I found it difficult to hit enemies with the short range, but everything was super satisfying and the graphics are really nice. Great job !

Wow !! I absolutely loved it honestly. At the point where I was thinking "ok it needs new enemies or else it gets a bit boring" it delivered straight away with new types of enemies at every room !

The variety of the power ups is also very cool and pretty well balanced.
It's the best game I've tried up to here by far.

Where can I find the Source code ? I'm actually curious how a game like this is made !

You should really shout your game out a bit because it clearly deserves to be played !!

@fdk Glad you enjoyed it! The source code is in the cartridge image if you load it with PICO-8. If you don't have PICO-8, you can view it on [this page](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=42635) by clicking the Code dropdown. :)

I learned a bit about PICO-8 in the meantime so I understood that my question was stupid ahah, thanks for the link I'll give it a look, PICO-8 looks super fun, I might give it a try !

Awesome job I love the look. I was getting a little bit of a delay / dropped input issue with throwing the snowball but other than that I really enjoyed it. Your art was great and the power-ups neat!

Great game! Loved the level titles and the difficulty! Everything felt very polished and the art was very cute :heart:

I have to be honest the game is a bit too difficult for me x) I struggled a lot to kill ennemies
but the graphics are very nice though (I have a thing for Pico8, always beautiful games)
I loved the mood of it too!
congratulations for your entry!

@dotsquare Thanks for trying it still :D I do think the start is kinda hard or requires playing a little tedious until you get sufficient upgrades- I'll try to rebalance things after re-organizing the code's final-hours-spaghetti in a post-jam version :)

Nice Pico8

Great game, but very difficult!

Really sweet entry! Although there is no bg music (as you mention) the game is really nice. Overall well handled! Good job

Great game! Nice variety of enemies and I liked that you got a little stronger with every room you cleared. Could use a little bit more tuning on the difficulty (I'd probably start by making player movement more responsive - right now the player slides around a lot which makes it harder to dodge). I did find the game a lot easier once I realized that you could strafe while holding down the fire key - maybe add a tip for that somewhere


yess more pico-8 games! This was really fun -- I wish I had played it legit instead of hacking in extra stats after dying the first time haha.

The concept is really solid, I think with just a little something more in the second-to-second gameplay it would be really fun to play, even at the start when you have bad stats. But I would say that about Isaac too and hey that game is wildly popular so what do I know.

I think I will play this again later, actually. and like: whoa nice work you made a compo game that I want to play again?? excellent excellent job!

Oh I almost forgot - I LOVE that water effect and I will absolutely be keeping that trick in my back pocket. Really great visuals all-around. (although the map is a bit hard to see)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007659333?t=03h01m25s

Nice little game. Reminds me of Zelda but underwater. The pixelated water effects looked nice.

Super polished and complete, especially for a compo entry!
I thought it was too hard at first, but once I (quickly) realized that you get more powerful as you progress, making the gameplay addicting and interesting, it all clicked. Great movement, graphics, animation and flow of action.
The only nitpick I have is with the controls, I really wished it could be WASD instead of keys, but I understand this is a PICO-8 restriction. It's a well-rounded, well executed piece of gaming that I'd love to play more of.

I really like the whole package for a compo entry. Really liked the style and the sound effects (even though I kinda wanted to hear an 8-bit version of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep ;) ) What made this a little bit frustrating though was the movement. I kept yelling "I´AM A PINGUIN, I AM A PREDATOR, I SHOULD SMASH THESE FISH". But I am not patience :D. But it does get easier after some power ups - Overall great game!

I like how you get to earn powerups the further you get into the game to help you get more skillful at killing the fish. Sound and graphics really took me back to old school games.

I like how you get to earn powerups the further you get into the game to help you get more skillful at killing the fish. Sound and graphics really took me back to old school games.

I love Pico8. I am ecstatic when I see how such a limited engine is capable and used for such well-made games. One day I will be able to make a quality game at pico8 and maybe even participate in a COMPO.
I loved the water effect and the "fountain" feeling that water gives. Only 1 criticism: The difficulty curve is unbalanced in my view. The first stages are very easy and, suddenly, a stage appears with many different rooms and enemies together. This is something to think about.

Congratulations on the excellent work!

I always love to see Pico 8 submissions and this one ticks all my boxes!

Great art, satisfying movement and wonderful mood all rolled into a perfect penguin rogue-like shoot-em up! I really can't stress how wonderful the graphics are, as someone who has dabbled with Pico 8, it's such a fun challenge working with the palette and the sprites are fantastic. I also adore that wave/underwater effect you included and the surface waves are so pretty and atmospheric.

The different types of powerups are really varied too which is really nice, you're always getting stronger in some way.

The only crit would be some ambient music, or some nice bumping music in the background would have been the cherry on an already tasty entry!

Great job on the compo entry, it's always amazing to me what a one person can do in just 48 hours.

Adelie Rolling in the Deep https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/adelie-rolling-in-the-deep

Overall:5.0
Fun:5.0
Innovation:5.0
Theme:4.5
Graphics:5.0
Humor:5.0
Mood:5.0

YOU NAILED IT!

This game is beautiful. This game is fun. This game has ambiance. This game has mood. The sounds are amazing. This is an incredible jam game and I am absolutely impressed. Everyone we had with us has saved this on their own laptops as a "come back and play this later" kind of game. You absolutely killed it.

If there's a game from LDJam48 that has a chance to be made into a full commercial release after the jam: this is certainly a major contender.

I had an absolute blast playing and loved watching our other people here play, too.

Some of the things I think were excellent game design decisions:

--the mostly linear level design with rooms going 'down', but -occasionally- having offshoots to the sides. This lets the player have choice but also primarily pushes them toward 'the end goal'-- I like that it did not feel like a maze or trap.

--The bullets having a very short range before disappearing. This made the gameplay and combat VERY strategic in the way you would dip and dive around the fishies. At first I thought it was a centipede or space invaders mechanic where you could not fire a bullet again until the first one had struck (which I erroneously said on stream) but once I realized it was the design of a short distance I realized how much more I prefer the design you chose. This went from feeling like a bullet hell to a true 'play with skill and think about your actions' almost 'chess-like' experience feeling.

Furthering this idea; you limited the number of enemies on screen to something that totally made sense. I personally died during the "chaos" of 4 spikes and 4 enemies... but that felt incredible. It did not feel like an overwhelming army of enemies but rather just a small skirmish in a scene that makes sense. There is something about the scale that you chose that -just works-.

--The gliding and sliding (friction movement) is really dang good. You have build up speed and bursts of speed and sliding all interacting in ways that come together in what is ultimately one very, very good character controller. While 'difficult'- it felt fair and responsive. This is one of the hardest things to get right in games and here is an area where your programming absolutely shined and demonstrated you have a very firm grasp on gameplay design principles. Whoever did the programming on the movement absolutely blew me away; this was my favorite part. I seriously think you need to give yourself a pat on the back for this because this is absolutely impressive work.

Overall I have to say that you really have a gem on your hands and I am very excited to have been able to play it during this jam. This game is exactly what LDJam is all about, what indie gamedev is all about, and what we should be striving for.

Thank you very much for bringing this to our stream and letting us play it - plus engaging with us and accepting our feedback.

P.S. I will send you a link to the gameplay session video once I have it uploaded to YouTube! :)

Beautiful game and really good controls. The sounds get a bit repetitive and could do with a bit of randomized pitch, but otherwise amazing. Super good job!

It was a little hard for me to get the hang of the controls, but once you get it, this game becomes SUPER fun. Also I'm a sucker for games made in PICO-8 so I really loved it. Good job! <3

Congratulations on the game, beautiful, cute and fun game added to the right combination of fun, summing up fantastic, a big hug, and I await your ratings regarding my game.

Hello! Your game was played on stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on 5/03 (Day 2 of LDJAM streams).

You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa

Nice graphics but the game is too difficult for me and favors enemies more than me :) When player gets hit he's penalized with quite a push backward, character constantly swims upright when not controlled (but enemies don't have any problem navigating under water), weapon has very short range, you can only shoot in straight angles etc.
EDIT: shooting pushes you back quite hard also, enemies are bullet sponges :/

ha, beat it without hacking this time! had a lot of fun


Great compo! The graphics are astonishing, nicely done! It's hard, won't lie, couldn't make it all the way to the end.

@pancelor Glad you revisited it- congrats on true ending 😎

This was such a fun game I'm glad I gave it a second go! I was having problems with the movement at first I thought I was getting stuck on stuff but I didnt realized shooting knocks you back until like halfway through my second run haha

I was impressed with the amount of variety with the fishes, every time I thought I seen it all, you introduce a new guy! You really picked good pacing in that regard! The last guy (I don't want to give any spoilers for other people) was challenging and really well thought out. Even after getting upgrade after upgrade, you still manage to challenge the player. Each upgrade seemed like only a minor boost, but when you give an upgrade pretty much every level, the effects become very tangible without feeling overpowered. Very well done with balance!

Graphics and sound were spot on. I'm glad you had audio feedback for pretty much everything like finishing the level, killing an enemy, getting health/upgrade and even jumping out of the water at the top and dipping back in haha. I love that you played as a lil penguin guy (top tier lil dudes)! My only suggestion regarding graphics is maybe make the boxes for the map have a white border instead of the brown color. Sometimes it would be hard to see the map and you only show the map when there are no enemies, so I think it would be fine if it stood out more

Really great game, I can tell you put a lot of thought into all the design choices because everything works so well together: good balance, sound, pacing, graphics, enemies, and upgrades!


(I hecking love penguins). Really challenging game, great graphics and very polished feeling overall.
I'd love to give it another try on stream after you've implemented some changes and are ready for a follow-up playtest.

I played this game for way too long! Incredible controls, fun atmosphere, challenging enemies. Love the rogue-lite feel and it made every play through feel very different. Only thing I wanted was a dedicated soundtrack and possibly going "deeper and deeper" in one location to fit the theme better. It does fit the theme, but moving to different locations is a criticism I can see being made about the theme design.

Watch @popdaddygames and me fall in love with this game at first sight! (01:33:00): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1009312502

That's an insane amount of work and polish for a compo game omg. Really nice entry. The beginning is a bit hard imho (that's a constant for jam games to be fair). Graphics are absolutely gorgeous, love that little pinguin dude. Thanks for the game!

https://youtu.be/1uPFW7nWIIU

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on stream yesterday! I uploaded the VOD if you'd like to rewatch the stream. I started your game at 28:36.

A very nice and complete game. A bit more polish on the character movement and AI interactions is necessary. There is a bug that shooting too much causes enough knockback that makes it hard to control your character.

I LOVED this game. Everything was polished so brightly it shined like a pair of shoes. I honestly don't know what to tell you to improve it, I had a ton of fun with it. So much in fact that I'm gonna go play some more right now!

Bravo, I really loved the polish on this one! The game is well designed, both visually and conceptually, and the mechanics all work well. One of my favourite Pico8 games that I've seen yet - ever, not just this jam.

I'm surprised you didn't simply go for one endless level -- which would have fit the theme even more, but the way you made it, with the pearls at the end of each area made it feel more like a proper game.

@ditam Glad you enjoyed it! The decision to not make it endless was a worry that it would get stale given the current enemy variety- especially when you're decked out on upgrades and can sweep floors from far away. Maybe post-jam, if I'm satisfied with the variety of enemies and can get a good way to scale their difficulty to really long depths, could add an endless mode. :D

Loved this, my favorite compo entry so far. The horizontal vs vertical movement difference made attacking from above the optimal approach, but that wasn't always possible, which is a good thing. I think the only "real" complaint I have is that the room should have a visual lock whenever the player enters it (just for clarity).

I hate fish.

Super cute game! I love ADELIE ROLLING IN THE DEEP, the penguin is so cute and the mechanics have a really creative feel to it. The procedural generation is really impressive and fun to explore every run based on the upgrades you get. I hope I can reach the depths of Marinana trench next time around! Congrats on making something so cute <3

The game is HARD! But fun as hell. Also looks great, and the audio, though simple, fits the aesthetics perfectly. Too bad you opted out from the mood category. I'd give it 4* minimum.

Great job!

I loved the game and had a lot of fun.

The start was a bit tricky and I really had to figure out how the game mechanics are working. After that the game was really really good and made a lot of fun.

The Screentransistion was a bit buggy and a nice background music would be nice but thats really picky to give some critic to the game.

So, A Great GAme, well done. Awesome

@meep Thank you for the Hint in the Stream, I just finished the Game the Second Time ;)


@deathstorm Glad to see you go back for it :D Hope you enjoyed the extra content!

*Goes through the comments section*: Wow, I suck at this game.

https://youtu.be/aHUsWQeZHns?t=2936

Had a lot of fun playing this twin-stick-like shoot'em up. It's nice and focused, easy to learn, hard to master. The roguelike structure does a good job of keeping each playthrough feel fresh and interesting. Graphics were great, and the lack of music actually wasn't all that bothering. Great work!

Personally, I thought the biggest problems I had with the game was movement. The knockback on each bullet fire didn't feel good, and how swimming up and down had a different physics applied than left to right. I recognize those were added in to distinguish this game from other shoot'em ups, but I personally had a hard time learning to work with these limitations.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the short range the poor penguin had when firing. I would have also liked to see the bullets of the fish had a better tell so I can make out when they're going to fire, and where. It may have been nice if the starting enemies could only fire in specific directions (e.g. left or right only), and there were some variance on when each fish fired.

Still, I did get better with the game over time, so clearly, I can learn to live with the limitations the game presents.

Wow, such a cool game!

Game's kinda hard, but this isn't bad

Things I like:
- The whole game. (specially the sound of hitting enemies, feels so fun in this atmosphere)
- The feel of the game
- The name of the game

Things I TOTALLY DISLIKE:
- The cute penguin can't walk when she steps on the ground, I'd like so much see that cutie thing T_T
(well, you can always add it if you want :P)


Really good job!

Thank you so much for this game, it's pretty cool, I'll share it!

That was fun! I like how quickly the powerups pile up; the gameplay was also simple but interesting. A checkpoint at the start of a level would be *really* good; the gameplay is somewhat slow initially so being thrown back to the beginning at death really hurt. Also I feel that the enemies could have a bit less HP. Still, the game was good fun and I especially liked the presentation!

[Thanks for submitting your game to the stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1023084119?t=00h06m54s)

This is a super impressive compo entry. The art is absolutely adorable! I'm glad I had enough time to play the bonus level and final boss! :smile:

Quite a progressive-curve of action (started out slow and futile then after a number of powerups it's a blizzard machine). So far, the best combat strat. is to have the penguin position itself like a defender-cannon from Space Invader (bottom of screen, fire-upward HOLD and repeat fire as necessary) <- though some edge cases of the harmful reefs you'd change; This strat. should help expedite combat-time.. Nice touches of pixel-caustics.
Suggestion: Have a SpeedRun with Seeds (semi-procedural); course of sequence of compatible seeds.. (each seed consisting of a good path of corridors, enemy spawns, etc..
- Quite tricky to land shots at beginning, one would like to see some parrying or counter-attack (to deflect the shots); However, the powerups seems to solve this. I'm sure another playthrough does the trick.
Looking forward to seeing more!