Depthshift by Snotax

Ready to go deep? Not emotionally—we’re talking depth of field. Shift your focus and remember: in this game, it's not how deep you go... it's where you focus that counts.
In Depthshift you have to change your depth of field to interact with different elements in the level.
Depthshift is our submission for the LudumDare 57 GameJam. Everything has been created in the time of this jam except for the audio.
Controls (Keyboard & Mouse / Xbox Controller):
Move => WASD / Left Stick
Look => Mouse move / Right Stick
Jump => Space / A
Pickup / Drop / Interact => Left Mouse / X
Shoot => Right Mouse / B
Change Focus depth => Scroll Wheel / LB & RB
Pause Menu => Escape / Start
Depthshift is a puzzle game developed by SufficientlyRoasted & Fit'n'Crispy Games.
If you want to support us, feel free to wishlist our projects on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2670810/CandyBandits https://store.steampowered.com/app/3305060/EscapeFloor_13
| Link | https://snotax.itch.io/depthshift |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/depthshift |
Ratings
| Overall | 334th | 3.685⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 521th | 3.259⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 11th | 4.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 106th | 4.214⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 559th | 3.407⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 539th | 2.56⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 534th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Overall I feel this is really interesting and a nice feat of graphic programming but I would suggest finding a way to make it less straining on the eyes.
Congrats !
Minor suggestion - the strings were a good idea but having interactive objects that change state elsewhere trigger audio & visual cues would really disambiguate cause and effect for the switches.
The music is great, the art direction is excellent (building to a really specific, interesting vibe)--overall, a great little puzzly platformer with a memorable core mechanic!
Overall very well designed puzzles that required thought but without being frustrating. I found my eyes got less tired if I kept the window relatively small on the screen and I was able to enjoy the whole game without having to take a pause. It was a cool and unusual experience and a very well designed game. Great job!
Only major complain is the buttons. There was very little feedback for when they are activated and the fact they activate the second that they are in focus often meant that i was activating and deactivating them on the periphery of my perspective all the time without even knowing it. (note im on a 32x9 monitor so this issue might be some what exacerbated by my configuration) Consider some kind of activation mechanic so that they only activate when the player intends to activate them.
Difficult to get the hang of IMO, as I have no experiance with cameras etc.
There's a lot I like here. The puzzle-chamber structure reminds me a lot of something like Portal. There are some pretty neat puzzles, but the best are those that use the focus mechanic which sets this game apart - for example, one early puzzle I liked was having to adjust your focus as you walked across a bridge to keep it solid. The visuals of the puzzle chambers are also pretty neat!
The depth of field system, to me, made the game extremely frustrating to play. So much of the game involved just scrolling back and forth to see things, which isn't really a puzzle. Some puzzles didn't even use the focus mechanic, and those that did (like the laser bridge I mentioned earlier) don't typically use the visual aspect of it. This means the game world is impossible to see properly for little gameplay reason, and you end up struggling to even find anything to read or interact with. This was especially tedious because the amount of world you can have in focus is extremely small (this can even make the non-visual gameplay annoying to line up). It just feels like busywork rather than puzzling. On top of the gameplay frustration from the blurriness, it's also just exhausting on the eyes trying to focus on a tiny sliver of world which is constantly scrolling back and forth. Solving puzzles is hard enough without a headache!
Overall - I think you guys have some real potential with your puzzle designs. There was some clever stuff going on! The depth-of-field mechanic just needs to be re-designed with a focus on player experience, gameplay, and clarity. The blurriness aspect of it either needs to be toned down or removed entirely, to be honest (most of your puzzles would work just as well if the DOF was just a box on the ground). With the visual aspect improved, players could propely focus on your puzzles!