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Ei, thanks for that, the music department appreciates the complement. All exactly bonkers live recorded, layered like a cake, mixed in with my lunatic ravings as the side dish. Glad you liked it and the game 🤘thanks for giving it a spin!

Great idea, really love games that integrate typing, even more so with pressure associated. Managed to restore the systems after a few tries. I'd expect you can do a lot of interesting things with the foundations of this, much potential! Well done.

Many thanks for giving the depths a hefty dive, we're glad to hear that its dark pits can shine brightly.

It was a lot of fun to put together, the audio side very intentionally was recorded to express some silliness to match the colorful art contrasting the gloomy dangerous pits. That and I tried to make absolutely sure when recording all the layers for the music that it allows for ramping up the intensity through extended play and will not start feeling too repetitive. To make sure of that, I recorded 5 guitar and 5 bass tracks looped with the layered drums then we rigged it to switch up the guitar and bass tracks as you arrive at each floor during your descend.

Hope the intent landed well.

Thank you for the compliment and we're very glad to hear that the dark pits of the perilous depths brought you joy!

It's not every day that such a deep dark bleak place full of deadly hazards can bring much joy, so it's wonderful to hear it can.

Awesome, glad to hear you enjoyed the game. Oh my yes, the circle strat is definitely real, I am now very curious to hear how far you managed to count DOWN! knowing this totally valid strat, also if you managed to still nap a hefty sum of gold coins while you were at it. Those coins can incite sometimes hazardous risk taking that isn't always to the benifit of the continued descent. The "gotta catch 'em all" urge can be deadly..

Also another key strat that can prove useful is the jumping strat. You can - if timed just right - jump over explosions as they occur. The window for success there is intentionally by design quite narrow, so it is an optional risk and a means to skillfully save yourself from a sticky explosive situation.

That was a lot of fun actually, like an unexpected introspection in disguise. I'd be very curious to see what people generally decided to do, if the data happened to have been collected - I assume it wasn't.

Loved the 24fps situation, I truly wanted to call it a feature, The Order: 1866 would had approved haha!

Great job with this, simple, clean and fun. Also fun to have managed to release a game, wowie! ;D 

That was some hectic fun, I am still not convinced that the lady over the radio is helpful or just as confused and clueless as me on how to disable that bomb. Little thing I know, saying things confidently does not equate truth 😂.

If I was ever lacking expectations as to how dealing with a sudden bomb defusal scenario would be, at least now I am a bit more prepared. Very good take on the theme, that countdown gets intense.

Surprisingly I did manage to disarm the bomb on my first try, then failed 5 times in a row, haha, and many more times thereafter. 

Very happy to hear you had a good time with our game, the challenge was a ..uhm.. a challenge to tweak just right, but I am confident you'd be able to ascend - or in this case descend - to deep diver stardom with enough practice. Either that or hoard copious amount of wealth, why collect cold coins? Clearly the answer is why not!? Just ask a Magpie 😁

Thank you again Robin for having a go at it last night, very happy to hear you had such a positive reaction to it, means a lot to hear.

We're definitely inspired to explore what depth we can scrounge up if exploring the down deeper, in case that bares fruit, or explosives, I'll let you know 🤘

In the meantime, keep on staying awesome!

And oh yes, I'll let you know if I find some hair from a dog that bit me, maybe I'll find it in the dark corners of the earth. Never know when it might come in handy... Stan! 😂

That and I'm totally hyped to give your game a proper go later tonight.

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it, likewise back at your with your game. I am stilling scrounging time as I can to dive into more game submissions each day, and I had a good time with your game as well.

Thank you, very glad to hear you enjoyed spelunking these dark depths and that some of its inhabitants made a good impression!

The perilous depths are indeed never depleted of time or challenge and always welcome with an explosive embrace. 😁

Awesome, will be fun to see what comes off this foundation. Seems like there is a lot of potential here for humorous scenarios given the premise. Good luck with the next steps 💪

Well done, very interesting take to forego health as a concept and fully lean on the coundown and delay being the ultimate punishment. Had a good time running through and eventually claiming all the upgrades and managing a full clear run just in time.

One oddity, I think the upgrade to reduce stun from getting hit didn't work. I suppose it may had made it a bit too easy if it had tbh. so maybe for the better.

Fun take on the theme, I clearly have a knack for choosing weapons previously owned by an odorous frenchman, not sure what that says about me 😅

Haha, that was a fun bait and switch premise, 5 minutes, yeeeess, exactly.

The idea is fun and a very solid take on the theme. I really felt like I was doing well once I hit close to an hour on the countdown given so many games have conditioned me to anticipate that time running out is bad, fun twist to rather be chasing to reach that zero.

Had some issues with a lack of feedback when making choices between modifiers, that and the ability to affect the outcome is a bit limiting with just the modifier choice and then the switching between sets. I would had loved the ability to exchange modifiers out in some way rather than just swapping between the sets available or seen what clever ways this concept could had gone further.

The feeling during play definitely lined up with that IT guys, attempting to fix the problem, no success.

Cleaned the table, would clean again! Enjoyed doing so, not sure I should. Well done.

Thank you for the compliment and for giving the game a spin, in my opinion the measure of skill is secondary to enjoyment, the Perilous Depths accepts all equally!

Thank you! I'll make sure the compliments land with the creative mind that spawned these creations from their mind magic! 🧙‍♂️🪄

Haha, thanks for that, glad to hear my voiced and mixed recordings landed the intended effect. 😁

You may not have appeased the Down Counter, but have your pockets been filled with coin? These are both important measures of accomplishments in the Perilous Depths!

Seek the mumbling wisdom of Denzo, for they hold answers.

Many thanks for the great feedback, you clearly figured out the optional jump-dodging technique, it's risky but can be effective. As you say, a skilled jumper might become a deep diver while lacking in the splendors of accumulated wealth!

I will gladly give your game a spin, be that it would need 5 min or more.

Yes, you have a very valid point regarding the lack of tutorialization / orientation of any kind, it quite possibly my have been needed, and a GIF or two is a good suggestion for it. While jamming the game together we decided - perhaps too harshly so - to let the player stumble their way into learning the nuances, leaning into the intended quick pace of the game and ease of diving back in. We opted for the risky move of relying on the visual clarity during play communicating and teaching the mechanics as you play - perhaps a bit much, maybe. This is yet another one of those challenges in design, it can become its Achilles heel, it's always tricky to assess how much information to front load to the player without wearing out their patience or breaking the game flow. This is definitely well noted if we continue fleshing out the Perilous DEPTHS onwards.

Big props on the 230m depth reached, you've definitely managed to reach a significant count DOWN! (I've just gotten 180m so far, but 73 gold collected)

Completely agree on making the money useful, it fell outside the jams scope unfortunately, as multiple other features did. It at least made it in as the additional High score metric🤘

Now that's an accolade to get behind, Flapjack is yarr di harr great! Thanks for the complement, I'll pass it along to Einar the stylus savant himself.

Ahh.. that could be, we definitely didn't get a chance to give it a whirl on apple silicon. If you get a chance to give it a go, I'd appreciate it very much if that resolved it.

I'll see if I can give it a try if I happen to get a chance on a macbook myself. Thanks for that clue towards unraveling who the ultimate performance culprit is, we'll root them out! 🤘

Thank you so much for that extra insight, I was not aware of this audio glitch phenomenon as you put it so well. I'd probably had prioritized higher getting that downloadable iteration of the game uploaded on time if I knew of it rather than focus on the web build first and foremost. Always helpful to get this sort of feedback, learning new possible problems is sure to come in handy in the future.

I'll definitely let it be known through either the games page or my profile on Itch.io if we end up going further with this game concept!

This was brilliant, sad to see doomsday didn't come - wait that sounds wierd to say - but the narrative of these unfortunate series of events captivated me as I perused this art gallery. The artwork looks great, music and voice acting also fit the tone well.

I hope you manage to bring doomsday upon us all - wait, again that sounds worse than I intend. I'll be waiting for it :)

No, do not talk yourself down like that, it is the natural effect of the Perilous Depths. They are intimidating, a challenge to conquer and tame - if at all possible. Perseverance overcomes this effect, you can do it! Become a  bon a fide deep diver and or as rich as a leprechaun hoarding gold under their rainbow, just in the deep darkest least rainbow-like place there could be.

Thank you for the kind words, well noted if we expand the concept onwards, we're definitely feeling the inspiration spirit after churning this out, was a lot of fun to make.

So lovely to hear these kind words for the game, all express very much the intention behind it, thank you so much, glad to hear you enjoyed it.

The mystery of the Perilous Depths shall hopefully get to be unravelled in the future!

Thanks for pointing out regarding the audio, something to look into later if we do more with this game. I was very much wanting to find time during the jam to have us implement the volume knobs/sliders into the game in time, but it fell to the side due to focusing getting integral systems all working before the deadline. The foundation for the volume steering is all there in place, just didn't make it in time for the deadline. Perhaps we overdid the Tempo ramping of the music, as it dials up faster per each floor, that could be the glitchy feeling you're experiencing.

We unfortunately didn't manage to get a downloadable build uploaded in time before the deadline, another aspect that didn't make it in time. I think the rules lock that away as well, for now.

So as with many of us, we succumb to the Coundown itself, one way or another!

Thanks for giving it a try, unfortunate that you ran into performance issues. We tried running it on a few PCs both desktop and some relatively tame older laptop - one with just integrated graphics - and didn't encounter any performance issues. But I am sure there is something we missed that is causing this, if only we could fix it up.

But valuable to know of it in case we do anything more with the game after the jam, appreciate the feedback very much.

It's as deep as you are willing to go! Naturally that can be scary.

We had scoped progression on how deep it goes with key variations occurring along the decent, however as naturally occurs in Game jams, we had to set our goals within reasonable limits, so it is endless.

So in the current state, the limit is only your daring, how deep can you dive and how much gold coins can you grab before succumbing to the chaos of the Perilous Depths.

Thanks for the compliments, we appreciate it very much, exactly the mark we were going for cute and creepy.

Thank you for the compliments, I'll send the regards to the master artisan behind the characters and general art design.

Adventure time ho!

Thank you for playing, glad you enjoyed it,. Extra fun to hear you enjoyed my improvised voice recorded sound effects 😁

Many thanks for the kind words! The ol' game jam spirit helped push as much love into it as we could muster.

Very glad to hear you enjoyed my whacky music track. It was my first attempt in recording live instruments with the intent of dynamically layering them along with the games progression, it was a very fun experience, learned a lot from it.

Thanks for the feedback and for giving it a peachy play!

Yes, I can confidently say that most all of the issues encountered were for the most part exactly that "game jam constraints". We set out a very specific and defined scope for the game from start to finish and wanted to assure first and foremost that it was playable from beginning to end, not too hard, not too difficult. Unfortunately while tieing all the knots near the deadline the primary balancing tweaks were managed primarily on my end on the night before the deadline.

But with the numerics, actually the numbers are managed in a way where base stats that affect all sources (do not contain weapon names at the start) are % based, while weapons (katana, monkey, pheasant and dog) are raw numbers. The intent here was to give the player an option to opt for either percentage increase to all sources (upgrade the modifier) or raw number boosts to specific weapons (immediate power for just a single weapon/pet).

All this got a bit convoluted near the final stretch so we didn't have time to format the numbers to better represent clear stats. We had a UI setup ready to be plugged for the player to access via the pause menu to review all upgrades and their current values, again didn't get it rigged up in time and removed it near the end to not mislead the player with bogus static placeholder numbers.

As to attack speed vs attack cooldown. Surely are many ways around defining either in a game. Technically I'd say yes, Attack Cooldown may be more descriptive of the current attack function, given there is no windup to the attack, so there is no speeding up of an attack occuring technically. Attack speed would be closer to projectile speed in this case - the speed of the attack. But mostly I'd say this comes down to interpretation as to what is more accurate given definitions used. But good to have this mentioned to have us remind ourselves to take a step back on the stats naming and reassess for more accurate naming choices, which surely is based on both a cross between logic and common conventions.

The attack speed stat is per second. Surely the confusion is due to the attack speed that affects all sources and it being cacluated as a % decrease vs weapon specific attack speed that is in raw numbers minusing in order to decrease the time between each attack. This is indeed confusing without better visual representation to clarify what each upgrade covers as well as the formatting of the text and being able to seenyour current stats, again largely the game jam constraints hitting us there.

As to directions and knowing what to do during the game. Here we opted to lean more onto the "show don't tell" mantra even to the extent of not holding you hostage to conversations - you can just walk away.

You spawn at the very back of a town, the only path naturally leads you to the combat area and all sources of information are scattered along your path. Specific sources are highlighted immediately with a yellow exclamation mark to focus the players attention on them first and foremost, with the dog being immediately visible at the start. These key animals all have a common request "candy, snack, treat" to which the UI has a slot for. We opted here to let the player make the connections naturally. However where you get this candy/snack/treat was left behind on the cutting room floor due to constraints. That being clarified somewhere was indeed missing, only mild hint is you needing to slay the Ogres. But to help orienting the player we designed both the respawn system to lead you from spawn through the town to re-assess your options and made sure your progress outside the town was always retained for easy of continuing the fight - no pesky start over try again here.

There are many ways around this and it is good to hear where this approach faltered in your case, so many thanks for mentioning it. Always good to see where you get blindsighted with your design intentions.

Very much true with the enemy variety. Given the scope of the game, the intricate systems, cut scenes, voice acting, weapons and all of these, we didn't get around to the ranged enemies. Actually there are animations in place for the Ogres and different iterations for faces. We even had in place around 40 unique drawn facial expressions that work universally across all the character models, just didn't have time to implement the change of faces except for those splattered with monkey poop! 💩

Oh my, this message got a bit long. Well again thanks for all that feedback it is always very helpful to get a chance to review and reflect on choices made, why they were made and to have blindsights exposed. Very helpful thanks!

Glad you liked it, Peach shall be with all for Momotaró is on the watch!

OH my...  now I know the superior powers of an organic four leg drive. Those mountains are nay challenge no longer!

Great style, fun controls, would horse again!

Loved the artwork and taking some time to be the barista of the fables! Made me think of Wanderstop, making a nice bit of brew in a cozy environment.

Surely many ways this could spin into a very complex barista job given the various customers with fantastical tastes, but I'd imagine that would quickly ride off far away from the cozy angle... if that would be a concerns, unless a cozy bait-n-switch is in order! múhahaha

Great style and very well done introduction to the game and setting of the story. The fundamentals behind the game seems good, could become something very enjoyable with more various disruptive tools, modifiers, rulebreakers and more.

Promising game concept for sure, well done!

Great use of the theme, mythbusters avert thine eyes! there are NO MYTHS!

That music really jams, feels good when returning to the menus. Talking about the menus, they feel great, simple clean and nice to use.

I would had loved if the upgrades were not mandatory in order to capture better shots = even though it logically makes sense. Would feel great and rewarding be able to apply your practices mastery of the photoshooting art to still capture great shoots, without the powerful upgraded equipment.

Very on point theme, fun to anticipate the impending yule lad and their pray to be hidden away and then lose yourself in physics panic mayhem. Gnome shall find their treat!

Great vibes, felt like an early version of a spooky short hike. Aiming to hit the spiders and landing jumps was a bit tricky with very little visual indication of either, also those spiders respawning really made me just stop attacking them after a while and opt for running past them.

I definitely liked the writing and feeling of getting lost in the forest with a fittingly ominous music.

Very good use of the theme, the Harmonica implementation was fun to have around while perusing the dark, surely many fun things can be done with that!

Clearly Gísli is not just a coding wizard but a voice acting wizard as well, many wizard hats worn!

Glad you enjoyed the ensuing ogre slaying mania and saving the elders. Peach be with you.