Across the Lake by stephan steinbach

The world is in a weird awful time right now. This is a cozy, chill game about skipping stones across a lake.
Click, tap, or use the space bar to skip when you hit the water, see how many skips you can get.
Works best on chrome.
Credits:
- game: Stephan Steinbach (https://twitter.com/stephan_gfx)
- art: Morgan McGuire (https://twitter.com/casualeffects)
- sound: Steve Lavietes (https://twitter.com/stevelavietes)
- physics/feel: Forrester Cole (https://twitter.com/forrestercole)
Made in the quadplay engine: https://github.com/morgan3d/quadplay
| Youtube | https://stephan-gfx.itch.io/across-the-lake |
| Youtube | https://github.com/morgan3d/quadplay/tree/master/games/across_the_lake |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/across-the-lake |
Ratings
| Overall | 27th | 4.33⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 219th | 3.915⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 137th | 3.991⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 133th | 4.24⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 30th | 4.667⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 90th | 4.18⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 12th | 4.547⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
It really draws you in, you pretty much reach some stone-skipping zen state while playing it, aiming for those perfect bops. The graphics are really pretty as already mentioned, I especially love the nighttime, with the houses in the background, but I think my favorite part is the parallax on the lake with the small colored particles, that added a good feeling of speed to it. Sound-design-wise, the music also added to the zen thing, with its more mystical tone. And on top of all that, it also felt very smooth to play, with the reflection as a good indicator when to bop, and the sound effects guiding towards that perfect moment. So yeah, all-around a great job, well done!
Simple gameplay, satisfying feedback, beautiful graphics - everything is just well crafted. Great job!
This game is art! :)
After a few tries I found myself relying heavily on the stone's reflection for timing my presses. I eventually found that pressing space at the moment that the stone completely overlaps its reflection, or maybe a frame or two before, is about where you can get a perfect skip (losing no height). I would guess that there is about a 4 frame window in which you can get a perfect skip. My best score was 76 skips.

Those long skips felt really nice and calming. I "entered the zone" on those. It's really amazing that something so mechanically simple could do that for me.
I really appreciated the effort put into creating a calming atmosphere. A big part of that is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is amazing, like I can't believe how well it fits the game. Of course I can tell that it repeats, but I can't tell exactly where, and it never got repetitive. The synth drones are my favorite part. It's literally just so chill.
The background is full of character despite being mostly a pure-black silhouette. It reminds me of one night when I was driving from California to Oregon: a moonlit sky, the dark silhouette of trees interspersed with lights from the sprawling towns. I'm focusing on the road, but in my peripheral vision, I notice the landscape lazily drift by. This game reminds me of that, and it felt real nice.
Loved the subtly multi-colored particles on the surface of the water. I love the impression of speed that I get from watching them whip by as I'm skipping.
This game is strong, focused, and well-executed. Congratulations on making a wonderful game.
Good job to all of you for this little masterpiece!
That being said, I found the "ping" sound when you hit the water to be a bit on the grainy side. I know that's a nitpick but everything works so well, that it stood out more. Might be a "hardware" limitation, but something closer to a sine wave sound would work a bit better imo.
I should also mention I like the font choice. Works well and look unique (and even has the reflection for the title which is a nice touch).
Overall, while not the most ambitious game, it's certainly really well-rounded. Well done.