Nice work! One thing I'd like to see changed is the level design - there's so much empty space that it takes a long time to navigate it all. I'd rather have some tighter levels instead of spending lots of time going through empty space. However, I liked the music and the gameplay was good whenever there were enemies about!
If you want to get a ranking make sure you rate some other peoples' games!

cute game, can definitely see the celeste influence

it feels good to build up momentum but I would have liked to see a way to cancel the dash early or something or maybe a way to retain momentum out of it to allow people to build up some speed faster

checkpoints are also a little far apart considering the difficulty of some segments and the slow journeys to get back to where you were

overall I really enjoyed it though and the sense of atmosphere is really strong

A very moody game, I got stuck sometime after the second checkpoint (when there are octopuses), because I'm too nervous, haha. I'll try again!

Nice pixel art animations and very chill mood overall.
Of course the first thing i tried was swimming to the top ;)

@felixmreeve Absolutely the biggest shortcoming in my opinion was the level design. I was really trying to tighten things up towards the end of the jam, but unfortunately I'd made too much of it before getting into comprehensive play-testing, and the result was that moving any one piece meant a lot of reconfiguring the spikes, dash-barriers, and enemies surrounding it.

I may actually continue refining the design though, after taking a break. If I do the first thing I'll be sorting out is scaling down the map!

Thanks for playing!

@diabolical-sloth Thanks for the feedback, Dash-cancelling is definitely something I would've liked to put in.

It's funny that you mention retaining momentum from the dash - that was initially how it worked. I ended up zeroing out the momentum because I kept overshooting and hitting walls in my early tests. I think I would revere that decision in hindsight.

Really quaint little game, absolutely love the swimming animation! :D A little bit too much empty space as what people mentioned, but overall still great job! Don't be concerned about the feedback, you did great work for such a short amount of time :)

Very nice game with beautiful character art and animation and a song that sets the mood perfectly.

My only critiques are:
- Your scenery art could've used a bit more attention -- the flat colors felt empty and out of place with the intricate characters (even reusing the enemy sprites in the background or adding some spots/a texture to the walls could've gone a long way), plus some sloppy crooked corners bothered me since seeing the straight walls flow as the character moved was very satisfying to me haha And there are some corners where you can get stuck.
- I also missed some control guidelines in game (took me a long time to figure out the dash)
- As some people already said here, in some sections there's really no challenge at all because the spaces are too wide and the character control is so precise (maybe if it was more bouncy like flappy bird for instance the wider levels could work)

I really enjoyed the narrower bits though and had a fun time overall!

nice game, but bugs in game,the first treasure, the wall after it, if you are not careful, the player is stuck in it, and sometimes it was going to pass through the "phase portals"

So, I'm going to start with saying that I'll echo that the levels were a bit too open in places, which could be frustrating. And things could be fidgety with getting stuck at least once. But otherwise very well done. You've taken something which I normally don't like much (floaty, slow controls in platformers) and turned it into the core feature of a game and I enjoyed it. Bravo to you for that.

Nice Game. It reminds me of aquaria. You could improve it by adding a map (because the environment are large) and juste a few particle so that the speed of the player is more visible. Thnak your

I agree with the feedback that the levels could have been condensed quite a bit. Travelling through empty space without anything to interact with is not super engaging. But the parts that were populated with enemies and spikes were fun to go through. Solid work overall!

@christian-jallas Are you saying you were able to fit into that small gap in the wall just after the first treasure?

I hadn't meant for that gap to be there, and I only noticed it pretty late in testing, but every time I've tried dashing into it I couldn't get the collider to go through. Thanks for letting me know.

@shubart I hadn't even thought of a map, but that's a good idea. Do you think a map that starts blank and fills in as you explore would make sense for a game like this?

I had intended to add an effect to the dash and some bubbles from the Diver to show motion/add a bit of flavour, but I ran out of time. Aside from the excessive distances I think the biggest issue for me with the final product was that it just doesn't have any juice, really.

@AFlatThrasher Thank you so much, I'm actually so happy to hear that you enjoyed the floaty slowness of it, and I immediately get it because I also normally hate that in games so seriously thanks for mentioning that!

Cute game! I don't really have anything constructive to say that hasn't already been said, but I can definitely confirm that the map being too big is something that needs to be fixed. Seems like a game that could benefit from a lot of small spaces and tight movement.

Love the sense of scale, makes you feel alone in the water. I did wish it had more enemies, most of the time was just navigating through the caves. Good game nonetheless.

shorter dash or even the ability to cancel the dash would have been great. found myself at times dashing straight into obstacles that were offscreen (or close) when i started the dash. otherwise, this was a really nicely implemented game! oh and i think there was some bug with the main character sprite? i was getting some horizontal lines above and below the sprite

Quite a challenging and fun game. Though for me the main challenge is finding out which direction I should go. And the game could really benefit from some textured background and a minimap.

Nice chill game. I had fun zooming around the ocean. Thanks!

A map that fills according to your journey would be perfect

This was a really cool experience with lots of charm. Everything fit well together and that gave it a wonderfully encompassing mood, with great music, satisfying gameplay and good tempo regarding the design. Great work!

@gimmers Thanks so much, I'm really happy you liked it!

@midamida I was pretty happy with how the dash turned out, so I'm glad you enjoyed using it. :)

I love me some pixel art and the dash movement feels really nice. I think the environments are a bit too open though, it's quite disorienting. It might be better to have a smaller, more succinct design, maybe keep either the top and bottom or left and right walls visible most of the time. There were a lot of dead sections where you just kind of swam with nothing around which might have been good to cut.

I *very* much appreciate the checkpoint system, but at least one of them was a really long dead-zone swim away from a very nasty section (I'm looking at you, ya dang purple barrier with spikes right on the other side!) so that added a lot of redundant swimming for me.

The music was really good and helped set a cool mood (did you make the music yourself?), and it was pretty enjoyable. I also liked the enemy designs, they were quite fun. Good entry and keep it up!

@wheffle Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, the big open sections are a bit of a drag, and mostly there because I ran out of time to play-test and make changes before the deadline.

I actually made all of the assets myself! Music, sprites, sound effects, the whole shebang. I'm glad you liked it and that it enhanced the mood.

Thanks for playing!

I liked the game, adding a map that is revealed as you explore would help a lot.

@simpathey Thanks again for playing it on stream! It was an amazing first-time experience for me to see a game I made on twitch, and the positive comments in the chat were just the best.

Very nice!

Interesting how big the map is. I wish there were background elements to help telling where you are.

As for the controls, movement is fluid, it feels like you're always in control. Also, it was nice to have WASD, since my keyboard can't handle combinations like up + left + space. Playing on a 16:9 screen, its "dangerous" to dash up/downwards as you can't see what's there, but maybe that's not a problem given how empty the world is. One bug is you can dash after dying.

The music is pleasant. Despite the dangers and the intimidating "Deaths: 0" at the beggining, it was a chilling experience. I could just calmly avoid obstacles and enjoy exploring the sea. Adding some background and maybe other elements, this would be a great chill game, good job!

@igor-kingamer Thanks for trying it, and I really appreciate the feedback.

Yeah, I'm planning to continue development, I'll be adding parallax background and a more landmark-ish approach to help players keep track of their location. My next element to implement is a minimap that you can fill in as you play, though.

Thanks for playing!

The music is awesome and it is what make me finish it. The gameplay is good, the movement feels quite good and the enemies and things are well made. There was a little bit too much empty space, maybe being able to see a bit more or zoom out would have been helpful, or something in the background to help with directions. Also, when I got impatient i would go on dashing and maybe sometimes I will clash against an eel, but it was my fault.
It felt the best when you were wandering aimless with the music background, and in the tiny corners that weren't that difficult, but enough to keep you engaged while the music kicks in

Great controls and the soundtrack fit the mood perfectly. I enjoyed the extensive open areas at first, making it feel like I was genuinely swimming through a vast underwater tunnel system, but the novelty wore off after a bit. Great Job!

Hi i have some (i hope constructive) criticism.

The dash is really useful but you can dash into a part that was previously offscreen. That means you can dash into stuff you didnt know were there. Id say make the dash a bit shorter but remove the cooldown. I always pressed the next dash when the animation ended and it didnt trigger (shorter cooldown would fix this).

The character looks nice and has a cute death animation. One thing i saw in another game with a similar theme and mechanic was to have air bubbles around the player just for another visual "this is underwater" vibe.

My main criticism comes from the level design. The game area is extremely big and feels very empty. Of course that fits the mood quite well but isn't very interesting to play. There are many long tubes with not even spikes on the walls so there is no danger or challenge to swim through. I liked the areas that were more tight and challenging. Another thing about the level desing is that at some point i didnt know where to go anymore. Maybe some indicators would be helpful.

I agree with many of the other commenters about the good controls, nice little variety in enemies and the music.
Good job on the additive soundtrack! It worked really well.

Just a great entry! A tad smaller locations would indeed help understand where the player is. Very nice character animations, and the death animation is superb.

The movement was fun, and I loved the dashing!

The dash could probably be toned down a bit - I was dashing into spikes a lot at the beginning until I started only dashing in areas that I'd already been to. I also interpreted the walls by the checkpoints as "doors", and wasted a lot of time running around looking for how to open them.

Good work!

@willoxs I appreciate the feedback!

I'm actually working on a full-fledged game from this design, and I fully agree about the dash. I'm shortening the cooldown, and the plan is to move the camera back a bit more so you can't dash off-screen. I also plan to have a lot more trial-and-error level designing to make sure that there aren't so many unfair deaths from dashing into the unknown.

Tightening up the level design is a big focus, as well.

I really appreciate you playing the game and taking the time to give such a detailed response, thanks again!

The animation, character design and movement is really nice! It felt like an adventure :slight_smile: It was kinda scary to be alone in the middle of... nothing. Sooo, I liked the mood :smile:

Loved the character design and animation. I dashed off screen into spikes a couple of times. To combat the feeling of a large, vast level perhaps something like a minimap with fog of war to assist in navigation/backtracking. Great job!

It's a fun exploration game with nice visuals :D

Congratulations on the game, your art and animation are very beautiful, you took a lot of life to the character, in the future I recommend putting a mini map so that you can know where to look for the treasures, a big hug, and I await your evaluations regarding my game.

First, I really like the concept here and the background music. It gives everything this great vibe :)

Pixel graphics on the main character are very nice and so are the animations. But the area graphics are not pixel and don't really go well together with the character art. The areas are big and feel very empty. Just some decorative elements (e.g. rocks, plants, corals) at the edges of the walls would improve the mood enormously :).

Dashing is great (and I like the sfx on it) but feels like it's too long. You can easily dash off-screen and end up in a very unpleasant situation (like impaled on a spike :wink:). I would decrease the dash distance somewhat.

Some treasure counter would also be nice, so I can marvel at all the loot I found underwater :)

I like the art and love the music! The dash feels great. One way to improve it might be to pull the camera out a bit so we can better see what we're dashing into and also so that it's easier to tell where you are

Dash sfx! Very rhythmic. Still, too much of a Japanese-like music loop. At some point the screen ambience seems too much and you wish for some narrative comics part (or shadow play) to happen. As if some narrative driven pop-ups appearing at the sides (where there's no action at all). More cinematic, I mean, can make this game much cooler! But enjoyed this dashing deeper, thanks).

Very cool game. Graphics are cute, music is relaxing. Controls are ok. Regular swimming is a bit slow, but I'm guessing that's the point? :)

Great job. You can immediately see that designers and developers tried. I also like the development of games and would like to develop in it. But still I have little experience, and I am looking for a job or some startups. I am an engineer, but I do not like such a job. I think you do not need to do a job that does not give pleasure. If there is such an opportunity, then do what you like. I agree that it is sometimes scary to change something and get out of his comfort zone, but you can at least try to write a good resume to https://skillroads.com/free-online-resume-builder and send it to several agencies that you can be interested in.