For Whom The Diving Bell Tolls

A very interesting game

you had me at the title \m/.

love the underwater sounds and enjoyed hunting for the notes. definitely re-playable!

Very cool aesthetic

Cool, maybe a little slow

I like it! The physics are actually interesting, I though I was trapped in a rut, but got out with a running jump and harpoon recoil.

Love the water sound, fun little game, love the name :D Shark made me go AAAAAA

Nice! Took me a bit to figure out the physics, but afterwards I had fun hunting for the notes. Love the art, sound design, and theme interpretation.

Oooh... this game is spooky. I made it to the bottom once and realized I really needed to read the notes to get the good ending.
I love the stereo watery sound. The harpoon was satisfying to use, but I found the physics a little floaty. Maybe increase the friction on the ground next time so it doesn't feel like ice...
but overall I quite liked it!

Really cool game. Love the aesthetic. The water sound and movement feel great. Great job.

I love the thrill of sharks!!

Phew! What a tense experience! It really made you feel more and more tense and fearful the deeper you went. I would have suggested one or two checkpoints but the feeling you get going a little further each time, knowing if you get eaten by a shark adds to the sinking feeling!

Enjoyed the movement in junction with using the harpoon gun for a boost. Underwater ambient sound really sold the setting and atmosphere. Great usage of the theme. Those sharks really made the descent the most frightful!

Nice one! i like it!

Kinda sad ending, but i liked it!

Great idea, and incredible sound design. Only gripe is that as some others have mentioned, not having checkpoints made it annoying to die if you were further down. Great take on the theme!

This was really interesting! I think the gameplay was a little slow and I didn't really feel like I was threatened by enemies, they were just annoying, but the story made up for it. The ending was sad but I still liked it. I think interacting with the UI could be better though. I think you could also add checkpoints since dying when you're far down was really frustrating.

a very cool art style, but I encountered a good amount of issues, for instance the harpoon I didn't feel like I needed to actually fire, once I discovered you can just melee and kill things with no cooldown. Also I would of loved the harpoon to have maybe some reel in animation or something, instead of just teleporting back.

i like the bottles to read while waiting for air to recharge, i wish there were more in better spots though

Very very cool. The physics was pretty tricky to handle when on the ground but I found that the answer to most of my movement based questions was "Shoot a harpoon". Very cleaver system with the pressure and being able to use the harpoon to slow your decent.

Because the movement is so slidey, I often ended up sliding over the edge past the bottles. Often, there wasn't a good way back up. This meant that I missed bottles.

I also got attacked by a shark while falling, which felt bad because I didn't have time to dodge.

I liked the underwater audio and thought it was very atmostpheric.

Awesome entry! I tried for a solid 20 mins and couldn't get it! The sounds were great and the art was spot on :)

The ending, right in the feels ;(
Excellent game though!

Great difficult and nice underwater vibe. The recoil from the harpoon is a good mechanic as well.

TODO: review game

In search of Spongebob :) :shower:

Really nice game! The underwater sounds is nice, but in my opinion, there is not enough background music

Nice job! Using the recoil for more than one mechanic was great. I died a few times and never managed to make it to the end but, it kept me trying again.

the pressure mechanic was a really clever way to prevent people from just speed running to the bottom! This game has a really good mood!

Cool :) I was eaten by fishes :)))))

I love the art style of the game :o

LOVED the art style and the ambient sound. The jumping felt a little difficult and the blind falls made it seem unfair the first time through. Maybe some slight indicators to help navigate down without taking unnecessary damage? Either way, great work! Had fun playing through it. :)

like the visuals and fun

Movement was a little slow and slippery, but nice game

I really liked the mood in this one. But I had to play it twice before I understood it. First time I just used left and right and totally missed the notes since there really wasn't anything telling me in game that I should interact with the bottle. I tried shooting it but nothing happend. So I got to the V shaped place with a bottle at the bottom and that was when I realized I should have hunted for them. Similarly, I totally missed that I could jump for a good part of the first dive (the text on the page would be helped with some bold or similar emphasis on what the keys are). The second dive was much more fun when I had understood how the game works though!

@sweer The 'melee harpoon' is a feature, we left it to allow some close-combat with the fishes. The dragging back of the harpoon animation would indeed be cool!

@masael255 Nice to hear you had fun :) Indicators of where to go in some way would indeed have been nice. Maybe could have done something with bubbles? Maybe you did, but make sure to use the harpoon to shoot downwards for more control over the fall!

@local-minimum Happy to hear you liked it :) Good comment about being clear to the player about what is going on. Could probably have added very clear instructions in the beginning on controls and what you are supposed to do!

Nice jam, great work guys!

Nice jumping mechanic. Message in a bottle story telling was a good idea.

Was it intended that I could defend myself without firing the harpoon? Things swimming into it died.

This is a really well executed jam entry! Great job all around!

@xeke-death Thanks, happy you liked the mechanics and the story telling! Yes - we left it as a feature, we thought it didn't make it much easier as you need to go so close to the fishes, and that it could be a fun alterantive to shooting.

Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for playtesting! Sorry I wasn't able to get to it when you were around. If you'd like to watch the play and commentary you can view the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1008703889

Great to see @marcmagus, thanks for testing it out :)

Great little game. I liked that the harpoon could be used as either a projectile or melee weapon. The balance was pretty good: I died a couple times at first, and by the end I was speed-running it to try all the different treasures.

I lov the recoil weapon, is very interesting!!!

Pretty simple game with nice visuals!