would have been a good addition. I got about 60% and would have pushed to the end no matter how difficult if there was even a checkpoint at the 50% mark.

Overall this is such a strong entry, well done!

Endless Depth by Dywanix 2025-04-09T21:38:46Z

Really fun and well put together game. I immediately clocked this one I'd need to focus because it'd be challenging. I really love the random generation, and how each prefab section has a nice level of challenge, and is solved each in their own unique way. Really fun levels, cool enemies with fun interactions that are designed well.

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So I was enjoying playing this game fast. I personally feel like the level design + the movement draws you towards that. Once you get familiar with each level section, it makes you want to almost do it automatically, with muscle memory and flow. Of course, this is not the actual goal of the game, which instead is to collect coins, encouraging a more methodical way of proceeding.

However, the mechanic of instant death when you hit a wall totally limits that. I don't think that's a bad thing objectively. But to someone playing patient/methodical, it's rarely a hazard. Whereas if you speed up a bit you will die frequently. It feels like it just slows you down for no reason.

This wouldn't apply if you had only some of the sections with this hazard, and some without. When you have moments of "this is instant death, not a wall", it enhances that sense of danger, and gets the player to lock in regardless of experience. I think it'd be an enhancement for both types of players.

Again, with the goal of the game, it's clear the intention is not to support this fast/reckless way of playing. But as someone who enjoys those kind of games, I think so much about this game makes that quite enjoyable.

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I liked the graphics and all, game looks great, super stylish. I love how all the enemies look, the terrain in particular I think is cool too. Well done on making a game feel like deep ocean without the color blue! No complaints there I think it's awesome

The music I think is wonderful. Love that bass that comes in, and the synth + drums reminds me of my favorite water level songs. All very excellent there, super watery song, very enjoyable.

For the sound fx, I wish there were just two more sounds, coin pickup and death. Coin pickup especially. It's what the game is all about! Crucial bit of feedback there. Slightly less important for death but still noticeably missing. Honestly, I might argue it'd be better to use the "move" sound effect for coin pickups instead. But the sound as it is does definitely give good feedback to the player.

Overall well done, this was such a fun game to play, and I was super impressed by the effective level design and dynamic gameplay. Very well put together artistically, which alone supports the Depths theme. Great work to the both of you!

Crush Depth by Psedera 2025-04-07T02:13:14Z

Really awesome making a multiplayer game for the compo with a CPU. Really love the concept, and the graphics look great! I don't know if there's supposed to be audio but it didn't work for me.

That all said, it's very tough with the enemy so closely mirroring you. Some delay on the movement and some easiness would go a long way, especially for first impressions.

I think I am understanding that the bullets cause you to sink a bit, and gameplay wise I think that's cool. Feels kind of like sumo wrestling pushing towards the edge. I think with the repeated hits kind of locking your movement for extended periods of time, it just makes the game feel unresponsive. If instead you made it sink every 3 hits or so, but sink a bit longer, it'd be easier to play around offensively and defensively.

The enemy using bubble shield at the same time as me too felt like it should be avoided, just take out the enemy bubble shield.

Overall, it leaves a very confusing first impression, it's difficult to tell what's going on. Really needs some info on the game mechanics for the player to read.

Underneath all of this is a really cool concept for a multiplayer game, kudos for that. But the only thing I've managed to crush is my confidence that I could ever beat this CPU :)

Depths of Discovery by CamComDuck 2025-04-07T04:04:50Z

I like the graphics a lot, the idea is cool and I love that you built a full gameplay loop with upgrade shop. Very neat to have a game with progression. Well done!

Nice medium level of challenge, although part of that is sometimes you take damage when the fish is a decent distance away. Not a huge deal

I think some scrolling on the background texture would have been super helpful, I'm not sure whether the texture is tileable, but maybe some bubble particles instead? It needs something to indicate movement since it's hard to tell how fast you're moving left/right, and it would also really show the effectiveness of the speed upgrades.

Overall good stuff!

Just a few kilometers by ollulf 2025-04-10T00:51:10Z

Woah! This is such a fun one. Super well designed gameplay. Neat unique concept that I feel was tuned very well. Lots of very tense moments that I barely got out of. Got it on my first try but 229 days :) But I think you made some really fun gameplay with a nice motivation to improve your high score.

I love the visuals and the style of this. Such a cool and cute little drone, reminds me of Bosco, I think the earthbending mechanic is awesome and it makes for a really neat character concept. I love the smiley earth core too. Very wonderful visually. Awesome aesthetic. And the music is excellent as well. I think you used BFXR quite well especially with the earth sliding and droning hums.

This is one that's really hard to critique. You totally nailed what you went for given the scope and it's an awesome result.

To think of some nitpicks

* Sometimes the bloom is a bit bright and hits solid white/yellow instead of a nicer gradient with contrast. Good case for tonemapping adjustments * Some of the sounds, like the radar and especially the death explosion, are a bit loud * I would love if the music would not reset when you restart (This is how you know I'm really nitpicking at this point)

Overall I think this is awesome. Great compo entry, solid on all fronts. Really awesome work!

Dark Pit by Haokai XU 1999 2025-04-07T04:34:33Z

Editing this now that I played the working build:

This is such a cool game mechanic on display, particularly using the time pause for the sake of platforming is super neat. Very cool concept to build around

I think you executed on it pretty well! I really like how the lighting looks. And the limited single wall cling is a good choice

I think the biggest issue is how dark it is outside the flashlight. It's hard to see things coming, and often it is a surprise when a new beam hits my flashlight. Part of that is there's no feedback when something makes contact. I think a simple sound to indicate "stop" and "start" would go such a long way for the fun and good feeling controls.

Also there were situations where I lost flashlight contact with a beam because the camera moved and I failed to exactly match the mouse movement. It makes me wish the camera would stay still when I'm only doing small movements, especially because the character movement isn't super smooth. It adds difficulty but not in a way that feels challenging.

I can't imagine it's easy to solve in the given timeframe, a good polished camera controller takes time for sure. Even for something simple where it only follows you when you move towards the edge. But it def would have helped in those more precise moments

Kudos for putting together the graphics, I know you say you are not good at that. In this case I think the main issue is just the colors. Generally sticking to 1 or 2 colors is a cheap easy way to get a decent look, and for yours I think it would especially help visually and also to sell the mood / theme.

All in all, really awesome concept and foundation, you nailed everything with the flashlight. I hope you continue to work on it, add responsiveness to the gameplay. It's a solid basis for a game for sure

Dark Pit by Haokai XU 1999 2025-04-07T20:17:34Z

@haokai-xu-1999 Thanks for the ping! Enjoyed this a lot, updated with a review :)

Esca - Ludum Dare 57 by bakuzen 2025-04-09T21:57:06Z

This is a great looking game! I love your use of lighting, and the color palette with the white and that shade of blue is wonderful! The fish is adorable, and I love the design of everything. It's a bit hard to see with the (necessary) pitch black, but I hope people pay enough attention to how lovely everything is like the planted foreground, and the watery background. Love the look of the fish too, very wonderfully cohesive, and a good basis to sell the theme

As far as gameplay, this is honestly quite fun! An unconventional way of doing fish collection, feels well tuned and I could get into the grove of sweeping through schools of fish. Very satisfying. Great work on this!

The sound effect for collecting is very nice and satisfying, sounds like bubble wrap! Music is a good choice too. I wish there was a subtle sound effect for when the fish collides with the mouse/wall, but it's not a huge deal without.

All in all, there's not too much criticism to give. It's a small simple game, but obviously the visuals are solid, and what you did build is nicely tuned. Of course as you do more design/programming, you'll be able to increase your scope for more features, variety to the gameplay, as here there's not really a reason to play more than 1-3 rounds. But it's all too easy to spread yourself thin, and instead you made something solid and nice. Good showing of your skill set as well. Great work!

The Trench by atsh 2025-04-08T20:53:56Z

I love this idea. You're the first one I've seen to show off how mathematically staggering the depth are, and this is conveyed well with leaving the photic zone after only several seconds, but still diving for soooo much longer. I love it. Big deep sea fan and this was showing off a lot of stuff I like. Really enjoyed the fish sprites. I was hoping for some deep sea snailfish or something though!! Just nitpicking I really enjoyed that aspect :)

I like the visuals here a lot, the watery ambience looks great. The deepening water color is really well done, and I like the look of the flashlight and the sonar effect. Very effective use of the graphics, sells the mood well.

I have no gripes about the gameplay. Obv it's just kind of for the purpose of swimming around, but all the cool deep sea facts kept things interesting, and the length of the game was good. I think even though it was pretty barebones gameplay, it did well to focus and emphasize the theme, so it still was entertaining. I liked the ending too

You mention audio is new to you. I think the sounds aren't bad. It was just insanely loud, and startling with the first sound you hear. You gotta be careful of volume and never put a full volume sample in without turning it down. A good rule of thumb is to listen to music or watch youtube while you test your game. It's necessary to do that little bit of audio mixing. I definitely had to settle into the sound because the first thing you hear is a super loud harsh noise.

That said once I was moving around, the audio wasn't an issue. It kept me immersed and all.

Overall this is really cool! Gameplay wise it's not super ambitious, but the concept and the visuals all came together, and you sold the theme/mood well through visuals and gameplay. It resulted in a fundamentally nice thing that I enjoyed playing, well done!

Nightmare Digger by OnnGD 2025-04-08T22:47:03Z

Very cool! A nice idea for the game. You sold the pacing and zombie panic well with the flashlight mechanic, and I like the idea of running from zombies while trying to mine.

I also think the different mushroom hazards are very cool. It is a solid bases for a fun, interesting, randomized game.

The music is very nice, and I love that droning metallic bass sound throughout. The sounds aren't bad either especially for using bfxr. Cool looking character, zombies look good. All very cohesive

So my main issue with this is the UI is quite hard to read. The thin black text in front of bold colors is difficult to decipher, and it takes a lot of focus off the game. Replacing, for example, the health numbers with 5 heart icons would have been huge.

When it comes to the time and other things displayed, it made it really hard to tell what was going on overall. Did I just die? Did I reset? How much time do I have? How far did I get this time? Eventually I realized that the goal is simply points, and it shows your high score. However the initial impression of the game is a bit of "I feel like I'm running around doing stuff for no reason".

A simple "You died, you got this many points, and survived this long" screen would have really helped especially on those first impressions. Not to sacrifice the sassy judgement, I loved that part :)

Also last nitpick here, I wish the actual descent into deeper floors was a more important aspect to the game given the theme. There really isn't much different between each floor, and even a simple "you made it 10 floors" would give that sense of depth. In its current state, it does feel like it could tie into the theme a bit more.

I really didn't have issues with the gameplay itself, it was pretty tight with the zombie speed. Sometimes it's a bit unresponsive to enter the next floor, but just a nitpick, I think that aspect was well polished.

Overall very good job,! You put in enough features and tuning to make some solid dynamic gameplay with interesting obstacles. The randomness is used effectively, and it's quite entertaining. I think the UI, while it didn't make the game more challenging, it made it a bit harder to get engaged with what's going on. Well done!

The Investigator by ImmortalFox 2025-04-08T23:17:08Z

Alright so first of all, congrats on making your first game! That is a huge feat in and of itself no matter what. You want some harsh effective criticism so I will be as helpful as I can.

I actually think you did quite well overall with the art. The characters, the colors, the UI even, it all looks quite good! The music is also very nice and fits well with the theme. Artistically this is solid, especially for a first game

The gameplay however, has a ton of issues, and kind of fundamentally doesn't make sense. It's extremely unintuitive. Let me go case by case:

* You've gotten feedback on this already, but the whole "Wait till the end of the day" thing makes no sense. You should simply be able to end the day whenever you want. Each day is either a mission briefing, or it's a mission. Sometimes it ends too fast, sometimes too slow. This mechanic causes friction and doesn't really benefit anything * The actual dialog menu during investigations doesn't make sense to me at all. Every dialog page seems to have two answers/statements at any given time, and I'm not actually understanding what the info is. Are they lying? Am I cross-examining conflicting statements? * Sometimes the two answers felt like they were statements meant to go together, one after the other. * Other times they seemed like two different answers that person might be giving, but wouldn't make sense to say both. * Visually, it very much is supposed to represent "Dialog Choice A" and "B", the only thing that makes sense to me is it was supposed to be clickable but no longer is. * The text at the bottom of the dialog box is confusing too. It seems like the text on the bottom-left is the name of the current page, while the bottom-right one is the name of the next page, but it reads like it's supposed to either be a dialog choice or two options, or "forward/back" or something. * If the left one is a title, it should be at the top of the dialog box, not the bottom left.

All in all, this leads to a problem where I'm just unsure of what's going on. It's hard to be sure whether something is intentional, or if clicking things is supposed to work but it's broken for me.

You are coming into this strong for your first game, but this is a UI heavy game, and you have a lot of improvement to make with conveying information through UI.

You should copy the UI layouts of similar games to get an idea. People fall on their biases and assumptions all the time, and your UI unfortunately doesn't follow those biases. (For example, the text at the bottom of the dialog box. Strongly reads like an "Option A vs B" type thing).

And I'm not just dogging on you because of a nitpick with the UI. Unfortunately, even though this is a story based game, the UI problems even extend to making it difficult to follow the plot. I cannot make heads or tails of what any of the suspects are actually telling me because it seems like multiple conflicting answers are displayed all at once, and I am never confident that I'm actually following things correctly.

As others have said, it feels like there's not much agency. I don't think that is actually against what you're going for in this game. I like how you interpreted this theme and it conveys a cool mood. Again, I think you achieved a lot making it look good and thematically cohesive, plot, visuals, and sound. It's very much held back by the UI choices. Every single thing is just a little bit confusing. Like everything else, keep at it and you will improve. I think it's a lot easier to get better at this than to learn how to make cool art, and that is what you did do. So good job there!

If there is something you should take away from my review, it is this.

* In UI, follow what everyone else is doing. Your users depend on it. * Make things respond to hovering your mouse overtop. It really helps inform the user that "yes you can click that", while also removing ambiguity

From the depths by max_sanch 2025-04-07T02:41:38Z

Really cool gameplay concept. I love the overall look and vibe of this sub, the lighting and the deep ocean around. Really great mood. Solid sound too, especially the ambient droning and humming of the sub. I also wish I got to see a better look out the window.

The gameplay concept itself is cool, balancing all of the different things at the same time. I got very close to beating it, but just ran out of oxygen. I wish I understood the inclination setting a bit better.

There is an issue with manipulating the controls however. You're required to move the mouse somewhat quickly, and the line between "just quick enough to trigger it" and "full speed" is very slim. It's very difficult to do fine adjustments, and it seemed to me it would have helped my success.

That's really my major complaint, this is a solid entry and you made a solid cohesive game here. Well done!

Fall Man, Into The Sinkhole by Clintor24 2025-04-07T02:52:16Z

Sweet and simple. The audio is a highlight for me. Love the soundtrack and the different sound fx crack me up. Works well with the goofy vibe

I like the visuals too on the cave, the upgrades, all of it. I wish the Fall Man himself had a bit more design to him. The blank white appearance feels out of place there.

With gameplay, I do think the combo of the slow-ish acceleration and the camera position makes it a bit difficult to respond and react. It can feel like things appear before you have a chance to move, even though you saw it ahead of time. This would be improved just with a bit more tightness on the controls

Also maybe I am doing something wrong but the dash doesn't seem to work for me.

All in all fun game, sound on!

SquidVenture by Goiaba Games 2025-04-07T03:06:11Z

Very fun game!

Love the style and everything with this game. Theres a nice cute sense of humor throughout. And I love that you can accidentally kill the squid friend, nice funny touch

The gameplay is quite fun. There were a few moments of sudden difficulty spikes but overall you did well to build up the difficulty level by level, and that was key for getting me to stick to the end. Lots of interesting fun combos with different enemy times. And there were a good solid number of levels too.

The art looks good and everything comes together visually quite well. I really don't have complaints on any of the categories I think you just did an overall solid job!

Trying to nitpick, there were a couple moments I died to getting stuck on a corner, and I do wish there was more adherence to the theme here. It def never stopped feeling like a water level, but I feel like the flying meteors and cannons could've been replaced with something a bit more related to the whole squid thing.

Great picks with the music as well, was really enjoying it, goes great with the game

Overall love this, great job!

Deep City by MilkiWay 2025-04-09T23:30:02Z

So the underlying concept of this game is awesome. Pulling it off in the timeframe is super impressive. It seems like you designed things quite effectively, and kudos for making an interesting strategy game.

The atmosphere is really great, sells the underwater feeling. It's cool stuff expanding your bubble to build further. Very sick interpretation of the whole "building underwater" fantasy.

I wanna give special credit to the sound/music/mixing. It's awesome. I love the music a lot. There's a great pairing of textures, with the ethereal whale sounds, contrasting with the harsh digital machinery. Really need and sets the mood super well. But it was when I scrolled off into the deep ocean that I realized all the really cool sound design and dynamic fades. Really well done putting all of that together.

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So others have given similar feedback, but this game is extremely confusing at the beginning. It is so difficult for a user without any aid to figure out what's going on and why they keep dying over and over. But it has nothing to do with the game's balance, or even lack of tutorial. It is a problem with the UI, and its effectiveness at conveying information.

The worst of it is that when you die, there is no indication of what killed you. It doesn't say whether you ran out of power or air or anything. It also hides the UI immediately, so you can't see what was happening at that time. It's a big part of why the beginning is so confusing for so many. Even late into the game, I encountered what seemed to be a bug that killed me for no reason. But there is no way to know

It is difficult to learn through playing. Not just because of no tutorial, but a lot of info is hidden or hard to navigate. Info about a building's resources is only displayed when you get ready to build it. You stop running out of air by clicking the "food" button, etc

With the beginning, you have this issue where players **must** learn to build Uranium and Farm at the beginning of the game. I think if you make this more prominent or clear in the game's description, it will save people a lot of this initial confusion. For me, it lead to a lot of frustration in my learning process.

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Overall, you pulled this off fantastically I really enjoy the way things are built out with the different resources and buildings. And of course, there are so many wonderful things to say aesthetically. The gameplay was a lot of fun, and I genuinely crave playing it. For me though, the learning process was pretty frustrating

I hope you make some updates some day because I would absolutely buy a full polished release of this!

It is a wonderful feat with the sound, it looks great. It is such a cool interpretation of the deep sea. And it plays into a really cool imagination. Very much to enjoy about this. Well done!