Ludum Dare #40compo

DEEPER

by vizitas

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.46

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.96

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.33

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.40

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.32

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.20

About

"DEEPER" is cave diving exploration game. The goal is to retrieve 3 treasures from the bottom of the cave before you run out of air.

Notes

- Getting all 3 treasures is hard, but not impossible.

- For best effect fullscreen and headphones are recommended.

Tips:

- Bubbles always go up.
- Not rushing and planning are keys to success.

Builds

Windows:

https://vizitas.itch.io/deeper

Web:

(disabled due to visual bugs)

Audio samples from:

https://freesound.org/people/HDVideoGuy/sounds/156011/

https://freesound.org/people/monica137142/sounds/211389/

https://freesound.org/people/scratchikken/sounds/115609/

https://freesound.org/people/josepharaoh99/sounds/367125/

Tools:

- Unity

"Light2D - GPU Lighting System" Unity Store

"Advanced Polygon Collider" Unity Store

- GIMP2

- Blender

- Audacity

- Visual Studio

After release Change Log:

- Minor in editor value adjustments (Sound volume, brightness).

Tags: #cave, #diving, #exploration, #horror, #mystery, #relaxing, #spooky

Genres: adventure

Tools: Audacity, Blender, Unity

Comments18

MRUniverse4 Dec 2017, 20:41

Very nice setting, the pitch black water really sets the mood. The maze is extremely disorienting and I was quickly lost. The bubbles always go up trick helps a little. I was getting dizzy with the camera movements though, maybe smooth out the rotation a little so it's less jarring. The diver also seems very fuzzy compared to the surroundings and treasure chests.

Prostone4 Dec 2017, 20:42

Really atmospheric! I got totally lost after picking up first treasure and before I realized I could use the bubbles as a compass I found a second one. Great experience playing through this, lighting is nice, and that you can't see behind a corner is a great touch that adds to the atmosphere.

gilborn4 Dec 2017, 20:45

Puh, 2/3, wasn´t brave enough to go for the third, I was glad as I saw the beginning room...
Unnerving sounds and mood, cool game!

Poorwill4 Dec 2017, 21:10

Nice atmosphere. The fact that the bubbles show you which way is up is a very nice game mechanic.

gwolf864 Dec 2017, 21:17

Really nice atmosphere. I couldn't get all three chests, but I'll keep trying!

vizitasauthor4 Dec 2017, 23:33

Thank you everyone for feedback. @mruniverse I was really afraid of that during day one and was quite sick myself, tried to minimize dizziness to the best of my abilities...I might have gotten used to it from all the testing and it did not seem as much of a problem after reworking movement in day two.

HolyBlackCat5 Dec 2017, 01:11

The mood is great! :o

Evan Polekoff5 Dec 2017, 03:20

This game made me feel really claustrophobic. Some of the dead ends are a little tight to turn around in.

Vovin5 Dec 2017, 17:08

That atmosphere is really unnerving, nice job. The tutorial boxes at the start position initially pointed me towards the surface, so I escaped with 0 treasures :thinking:

oson5 Dec 2017, 17:48

The graphics and audio go really well together to set the mood. It's a cool idea too. Is the oxygen tank stuck in the end of a really tight space supposed to be unreachable? I wasted some time trying to activate it, perhaps as I'm expected to. The controls work quite well although having multiple boxes and trying to move around corners can sometimes be quite annoying.

vizitasauthor5 Dec 2017, 17:59

Thanks for feedback @oson Yes its supposed to be unreachable, maybe I should have made that more
obvious.

Persikan5 Dec 2017, 18:08

I like the idea of this game, the mood it gives off is great! Though, I feel that it might be a tad bit too dark, but that's just my opinion!

cogcomp5 Dec 2017, 20:50

Moody :-) Found searching around to be very disorienting, which I guess is a good thing in a game like this :-)

Logan5 Dec 2017, 21:50

Wow, you accomplished a lot of mood with so little! Very impressive!
The low visibility, screen rotation, pressing time limit and use of sounds really conveys a sense of claustrophobia, and turned what would otherwise be a simple maze game into something... deeper? And the bubbles were a nice touch, too.
I /almost/ got all three chests, but the last one was in this narrow cave near the top, and I was already lugging around a huge box that wouldn't fit. I guess that's how it goes!

Togis6 Dec 2017, 17:50

I uploaded my gameplay of this game on youtube, you can find it here

Thanks for being part of the stream :)

furet7 Dec 2017, 03:23

This was pretty relaxing, nice mood and sounds. I surfaced with nothing a few times before realizing there were other paths. At first I thought I'd get lost, but happily kept finding new things. Later, I ran out of air trying to pull 2 boxes thru a narrow opening, which I thought was the last place I hadn't seen, but wasn't sure. It'd be cool if I could mark places I'd been already.

multiplexor28 Dec 2017, 00:22

Very interesting concept! I like the way the lights work and make hard to know if it's a wall or a shadow. Still, it's quite complicated to orientate oneself through the maze, maybe some landmarks would make for a good addition!

Also, some music might have also made it more immersive (pun intended :P)

Keep up the hard work!

ambi28 Dec 2017, 09:31

Where am I supposed to go? If I go up I "reach the surface" and the game ends. There seems to also be no other way to go. Ok I found the route. It would be really nice if there was a better indicator of my non-visible area. Now it all just looks like cave wall. Also a discovered area map would help a lot. Now I'm just running around in circles. :D

The presentation is very cohesive and well put together.

Other games by @vizitas

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co-authored

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★3.52