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W.H.A.L.E. Program's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #6 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Polish | #12 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
| Overall | #18 | 3.483 | 3.483 |
| Theme Implementation | #25 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Special Object Implementation | #29 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Audio | #30 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Visuals | #33 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How did you implement the theme?
You play as a bipedal, terrestrial subspecies of space whale. You're part of the W.H.A.L.E. Program, an initiative to help whale-based lifeforms adapt and thrive across the universe using experimental tech.
How did you add the special object?
The special object—the printed circuit board (PCB)—is represented as collectible upgrade chips scattered throughout the levels. Players must gather these PCB chips to unlock new abilities and progress further in the game. This ties into the lore of the W.H.A.L.E. Program’s experimental tech, reinforcing the theme of enhancing space whale lifeforms through advanced technology.
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Comments
A short and fun puzzle game! I was impressed by the amount of settings.
I feel like having a proper video settings menu is a must in any 3D game, since not everyone has the same hardware. I'm really glad you appreciated something that’s usually taken for granted!
Incredible game (especially the visuals). Completed the main course, didn't have time to unlock the surprise. Well done.
Thanks! For the visuals, it’s a mix of free assets and some of my own. Even with the premade stuff, I didn’t leave anything untouched, most things were optimized, textures reduced, collisions improved, meshes simplified… I don’t want to take full credit for the visuals, but I did put everything together and made sure it all ran well on a potato PC. I'm glad you liked it, thanks for the feedback! The surprise wasn’t much btw, just a whale plushie that makes noises when you interact with it and gets smaller and smaller until it eventually disappears and farts.
Cool concept! ¦3
Such mechanics are hard to implement, and you did them quite well. I would love to play more puzzles that combine different abilities!
Thank you! I dedicated like 12 hours a day for a week, mostly on the mechanics. You can’t even imagine all the bugs and stuff I had to fix to make sure everything works without messing up the player experience, so I’m really grateful that you could appreciate and enjoy the mechanics. Maybe for future jams I’ll use the feedback and what I learned to make some more interesting and beginner-friendly mechanics. I didn’t want to add too many abilities because it would get out of scope and could be overwhelming if you hadn’t mastered the previous mechanics yet.
I am speechless! 😮
I want to just start by stating my unpopular fact about myself - Never got in to Portal - not my kind of thing.
However this had me hooked 🤩I couldn't stop playing it till I got to the playground and then couldn't stop doing the playground till I got the secret ending which I have just got now! Gameplay was smooth! Fun! Addictive
Please please please tell me you thinking of expanding on this after the jam🙏
Thanks for your feedback! I'm really glad to hear someone made it all the way to the end. Did you notice that you can interact with the final surprise too? I realize it wasn’t very obvious, I never actually hinted that you could play with it by pressing E, and something extra happens if you interact multiple times.
I’m also a bit concerned about the difficulty level. I noticed some players struggled with things that were meant to be super obvious in the tutorial. So yeah, it really makes me happy to see people actually enjoying the full game!
If you enjoyed it, you should definitely try the Portal series. My game doesn’t even come close, those games are masterpieces.
As for expanding it, I have some other goals and priorities at the moment, but you never know. I might even turn it into a multiplayer co-op game someday since making multiplayer experiences is actually my main thing.
For me it was the perfect balance of difficulty! The first wow moment was the wall jumping! Loved it every time I got to do it!
I do have both portal games! Brought them years ago but couldn't really get into them. To me this hits and drags me in more 😄
I didn't know about interacting with the final surprise but now I am tempted to see what happens 🙌
Understandable I can imagine there is lots of projects and so little time. If you do ever decide to expand this though please let me know would love to play more
Wow, just wow – incredibly polished and so far the game I’ve personally had the most fun with! The switch between third-person and first-person is really well executed. Wall jumps feel great, and the small puzzles strike a nice balance without being too difficult. Definitely worthy of a top 3 spot – if not first place!
I’ve only been able to test the portal mechanic to a limited extent so far. I tried to bring my cube through the portal, but it just disappeared, and I forgot how to reset it. I’ll give it another shot tonight.
Great job!
Thanks for your feedback! Yeah, the cube probably fell off, if you send it through too fast it will be launched out and it can fall, it was supposed to be some sort of intended mechanic to "force" you to realize you messed up, lost the cube, and go back to the red button where the cube was to recover it.
So, TLDR, cubes have a small red button at their starting location that will retrieve them, that's how you get it back.
Wow, I can't imagine games these days won't fit on my CD-R!
Is there any chance you could upload a ZIP instead of RAR? It does not seem to work with 7z :<
Done, deleted the .rar file since WinRar can also open .zip files so there's no reason not to upload as a zip, thanks for your comment!