ScubaBear is a collecting and exploration game. A true Beneath the Surface Metroidvania! Scuba the bear aims to collect all of the hidden treasures of poseidon. As you collect treasures with ScubaBear your set of abilities will grow and you can explore even more areas. Finally, when you collect all of the treasure you can be proud to call yourself the true King of the Sea. Controls: Arrow keys and 'D','F','return' keys When in Chrome some game controllers are also supported. Credits: All (fantastic) audio: Shannon Mason 'Pongball' Art / programming: Richard Lems 'Rilem' Level design: Diane de Wilde 'Ziryf' Known issues: - Artifacts between tiles on older browsers. - Random flickering on outdated graphics cards / drivers. - empty chest *fixed*
Yes am bear, but always wondered: "Why am bear? Is there more than bear?". No longer! Am bear for scuba! Am bear for good game! Am more than bear. Am ScubaBear!
Lots of fun. Was expecting a boring left to right platformer. Was nicely surprised. (Also was one treasure short. I think there was a chest in a cave near the left side of the map that didn't fill up a spot on my list. 2nd column, 2nd row of list?)
Very nice production quality (as often with your game), nice graphics music and audio. I like the changing music when you go deeper/go back to surface.
I too add an issue where a chest just gave me nothing so I end up with one slot missing when I've got all the rest of the treasure, it is a bit frustrating ^^
The game directly crashed for me when trying it in FireFox, but it is because of the gamepad API. Nevertheless, it works good in Chrome.
Congrats to you and your team for this nice game made in a week end and submitted in the jam !
Adorable, cute, amazing pixelwork, great sound, great controls, lots of content! Crazy this was made in 3 days! The map is a bit "walk back and forth" but it is really exciting everytime you open a chest! Awesome work!
Very fun and polished. When are you guys gonna release a full game? I mean if you can create these things in 3 days, show us what you can do with 6 months :)! Good job!
Note, with FireFox 29 everything works just fine (controller, music, gameplay all good), and thanks for the fixing the issue with "the last chest", I was able to see the end that way. Again, congrats on a game well done !
Well this is just pretty marvellous, isn't it? :D Reminded me a little bit of Treasure Island Dizzy. I also liked that the music changed a little bit when you are underwater!
Awesome game! Could find 21/24 treasures. Was really happily surprised by the different changes in the music while diving deeper and deeper :) I love the deep abyssal side of it!
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_Rilem29 Apr 2014, 15:14
@Kyatric: Yes I just saw the firefox release. Awesome that everything works now. :) The 'ending' was thrown in last minute, but now people will at least be able to see it. xD
Really fantastic. Entries like this always make me so jealous. The dynamic/contextual music was a great touch, and the treasure/stage progression relationship was rock solid.
I hate the game. I don't know how the fk I managed to get all the treasures from the dark area without the light bulb. 10/10 game, but I hate it right now haha
Wow that's a lot of content you've got there, and it's super professional. Great job, especially on the feeling/screenshake/particle stuff, it really adds something :D
This game was awesome! one of my favorite! really, the art is beautiful, music is great and well merged, design is awesome. Great job, really. I have nothing bad to say about ti.
This game is amazing, the pixel art is beautiful, the gameplay is great and relaxing, the musics fit the game perfectly and I loved the references! One of my favorite games for sure! :D
My favorite Jam entry thus far. Simply perfect on almost every level. The music... oh my god... and how it changes... I can't even deal with how beautiful it is. The sprites, the controls, the humor with the different treasures... the progression... GAHHHH it's just so amazing. Wonderful work all around. You should feel very accomplished!
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_Rilem29 Apr 2014, 18:09
Thanks for the kind words, we did our best! ^^ @rogberth: respect to you for finding those treasures in the darkness! That's insane o.o
Ok, this was awesome. Great everything. Very *VERY* nicely done! Also thanks for making this HTML5-enabled. There aren't many games that work under Linux, so this is always welcome. That said though, the tiles weren't aligning correctly. I expect this is some kind of bug in Construct or Chrome?
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_Rilem29 Apr 2014, 19:04
@chronoberry: there will be a postmortem in a few days which will give a more in depth view. But a quick summery was that all 3 of us like exploring and collecting hidden treasures. So we settled on one of the first silly ideas of a bear. Then I set up a quick workflow from http://www.mapeditor.org/ to our construct scene. From there it went pretty smooth, but it was hard work till the end. o.o
@frozencow: That's a rendering bug that is most likely related to the gpu or gpu drivers. Then again it might also be a linux specific thing. But I'm just guessing here. :p Windows/osx/linux builds are coming later, so that might fix the issue.
Hey, I'd say you pretty well nailed what you set out to do, the music is wonderful, there's a ton of awesome artwork. Nice job. There isn't much to it-- it's pretty much just "scour the level for collectables"-- but for what it is, it's awesome.
There were a couple parts that were a bit unclear to me-- using the double jump ability comes to mind, as does finding the last button. And I never actually found the final collectable. Aside from that, I liked it.
Amazing game. Woke up some nostalgia in me. Reminded me of an old Genesis game. Wonder Boy in Monster World. The Graphics, the happy music, the crabs, the chests. Wonderful :).
This oozes charm, great soundtrack (loved the dynamic playback when it comes to being underwater, always a fantastic sight!) Highly polished, lots of content... it's great :D
If you want something constructive, all I can offer is a minor UI niggle: the inventory showing up after each "item get" was a little unusual since you had to manually close it. I'd be cool if that only showed up for ~2 seconds and then went down by itself!
Really though, it's a non-issue. The game is great :D
fantastic work. fun gameplay, and great sounds. I did run across an issue where if I attacked while my ghost was floating back I could move my "body" out of the way and it got lost off one side of the screen.
Looks good, feels good to play, fun world to explore, and props on the context-sensitive music. Only problem I had was that there's not much you can do to control the height of the bear's jump, and it's not 100% consistent in the water, so I kept running into enemies, but that's a relatively small complaint.
This was awesome loved the concept of it, only problem was it was freezing alot, and you can see the lines in the tiles. other than that awesome game great job!
That's a great game ! That bear remind me Rocky the Raccoon (from Pocky and Rocky SNES).
Well, some constructive critics : - I love the "FPS" inventory. But it could disappear after some seconds when we collect a treasure. - About the one big level : That's good, but I'd liked a map as a treasure (showing only where a already go) to help me to figure where I have to go next. - Really need a save command (or checkpoints). - Have you considered mouse / touch command to port it on tablet ?
Good work ! Can't wait to see the full game.
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_Rilem30 Apr 2014, 08:38
@neekobus: A map would be a very good idea. But alas 3 days wasn't enough time. :< I haven't experimented with touch controls yet, but it's on the todo list! :)
Everything about this game is fantastic. I loved every second of it, and I got all the treasures. It's actually kind of what I wanted my game The Puddle to be like, but my current skill set wasn't enough for that scope. FANTASTIC GAME!
One of the best games of this ludum thus far. Impressive graphics, catchy music, cool sfx and a lovely bear.
The only downside is that the game has only one enemy and one trap, so the last half of the game a bit monotonous by the lack of new things. But is understandable knowing the time limit in a event like that.
THIS IS AMAZING. Best jam entry I've played so far! I love it! One small criticism: I couldn't see what the last treasure was I collected because the end screen popped up right away.
The general level of polish and competence are worth repeating.
My major gripe is the lack of a map. Going to look for the last piece of treasure really didn't entice me enough after finding all the others. Another point is separating the inventory into two parts: Items and treasure. It wasn't entirely clear to me, in the beginning, that only the first row gives me abilities.
Apart from that the game is also a bit uninspired. It's a 2D Metroidvania with regenerating health out of all things! (it makes sense though, the player being a bear and all!) Nothing really made me jump out of my seat, spewing out sentences like "Wow I've never seen that before!".
I'm just raining on the parade here. Overall it's an extremely well done and fun entry.
Beautiful job! I just wish I had a map of some sort so that I could keep track of where I'd been. Maybe something with like a Fog of War as I explored.
Just finished. Great work! I love how expressive the bear is for health. It never was too easy or too hard, just a solid enjoyable experience from end to end.
I would have really liked having a map. I spent some time searching for places I had not been to yet.
I never knew when I got a new power, or what that power was. I accidentally found double jump and I still have no idea which item let me swim through the strong current.
Still one of the best I've found and I'm at ~60. Will share. Thanks for the game!
Why didn't I read the description before playing... I got to the bottom of the cave playing with the keyboard... while I had a X-Box controller connected to the pc. >_<
Well, that aside. XD Amazing game! Really, wow!! It was really fun and so goddamn polished! Fighting felt great, but I had some troubles adjust to the new range after I got the trident. The graphics are great, and the hud with the controls reminded me of GBA games. And the music!! Changing it when you go underwater was awesome!
Incredible. I always love these short collect-all-the-treasure games. The pixel art is amazing, as is the music and transposition depending on location. The controls are tight and lots of little details (puff of dust while walking, bubbles underwater, etc) really added up to great effect.
If there were a nostalgia category I'd give you all the stars! I had so much fun playing it. The graphics and music were absolutely perfect, and I loved all the nods to other games.
The most polished game I see so far this LD, really amazing music and graphic. I had small problem with run it on my Win7, but compability mode solved the problem ;) POKEBALL!
Oh man! L-O-V-E this game! THIS IS SO AWESOME! Polish! Music! Graphics! Levels! The best game I've played so far out of more then 200 on this LD. You've guys made the perfect jam entry.
Wow, I just played throught the entire thing and it was awesome! The map is really huge and there is so much to explore. I am really impressed what you guys created in this short amount of time! awesome!
Wonderfully polished. So many classic video game callbacks (both in treasure and design decisions), but it's working for me here. That there's a dynamic soundtrack change for above/below water is just magical~
Fun as hell! Found all the treasure but still wanted to explore a corner of the last area, oh well. This reminds me of that unreleased game, Treasure Bear.
Fantastic job! Really polished, impressive that you made it in 72 hours. Love the music, particularly the dynamic music change when you go underwater. Awesome graphics. Really satisfying when you attack enemies too (I think its the screen shake that does it.) Great game!
First and only game with all 5 stars for me... All the references (Flappy and Banjo&Kazooie) and more! Just wow! Amazing all around! Hard to believe this was done in <72 hours! As others have said, "Would throw money at" if made into a bigger game or if the same studio made another Metroidvania with the same feel/style.
Hahaha, how is this not more famous? Scubabear, you should be the poster boy (poster bear?) for LD29!
I'm sorry that I don't have anything constructive to add; as it is, the game feels more like a fully polished indie game that should be on Steam instead of a 72 hour jam entry.
Also, from a web dev's perspective: you coded this in HTML5? HARDCORE.
I'm so impressed with the amount of effort you guys put into this game! It feels so polished throughout the entire game, especially the graphics, music and the core gameplay. One thing that may be good to think about is how the treasures that does and does not change the gameplay are presented. Some times I saw the cosmetic difference to the bear and understood that something had changed (like the weapon), but then the beard was changed and I didn't have a clue what to do with it.
I loved the game and I did finish it after some trial and errors. Overall it was very enjoyable. Thanks!
Great game, congrats to you guys! So much attention to details in so little time, it's impressive. I loved how the music changed depending on the environment.
Oh wow, this is amazing! The level of polish and amount of content is really impressive! My only complaint is that the ending showed up too quickly and i didn't get to see what the final item was haha
Pure, undiluted fun! And it looks and feels absolutely stunning, too. I especially like the user interface, the representation of health is just wonderful. If I could wish for anything it would be for more enemy types, but the game is fantastic nevertheless!
P
PIXEL^39 May 2014, 06:27
This is amazing for a 72 hour game. I do have a few nitpicks like the effects of items could be more apparent, place the light bulb in a barely dark area for example. I liked the game references though and I think this game has enough polish that I'd pay for it even in it's current state.
King of the sea! VERY polished little game. Big game level, excellent mechanics... Biggest complaints I have are it's not immediately obvious what some of the upgrades actually do (And I'm still not sure what gave me the ability to bypass the current - suspect it's the beard?) and a few annoying dead-ends-unless-you-have-the-ability here and there, but beautifully polished and fun little platformer. Top job all of ya! :D
Unbelievable! Such a polished and well-designed entry. Loving the vibe and treasure-collecting mechanic, it brought back memories of the treasure hunt mode in Kirby All Stars. There's not a doubt in my mind that this will place very high in the results for jam entries.
I got all the treasures! Perfect game. I had a wonderful time playing this! It would be great if you could find a way to generate maps procedurally, for replay value.
I was going to give the programmer a hard time for the flickering, and then say that the art is the absolute best art of this LD, but then I saw the art/programming was the same person, and that the flickering was from my graphics card.
So with that in mind I can find literally nothing to complain about with this game, it is perfect. Amazing music, Amazing art, perfect fun LD entry.
When a game is this good you almost have less to say about it because with good game they'll have a few great elements but with this game everything about it is great.
Cool game. Would have almost missed it, if it weren't for the Button Masher Bros. I really love all the small details and the treasures were so sweet tributes to so many cool games!
I liked how the music got filtered under water and the looks of the bear when hurt. Really cool game.
Great art style. Very nostalgic. I think the part I enjoyed most was the situational health bare tied to the condition of the Bear's face. Awesome touch.
As a side note Scuba Bear ended up in a Youtube showcase =D
This is excellent :) But... you know guys that EVERYONE absolutely hated the underwater levels in Sonic, right? Your entry was top notch: controls are very good, the art is amazing, and all the details were carefully thought and properly implemented :)
Good job guys!
D
DDRKirby(ISQ)18 May 2014, 09:06
This is exactly the kind of game that should be coming out of LD, haha. Great job, guys. And props to pongball for the 3-phase music, was a great touch!
Honestly, I'm surprised this game did so well. The HTML 5 version, at least, is super buggy to the point of being almost completely broken. Anyone else have that problem?
Comments156
But... when I got to the last chest, it didn't do anything. So I have a missing slot.
I too add an issue where a chest just gave me nothing so I end up with one slot missing when I've got all the rest of the treasure, it is a bit frustrating ^^
The game directly crashed for me when trying it in FireFox, but it is because of the gamepad API.
Nevertheless, it works good in Chrome.
Congrats to you and your team for this nice game made in a week end and submitted in the jam !
Might be the chest ghostmaple is mentioning.
You might need to clear your cache to see the changes.
congrats guys!
Again, congrats on a game well done !
Was really happily surprised by the different changes in the music while diving deeper and deeper :) I love the deep abyssal side of it!
The 'ending' was thrown in last minute, but now people will at least be able to see it. xD
10/10 game, but I hate it right now haha
too bad about the anti-climactic ending :P
The game has a lot of great content.
@rogberth: respect to you for finding those treasures in the darkness! That's insane o.o
I played for so long my food got cold >_< Wooooow, just wooooow.
How did you guys make this in 3 days? Could you give a quick summary?
Also thanks for making this HTML5-enabled. There aren't many games that work under Linux, so this is always welcome. That said though, the tiles weren't aligning correctly. I expect this is some kind of bug in Construct or Chrome?
@frozencow: That's a rendering bug that is most likely related to the gpu or gpu drivers. Then again it might also be a linux specific thing. But I'm just guessing here. :p
Windows/osx/linux builds are coming later, so that might fix the issue.
There were a couple parts that were a bit unclear to me-- using the double jump ability comes to mind, as does finding the last button. And I never actually found the final collectable. Aside from that, I liked it.
You successfully made 2D Banjo Kazooie.
If you want something constructive, all I can offer is a minor UI niggle: the inventory showing up after each "item get" was a little unusual since you had to manually close it. I'd be cool if that only showed up for ~2 seconds and then went down by itself!
Really though, it's a non-issue. The game is great :D
That bear remind me Rocky the Raccoon (from Pocky and Rocky SNES).
Well, some constructive critics :
- I love the "FPS" inventory. But it could disappear after some seconds when we collect a treasure.
- About the one big level : That's good, but I'd liked a map as a treasure (showing only where a already go) to help me to figure where I have to go next.
- Really need a save command (or checkpoints).
- Have you considered mouse / touch command to port it on tablet ?
Good work ! Can't wait to see the full game.
I haven't experimented with touch controls yet, but it's on the todo list! :)
http://imgur.com/Ugcqfot
One of the best games of this ludum thus far. Impressive graphics, catchy music, cool sfx and a lovely bear.
The only downside is that the game has only one enemy and one trap, so the last half of the game a bit monotonous by the lack of new things. But is understandable knowing the time limit in a event like that.
Great good job to all the team!
One small criticism: I couldn't see what the last treasure was I collected because the end screen popped up right away.
It's incredibly awesome game =)
It's not serious at all, but pretty fun to play and relax.
Visuals make me jealous =)
Fantastic job
My major gripe is the lack of a map. Going to look for the last piece of treasure really didn't entice me enough after finding all the others.
Another point is separating the inventory into two parts: Items and treasure. It wasn't entirely clear to me, in the beginning, that only the first row gives me abilities.
Apart from that the game is also a bit uninspired.
It's a 2D Metroidvania with regenerating health out of all things! (it makes sense though, the player being a bear and all!)
Nothing really made me jump out of my seat, spewing out sentences like "Wow I've never seen that before!".
I'm just raining on the parade here.
Overall it's an extremely well done and fun entry.
I love how expressive the bear is for health.
It never was too easy or too hard, just a solid enjoyable experience from end to end.
I would have really liked having a map. I spent some time searching for places I had not been to yet.
I never knew when I got a new power, or what that power was. I accidentally found double jump and I still have no idea which item let me swim through the strong current.
Still one of the best I've found and I'm at ~60. Will share.
Thanks for the game!
Well, that aside. XD
Amazing game! Really, wow!! It was really fun and so goddamn polished! Fighting felt great, but I had some troubles adjust to the new range after I got the trident. The graphics are great, and the hud with the controls reminded me of GBA games.
And the music!! Changing it when you go underwater was awesome!
Really, amazing entry! :D
Polish! Music! Graphics! Levels! The best game I've played so far out of more then 200 on this LD.
You've guys made the perfect jam entry.
I'm sorry that I don't have anything constructive to add; as it is, the game feels more like a fully polished indie game that should be on Steam instead of a 72 hour jam entry.
Also, from a web dev's perspective: you coded this in HTML5? HARDCORE.
One thing that may be good to think about is how the treasures that does and does not change the gameplay are presented. Some times I saw the cosmetic difference to the bear and understood that something had changed (like the weapon), but then the beard was changed and I didn't have a clue what to do with it.
I loved the game and I did finish it after some trial and errors. Overall it was very enjoyable. Thanks!
Congrats!
~AlucardX60
So polished and overall just pure fun!
So with that in mind I can find literally nothing to complain about with this game, it is perfect. Amazing music, Amazing art, perfect fun LD entry.
When a game is this good you almost have less to say about it because with good game they'll have a few great elements but with this game everything about it is great.
I liked how the music got filtered under water and the looks of the bear when hurt. Really cool game.
As a side note Scuba Bear ended up in a Youtube showcase =D
But... you know guys that EVERYONE absolutely hated the underwater levels in Sonic, right?
Your entry was top notch: controls are very good, the art is amazing, and all the details were carefully thought and properly implemented :)
Good job guys!