itch.io

Wow this was great!

• Right off the bat, the artstyle is phenomenal! The little animations, tile sets, cutscenes, and character designs were all really really good. The last cutscene was great.
• Big fan of the ambience, it works very well in this game adding to a sense of dread, and being lost.
• I also really enjoyed the ambiguity of the story, it made it far more interesting to me.
• I agree with Jake about holding shift, it was a bit unneccesary and strained my pinkie a little.
• I personally would have loved like one more layer of interaction whether it be some way to damage enemies, or some other mechanic besides just traversal as it can feel a little slow at times.
• The boss battle escape was really cool, and I enjoyed how the level was more simple at the end, as many dead ends would have made it far too hard to navigate.
• I think this is probably my favorite use of the limitation in the jam, it is used so well. Both in the story, limited timer mechanic, and the physical depth that you are at with the pitch black setting. Very good stuff!

Hey I recently replayed this because I really like your background animation and was thinking of implementing a similar style of shifting patterns in my own project. Is there any advice you could give on how you made it? My Discord is @sweetjabe, if that's easier for u.

This is great! Ok so I just replayed to record what I thought was a bug but now I realize is just the fish requiring 3 hits to kill. I thought my harpoons were just getting destroyed. So I would highly recommend looking up what squash/stretch is, which is what I meant rather than a death animation. I think if you add a slight scale up + scale down, plus flash the fish red or white, or even show a little damage number popup it will be juicier with better feedback for the player to know they are dealing damage to fish. Squashing and stretching can just be done thru code. Im not sure if a death animation would be necessary as the game is very cute and it could seem a little harsh.

This is my favorite game feel guide as it really shows so many great ways to add juicy feedback: https://deepnight.net/games/game-feel/

Reading other comments I now realize plates in fact are needed, so thats good to know

This is really great stuff! Just gonna drop all my feedback and notes from playtesting:

• The art is really incredible! The spritework is so cute, with a very fitting color palette that really sells the whole experience. Great use of color to show different depths of water.
• Music is really fire and I like the effects used and how it layers and changes depending on where you are.
• Obviously, there's no tutorial which would be nice but ofc this is a game jam, plus I figured it out without needing to read the description.
• There is a collision bug when shooting fish which unfortunately is a bit annoying and hinders the experience for me a bit, as I have to shoot like 5 times and get super close to fish to kill them.
• Not sure what the plates do, I'm assuming that is like unfinished or I just don't get it.
• I like the cooking mechanics a lot, but I feel like the pacing of the cooking game loop is a bit slow, and could definitely be sped up or upgraded to be more efficient. Also maybe putting your food closer to the cooking gear would help to reduce walking back/forth.
• I really enjoy the fishing gameplay despite the bug, and it is definitely the stronger of the two minigames. With a great use of the theme btw.
• I would recommend adding more squash/stretch effect to the fish, with bubble particles, and maybe even some screen shake to add more juice. Also giving the player knockback when shooting would add a lot as well. Being able to hold down the mouse button to charge up shots that go farther would also be fun. The fish could get knocked back a little too before turning to meat.
• I encountered a weird lil bug where my screen went black because I was about to die, but just barely reached the surface in time, and the audio seemed to just shut off until I went back to the island which I assume is a different scene or something.

Great work guys! Hope you had fun, and stay tuned for more game jams!

Of course man! Thanks so much for participating! I think the code based assets is a really unique way around the no ai art rule as a non-artist. As someone who has done a bunch of ai development with some web dev stuff I can spot the ai UI design look pretty fast, which for me and probably some others just takes me out of the experience a little. But really not bad for your first jam, keep it up dude! You can join our discord if you want to join any future jams (we're gonna host them regularly).

not yet but I will don’t worry, like halfway thru 

Of course! I hope you guys had a blast, stay tuned because we will definitely host more jams in the future!

Dropping my feedback here:

• Title Screen ping to start was a very stylish touch and great way to introduce the main mechanic.
• Right off the bat the game has a very AI feel to it, the text all being very clearly written by AI gives me a bit of pause about the quality of the game. Can't prove it but it just has a vibecoded vibe idk, very sorry if I'm mistaken but it follows a lot of design motifs typically seen in vibecoded projects.
• The gameplay is super cool! The use of pinging is a great mechanic. Surfacing to find power ups is cool too! I will say due to the wall of text in the how to play screen (that I didn't want to read) I didn't understand the purpose of the surfacing mechanic until I did read thru all the instructions later. I recommend adding some onboarding to reduce the need to read all that text, since it is jarring for the average player. 
• Code generated assets and audio is super cool! I like the audio and visuals.
• Overall the incremental difficulty and power ups made this really fun and entertaining. Great job!
• Btw I know AI code was allowed for the jam it is just a personal turnoff to see the influence of AI in the game.

Dropping my playtest notes here:

• Right off the bat, look right and look left buttons seem to be in reverse. (i see now that others have pointed this out)
• Interactable text boxes? I like this a lot, I wish it had more of a purpose. I thought it was very interesting that I edited the text and it stayed that way in future attempts. 
• The dialogue made me chuckle along with a lot of the death screens.
• Some visuals were great while some were a bit hard to tell what is going on. The shark sequence (Ending 1) was great and I loved the visuals.
• The look back button is bugged and seems to softlock me in the cave.
• Nice screen transitions and point and click progression, I would like to see more endings because this is a nice start. Great work!

I really enjoyed this! Just gonna drop my playtesting notes here for ya!

• Lots of comments have addressed this but I do think the obstacles randomization is a bit of a problem sometimes. It makes me kinda wish the levels were hand made with a more clear level design focus to create more balanced and unique levels.
• I LOVE the art and animations so funny and wacky.
• The birds are great I rly like the way they clear the screen and make you rethink your path. I actually love all the obstacles I think they're pretty cool.
• The music is pretty hypnotic and keeps me sucked into the game.
• Unless I am missing something, having to hold space seems a little pointless since you want to always be moving, letting go at all is going to get you killed. 
• The tentacle pointing where you are going is a very nice touch. Smart thinking there.
• The difficulty curve is a bit intense, I would personally recommend really dialing down the amount of obstacles at the start, I may just be bad but it took me like 15 tries to beat level 1. I think having a more smooth difficulty curve would make progression more interesting. 
• I like it a lot, very fun arcadey feeling game that just needs a few difficulty tweaks

I wrote up some notes from my playtesting, the judge feedback doesn't get sent till after the jam ends so I'll copy it here: 

Once I figured out how to play it was really fun. This is super creative with really nice visuals btw.

-Lack of music and sfx in the hub area caused me to blow my eardrums out the first time I caught  a fish lol, but I do rly like the gameplay sfx in use.

-Some type of blinking highlight indicator with an arrow or something to indicate to the player at the start that they need to pull the lever back would definitely help. IT took me a good 10 seconds of experimentation to determine thats how I needed to start.

-Love the models and especially the frog character so cute!

-Really like the physics based gameplay and the modification system is super cool! Using some satisfying clicky noises would make rotating and snapping blocks together be more juicy and fun. (Think Resident Evil 4 Inventory System)

-UI and general look to the game is really nice, super polished looking.

-I encountered a bug that ended both my playthroughs prematurely where the lil fish clipped through the left side of the launch chamber, and no amount of pressing F was able to unstuck it. It was quite sad because I got softlocked.

-I don't think I like the timer mechanic, it feels a bit odd to me as a player, because I would like to keep playing but you're forcing me to restart due to something out of my control, maybe scoring points adds more time? It just felt weird to me especially since you only see the timer in the hub, so it doesn't feel that important to the gameplay. I probably would have played a lot longer if you didn't cap my runtime.

-Lastly there is a strange amount of lag at random times, hitting the worm causes a particularly large lag spike for me.

Thank you!!! I’m so glad you had fun!

Thank you so much!! I’m glad ya only found the good kind of bugs. :D

Thank you so much for playing!!

I love the concept! Very simple and replayable. Repeatedly killing myself made me stop and chuckle. Fun game!

Very cool lighting effects and graphics. I was a little unsure of what could be possessed and what couldn't, at first it seemed like anything glowing could be possessed but that was not the case. Cool game!

This is cool! I like the main mechanic a bunch. Not sure if I understand why you can just spawn a ton of dudes and just farm tons of cash, is that the point? I just wasn't sure if that was what I was supposed to be doing or nah.

Very creepy sfx. Love the little details like the pov shifting towards the button slowly. Really cool!

Thank you so much!!

Very cool use of the limitation! I love the art style, kinda reminds me of monument valley. Great puzzle design too!!

Fun and simple little game, with a fun concept! Would be interesting to have a bit more variety in enemies that alter gameplay slightly.

This is pretty interesting, definitely took a sec to grasp the controls, but the gameplay is pretty unique. Cool concept!!

This is brilliant! Very well made puzzles, simple yet effective color contrast, and very interesting core mechanic. Love the subtle wall cling, very useful and smart addition.

The colors and atmosphere are great. Love the sfx, took me a sec to understand whats going on but after reading the controls it made more sense. Very cool project!

Wow thank you so much! That means a lot to me!

Thanks for playing! Originally I agreed about stopping at the edge but when you get really far in the game, the edge hop move is basically required to survive. Tapping 3 times is slower, I still want to find a better solution but this is it for now.

Regarding the limitation, the main character killed his master to gain his abilities, and is now paying the price for his greed. Ngl I misunderstood the parameters of the jam at first and developed the game the whole first day, thinking control was the limitation, so it is not as intertwined with the game's design as I would've liked.

Ohh ok gotcha! No worries, I just wanted to confirm. One time, an asteroid I launched off screen somehow gravitated back on screen like minutes later and it wa AWESOME.

THANKS!!! Thats very nice to hear!

Don't let Nintendo see this. My GOTY pick

Thanks for playing! I appreciate it!!!

Like the lil animations! DISCO MODE

I think adding some hit feedback (flash enemies white, particles, hitstop, sfx, knockback, screenshake) this would feel very nice. Love me a lil roguelike.

This soundtrack is so awesome, I love the concept. My issue is that the input is a little vague, as well as a little laggy on my end. But its a short and simple game with a cool use of the limitation! Nice!

LOTS OF TEXT, bit of a jumpscare. But those sfx are lovely and satisfying.

Im rockhard

This artstyle is wild man. Really funny concept

Astroids BUT EVIL AND AWESOME. This is a great idea, I'm wondering if it is a bug but the little launch GUI always glows green when I start cliking and then turns red when I aim, am I missing something?

Also God Mode in video games has been a concept for like nearly 50 years

Its based on cheesy martial arts films, and the God Stomp scroll was just a funny concept. Also the caterpillars represent different elements and I imagined them as deities coming to punish you for disrupting the balance of nature. Hence the stomping of gods. Sorry if it was offensive but it was rly just meant to be a very silly game