This is one of the few games I would sit down and play even if I wasn't rating games for a game jam. Great job. The art is beautiful, particularly the water. Having everything controlled by the mouse makes it easy to pick up.

I really love the mining and upgrading, but not so much the combat. Combat is more difficult and annoying than fun. For one, the gun is placed above the submarine so it's hard to aim. Also, you gotta move in the direction of the enemy. I found myself always going in circles trying to kill one guy. But then a bunch of other monsters would come at me from other directions. So I would just lose health while mining until I go repair. For the jam, I think it would have been better to go without combat and develop the mining even more.

Sometimes its hard to see what's going on. The submarine moves fast and the camera lags behind, so I can't see what's in front of me. Also the lighting should be 360 degrees, not only in front. When mining, I can't see anything because the light is pointing right at the ground. If you want the effect of a spotlight, how about keep the bright spotlight you have now, and add a dimmer light that goes 360 degrees around the sub.

I know it seems like a lot of criticism, but that's only because I am interested in the game. Good work.

@patrickjr Thank you so much, I added a day one post LD patch that should adress both your major points somewhat.

Nice work! Fun game. The post LD version has a screen size issue for me (zoomed in). But the original submission is so good! Lot's of upgrade options, I feel I have to save up to get the best thing. Nice work! :smiley:

@thebox193 Oh this seems to be an itch.io issue. I think I fixed it now

I like this game very much, really fun! I really love exploring the deep seas. The only thing is that I feel sorry for the poor squids...

That's a fun game, a bit hard to understand at first!

The visual effects were very nice. And as the other commented said, I would totally play this outside of LD. I didn't mind the combat though, in fact I've found it challenging and fun.

Sound, mood, fun are excellent. Visual effects are good too. Very solid 4.5/5.

How addicting! This is by far the best game i have tried so far. Just as Patrick said, its one of the few games one would sit down and play even if I wasnt rating games for a jam.

I like the balance of the enemies spawning and the upgrades you have to get accordingly. Still I see it like Patrick, that fighting is pretty hard - but i am sure it only needs some practise ;)
I also found myself in the position ending up circling in order to kill my opponents, which only made more to come , but not too many in my opinion. I was just a bad shooter^^

You created an awesome game right there! thank you! :-)

Graphics and sound design are good, I like it
I like animations and when you mine something your ship like brrrr** haha
Really great job for so short time
And
I have upgraded everything but didn't see a real goal
When I've got a mineral, what is so important and cool, I didn't get anything except more money for nothing, cos I was full upgraded machine for mining! Haha
You need to work on it
Good job btw :)

Omg, this game is awesome. I hope there will be some more updates, if so this will be a game that I will continue to play even without the game jam. The graphics are great, I like the music and I haven't seen a game like it yet.
But I still have one criticism: I find it very difficult to fight with the first weapon.
But apart from that, it's a really good game.

@ambear try to explore a bit further out. Then you find yellow crystals. If you mine those and bring them back you win :)

Fun sea mining game! Maybe ease a bit on the tutorial dialog interruptions, otherwise this was fun!

Great mechanics, a bit rough around the edges. Shooting while accelerating is hard.

Really fun and addictive! The enemies can be quite overwhelming sometimes!

Had a lot of fun with this. Great upgrade system. Fighting is a little difficult. More in the vid here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003143985?t=0h47m45s

@patrickjr The Post-LD version should now adress all of your critisism. You no longer have to move and shoot at the same time. Light becomes 360 degrees if you upgrade. And the Camera no longer lags behind while moving.

@bongard22 I Implemented it so that you only move with right click now in the Post-LD version. Fighting should be much more fun like this.

@yellowkamel You can now shoot whithour accelerating in the Post-LD version. Maybe give it another try

@zeusonator Check out the new update on the post LD version

@hanna-knop Fighting should be a lot better in the post LD version since you no longer have to move and shoot at the same time

I wish I could stop moving forward all the time, but other than that this is a really stellar game. Reminds me of the old school flash games where you collect and upgrade. Here is the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1004005114

@jake-marks thank you so much for playing. Yesterday I published a patch that allows you to only move when holding right mouse button. Check it out if you want to

I gave it another try. Much better! I am no longer annoyed by the combat because now I can control when I move and aiming is much easier. I am glad you made the camera move ahead when moving. Great work.

Pretty cool, pretty damn cool! Really marvelous graphics on fullscreen! Nice atmosphereic tone in the background and fun gameplay. I played the LD version, so perhaps this has already been fixed, but I was a bit frustrated about not getting to see further when I upgraded my light. I already saw well in the area I was, but I wanted to see further - brighter just wasn't worth it :P

Very nice game!

@fpeg Thanks so much for the kind words. This has indeed been fixed in the post-LD version 😊

That was fun to play, well done!

I like how you guided the player with a tutorial and that it was triggered depending on the situation (ex when the oxygen was running low) i would have liked them to be disabled after the first time they were shown, for the dialog i would have liked to able to skip to the finished phrase instead of going to the next phrase when pressing "next".
The upgrade system was solid i liked that you didn't lose your upgrades when you died, but i would have preferred to lose a fixed amount of money on death and when you don't have money left then die or go in debt or something like that, it would have made me take more risks.

I liked the graphics a lot and the little touches like the shattering of the crystals and the enemies dissolve.
Great job overall!

@exopunk Thank you so much for the helpfull review

> i would have liked them to be disabled after the first time they were shown

this is already done in the Post LD version

> for the dialog i would have liked to able to skip to the finished phrase instead of going to the next phrase when pressing “next”.

thx I'll keep that in mind for the next post LD update

> but i would have preferred to lose a fixed amount of money on death

yeah not sure if your solution is the best, but definetly something that needs some tweaking, I agree

>I liked the graphics a lot and the little touches like the shattering of the crystals and the enemies dissolve. Great job overall!

@mellifera You did a great job with the graphics I can only agree ;)

Nice sea mining game. The top-mounted gun makes it really hard to shoot enemies directly in front of you :frowning2:

Amazing game!! Nothing more nothing less.

@flying-dog-fish Glad to see that you are still here. I remember playing your LD 45 game :)

Yeah the gunplay is one of the weakest points of the LD version, but I fixed it in the post LD version :)

@ausstein Yeah, the post-jam version is much better, I managed to win.
And don't worry, I'm here to stay. :wink:

thanks for the game! shooting in v1 was horrible, but overall you hit the theme and the game actually made me want to find that yellow crystal! well done!

This is an excellent game, I love the art style and the basic premise works very well for the theme of this jam. I think that the changes made for the post-LD patch were great and made the game a lot more playable, I tried the LD version and found the constant moving towards the mouse a bit annoying both for mining and combat. The timing of progression for this game is very well done, I never found myself feeling like I was getting bored or having to grind just to get another upgrade. Overall a great Ludum Dare entry, well done!

That certainly is the kind of game that i wished to play forever. Amazing concept, nice atmosphere and really fun gameplay. Loved it, great work!

Nice entry! I had some troubles at the start to see whether I was mining something or not but besides that I enjoyed the experience. Congrats for your entry :smile:

Rating the LD version here: Really enjoyable game. I love me some upgrade-buying - always a fun mechanic. I thought the art was really great - endearing and well-designed. Obviously, it's hard to get really great gameplay in such a short time, but yours was fun, if not too complex. As others have noted, I found the turning and shooting very hard, especially with the gun on the top of the sub, and with it changing position as the turns caused the art to invert. Best to have that consistent from a gameplay perspective, even if it doesn't make naval sense. Sounds were good too. I wish the slow dialogues would fast forward to the full text when I clicked rather than vanishing - I really didn't want to wait the whole time to read them, but I didn't want to miss information either. Nice work on this - a fun and polished entry.

So good! Great entry. Congrats. Would have helped if the $$ updated in real time.

Really nice game! Got me hooked! The art was pleasant but gameplaywise, overall it was a really good experience, great job!

@dob thanks for the extensive review. I tried many things for movement and guns and they all somehow felt even worse. Someone playing my game on twitch said, "what if you only move with right click" such a genius solution, I wish I came up with that during LD haha. Skipping the dialogue to full text together with hit sounds/animations for the player are the two things that will come with the next patch.

You've done a great job. I played your game with great pleasure for about 30 minutes. Thank you very much.

Fun game with nice art! I really enjoyed the upgrade mechanic. The highest powered light washed out most of the screen for me.

Really solid! Probably the most fun I've had playing a submarine game. The gameplay was nice and balanced (and as long as you watch your O2 bar unlike this idiot you'll be fine), the graphics were perfect, and the sounds were very fitting. I'll probably give this another go and try beating the game without ever upgrading the gun, since the rocket launcher's rate of fire is pretty low and apparently I'm really bad at aiming the machine gun barrels.

I noticed that I don't think I technically mined the yellow crystal, I only activated the dialogue, but whatever. If the game wants to make me a millionaire I'll accept!

Oh, and one thing to mention: a tribute to Genesis 1 by making an option to turn the sand into the image of Will Smith would be a pretty funny reference to your past Ludum Dare game. I tried it last night and was doubling over laughing *just reading the comments*. I'm sure you can imagine how much laughter came from me when I was actually playing it.

@peace-of-cake-games Ah yes I was trying to come up with an easter egg for when you ignore the "stop going left" message. I guess I Will activate Smith then ^^. The Story is not actually the trigger for the win screen. But you only need to mine ~0.5s to gather enough to win (I gave the yellow crystal ridiculous values).

How come you tried Genesis 1 now? I was a bit dissapointed after so many people told me they'd give 5 points for humor and it ended with less than 4 points on average. I guess humor is subjective and some people must have found it not funny at all, Imo it is better in theme and humor than "While loops".

@ausstein Ah, that makes sense why I became a millionaire so fast, I probably hit the yellow crystals really fast when I was turning around to escape the guardian monster. Before I mined the yellow crystal I was too broke to have a weapon good enough for fighting the guardian, but I did have the best drill.

I'm actually a bit of a "newbie" compared to Ludum Dare professionals like you who have been jamming for years, Ludum Dare 47 was my first LD. 😅 Sometimes I'll see a game from a Ludum Dare I unfortunately missed when I'm linking to someone's game, and Genesis 1 intrigued me. Games like Genesis 1 are what make me wish I had participated in Ludum Dare before LD47, I missed out on so many great themes and games! At least now you can know that someone (me....) would have rated it 5 stars for Humor without a second thought. 🤣

Hey matey, thanks for submitting your game to stream, I really enjoyed it! I hope my feedback helps, if you'd like you can rewatch the vod here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1012941526

I played the original jam version for fairness sake but I see that you addressed all the improvements I thought of and some more with the patches!

This was really an enjoyable game, my only wish would have been even more upgrades, enemies and deeper seas :D Great job!

Very great job! Game is very addictive :smile:
Nice graphics and very funny enemy sounds! Also great upgrade system and ui. Final boss was a surprise

p.s. yeah, your fish is more hostile than in our game :laughing:

This is very nice game! Fight system makes a lot of action that leave no chance to relax on depths. I realy like the sound design, especially octopus screaming as a pig lol XD
P.S. Thanks for video feedback on our game thow :)

Wow, it's a really cool game! I like the challenge level especially and it's definitely a game that could be continued after the jam into something bigger and fuller. Amazing entry!!

Really fun game you did a great job on the gameplay, the gun is just a but hard to aim but other than that it's a great game.

Eh. combat's annoying. but otherwise it's a good game.

@john-llyod-apolo @wizard-sino
The combat is fixed in the post Jam version if you want to check it out

Great game! Nice art, nice sound design~. Mining crystals felt good, getting the upgrades was really fun, and gliding around in the best ship with all the best equipment felt amazing. All around a well polished game, good job! :)

Great graphics, a lot of variety for a game jam! I love the wavey look of the water, never seen something quite like that before.

I found the difficulty balance surprisingly good, the game felt challenging from beginning to end. The times I died felt like a genuine setback, making it harder to progress since you always need to go a little deeper to find new crystal veins, but still always doable.

It's a little jarring how the gun quickly changes position when you turn, though I'm not sure there's a good solution since it would be weird if the submarine wouldn't flip and was upside down in one direction. Maybe a button to decide when to flip it yourself?

Overall a very complete, polished entry, good job!

@dob @exopunk New Post LD patch now skipps to the finished text and added hit sound and animation to the Player submarine

@zathnic Have you tried the Post LD version? I basically inverted the logic for shooting: the bullet travels exactly to where you click and the submarine rotates to a position where the shot would be believable. Or do you mean the position of the Drill that changes? That is a little bit annoying still.

Hi! Your game is very addictive!
It looks finished and playable, including music, graphics and gameplay.
I'm sure you should release this game and continue work on your game:)

Very fun entry, this gave me a Subnautica vibe ! :)

Great game, nice art! I had fun playing it, congrats for your submission!

I enjoy the core mining-upgrade game loop. It is, I think, susceptible to a couple problems which I want to discuss, but it was pretty fun for most of the game. The post-jam version in particular, where combat becomes a bit more doable, is really nice.

One problem I ran into on my playthough in the post-jam version is, I decided to buy the rocket launcher first. However, I found I couldn't really use it, so then I bought the machine gun. But then I was down $5500 and so it took me a very long time to get enough money for a fast ship--so I had to keep going really far down and mining crystals with a slow ship. I think a selling system would help here, so I could sell my gun or my old submarines, even at say half price, so that I wouldn't be punished too much by selling things out-of-order.

My first playthrough, on the Ludum Dare version, I died once, and that was the point that I quit... I lost around $2000 plus several hundred at least in crystals, and I was in a somewhat similar situation where I had a slow ship. So, at that point, I would have had to go even deeper to get more money, and it would take just a ridiculous amount of time to build up all my money again. I think that the punishment for dying is too much--it should probably be a fixed cost, like $400 or so.

It also seems like it might be possible to burn through so many crystals that the game becomes outright impossible? I'm not quite sure.

One thing I found frustrating about the combat is that often, a very large number of enemies would spawn, and I would essentially have to go back up to the surface--trying to fight them off would result in a great loss in health. Especially when I was stuck with the slow, unupgraded ships, going really deep for a couple more crystals, I would often lose like 3/4 of my health in a matter of seconds and just have to pray that I don't die before I can upgrade my ship, as that would result in a ton of lost progress.

In any case, I finally managed to push through to the end, and I thought that was one of the best moments in the game. Digging a couple crystals and then getting a few million dollars... it was pretty fun.

Overall I think this game is a pretty solid game. The core gameplay is pretty fun for a while--I just ran into a couple roadblocks in the mid-late game that I think could be somewhat mitigated. I also think the graphics and audio are pretty nice, especially in the post-jam version.

@honey-pony

Thanks for the in depth review.

> One problem I ran into on my playthough in the post-jam version is, I decided to buy the rocket launcher first. However, I found I couldn’t really use it

I am Suprised by that. The rocket launcher is target seeking, maybe you have not noticed that? you don't have to aim at all with the rocket launcher, which makes it the most over-powered. With the rocket launcher you don't even have to stop mining to keep fighting

> But then I was down $5500 and so it took me a very long time to get enough money for a fast ship–so I had to keep going really far down and mining crystals with a slow ship. I think a selling system would help here, so I could sell my gun or my old submarines, even at say half price, so that I wouldn’t be punished too much by selling things out-of-order.

A selling system would of course throw the balance off since you could get everything faster, so I would need to rebalance the prices at the same time. I think what makes it frustrating is that you have to go so deep down, so maybe a quick fix for this would be to regrow the Crystals after a while.

> I think that the punishment for dying is too much–it should probably be a fixed cost, like $400 or so.

I had mixed feedback on this. Some people thought it is fair that they get to keep the upgrades some people would have prefered a fixed cost. I'll experiment with this. The problem I see with a fixed cost is that in the late game it would be like peanuts. Maybe this could be scaled with the ships value. But again I think the most frustrating part is that there are no crystals left close to the top, so regrowing crystals would be a quick fix while I can experiment with the rest.

> It also seems like it might be possible to burn through so many crystals that the game becomes outright impossible? I’m not quite sure.

Yes it could run out, but I think this is more something you would actively have to try and archive.

> One thing I found frustrating about the combat is that often, a very large number of enemies would spawn, and I would essentially have to go back up to the surface–trying to fight them off would result in a great loss in health. Especially when I was stuck with the slow, unupgraded ships, going really deep for a couple more crystals, I would often lose like 3/4 of my health in a matter of seconds and just have to pray that I don’t die before I can upgrade my ship, as that would result in a ton of lost progress.

I don't see this as a bad thing necessarily. It is a risk reward situation. The spawnrates increase with depth. This is of course a problem if you are forced to go deep because all the surface crystals are already mined.




**tl;dr I will add regrowing crystals, which should be a quick fix for most of your problems**

I enjoyed myself a lot ! The drawings looked very nice, the sounds made the ships feel fast, the monsters sound dangerous. This one really was nicely polished. The shooting was a bit annoying though until you get the homing rocket, this made it so I was not really fighting the creatures I usually just returned. Also the going up again took some time which was a bit boring. The negatives I just said are all just to give you something to work on because in the end I really enjoyed it. Nice job, definitely on the graphics :)

Really good game! I really liked the graphics and sound; they were clean, polished, and looked/sounded really good! The gameplay was fun and I really enjoyed exploring deeper and deeper. The underwater world was really nice, and it was cool how the progression system tied into with exploring it through mining different chrystals, and being a more confident explorer. It reminds me a bit of one of my previous jam games I made with a friend where you mine similar things on the moon and trade it for oxygen. I found the shooting mechanic a little underwhelming and a bit hard to use (although I was using my laptop's mousepad), but the squid AI worked really well. Overall, great game, and I hope you get a good score for it because you deserve it!

@shakedimus Thank you very much. Have you tried the Post Jam version? it has much better shooting

@emperor-eagle
Thank you so much for the review, Same as for shakedimus: Have you tried the Post Jam version? it has much better shooting, although I have not yet tried it with touchpad.

This was a simple, fun, progression game. It was very fun for a jam game, even though it had its problems (most of which appears to have been fixed in later patches, so I don't really have any additional suggestions). The graphics were really nice, at least the static art. The sea floor was stellar, and although the enemies and submarine were good, they didn't quite reach the same level (that said, they were greater than anything I've ever managed to do in a jam). All in all, a very solid entry! (and bonus points for making the game fun and not a chore to play!)

Felt pretty smooth to control the submarine and I like that. The upgrades are a nice touch, with a lot of options to help you go deeper and deeper into the ocean. The only thing I disliked about it was the fact that I could spin 360 degrees with the submarine, but at the same time it was fun. Overall, great job!

What a fun game! I really liked the gameplay, the graphics, the sound, everything in general. It was one of the best games I played in this game. Excellent interpretation of the theme. I spent almost 1 hour playing, everything works very well in your game. It has a mechanic that encourages you to improve your submarine, to get more money, to mine. I really had a lot of fun with your game. For you to have an idea, I will literally mine everything in the game. I just wish the credits would show up in the game. I consider this as a form of achievement. A game only ends when only credits appear hahaha. But that did not spoil the experience, quite the contrary. I don't see any negative points in your game. Congratulations.