In the DEPTHS by Planetary
Explore the depths of the world and light up your path while surviving among the enemies!
Remember! The land is your friend!
Collect coal, gold & diamonds, and use them to upgrade your character.
This is a short guide on how to reach 1000m:
Step 1: Dive into the unknown, stay around 30m deep and collect as much coal as you can.
Step 2: You need to upgrade time, lamps & intensity upgrade in order to go deeper. The lamps will help you a lot when getting deeper (at 100m you'll be in dark).
Step 3: When you feel strong enough, reach 150m and start collecting gold. Gold is used to survive in general.
Step 4: Upgrade the number of lives to survive against the enemies, touching magma blocks or falling from high altitudes. You should also upgrade your impulse to have an advantage.
Step 5: When you reach 450m - 500m, you'll find diamonds and you can upgrade the special upgrades.
Step 6: Feel free to reach the deepest point!
Controls:
- Drag your mouse to launch the character.
- Use the right button or press 'E' to place a lamp.
- Use the left button or press 'Q' to do a shock.
Upgrades:
- Time -> The current time that the player can play a round. (Enable Sandbox Mode in the Help menu to get rid of this)
- Lamps -> The number of lamps that can be used.
- Intensity -> The intensity of the lamps. (this parameter affects the range of them)
- Health -> The numbers of lives that the player has. VERY IMPORTANT!!!
- Shock -> The number of shocks that can be used. It will help you when you are stuck between stone blocks and can't move anymore.
- Impulse (limit) -> The maximum impulse of the character.
- Fall Reduction -> The minimum speed that the player will get damage when hitting a stone / magma block. Upgrading it will increase the minimum speed for damage.
- Death Defy (limit) -> The chance that the player will not get damage.
- Ultra Light -> The multiply of Intensity. When collecting a PowerUp, the Ultra Light upgrade will be visible in the game for 12 seconds.
Customization:
Currently, you can freely choose the color. 10 colors available!
So, what are you waiting for? PLAY NOW and comment below what is your deepest point reached!!
The HTML5 build is supported by Windows, Linux and Android devices, but the performance is low and usually it can throw a critical error for unknown reason (I'll find out soon how to solve that bug). Recommend to download the .exe build instead for PC!
Note:
- a new version is available: greatly increasing performance + adding a disable water / lava option (recommended for low devices) + reduce the cost of the upgrades to rush a little bit the game;
- teoretically, this game should be playable on Android devices too using the HTML5 build, but I tested and the game couldn't generate the world. If you have time, you can test it on your phone and write in the feedback if it worked or not! (tested on Samsung Galaxy S23 & Xiaomi Redmi Note 11, both failed)
| Link | https://files.jam.host/embed/$407104/41631/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/in-the-depths |
Ratings
| Overall | 522th | 3.435⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 518th | 3.261⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 260th | 3.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 181th | 4.087⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 688th | 3.022⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 482th | 2.976⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 697th | 1.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 776th | 2.886⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
- visuals for trajectory don't really show the path that the ball will take. It doesn't take into account the hitbox size and might also be slightly shifted (?). It would be cool if I could gauge whether the ball would manage to fly over the hill, or will it hit it and stop.
- materials pick up sounds are super loud.
But the game feels good and polished, I couldn't find any serious bugs or softlocks, for a game jam that is great!
What an interesting little game! The progression felt a bit grindy, but the gameplay was interesting enough to keep me hooked in. The upgrades felt meaningful and useful, but having to quit to menu to buy those felt like it broke the flow of the game a bit, as the restarts between runs were otherwise so smooth.
World generation seemed to sometimes (rarely) produce levels with entrance very far to the sides from where the player character spawns. This wasn't that game-breaking, but very annoying before getting the time upgrade, as there was so little time left to spend in the depths.
Great work! <3
Thank you so much for playing!!!
The physics-based movement is pretty cool. As others have mentioned, it sometimes displays inaccurate trajectory, but I think you're right that it's caused by character nudging another collider - I found that it most often happens when I'm either in a tighter spot or if I try to launch on a flat angle near the ground.
One thing I'd change is to make the upgrades cheaper, or increased the amount of resources you get from pickups. Maybe it's cause I'm bad at the game, but so far I've spent around 15 minutes on it and barely got to 200 meters. I've followed the initial guide, but every run I managed to get enough coal to get just one or two upgrades, so the progress was really slow. I can see that there's way more to discover in the game, but at that pace it would probably take me a few hours to see it through to the end. At least I got to the stage where there were some enemies trying to make me into a pincushion! :D
The graphics look pretty cool, I especially enjoyed the falling water and that it wasn't just a decorative in the background, but physical particles that interact with your character as you move through the water stream. A simple music in the background and sounds on movement and interactions worked pretty good as well.
Overall, it's a surprisingly big game for a jam entry, but it's a fun one! And unless I'm mistaken, it does save the progress, so thankfully I'll be able to return to it later and see if I can get further instead of having to start from scratch! Nice work! :)
Feels like the game is stuck between two different designs.
I switched to sandbox mode and enjoyed the experience a lot more. Art is simple but consistent, the light mechanic is neat.
Nice work!
In terms of upgrades, you're right, even if I did the same for the last 2 games I made for these events (LD 55 & 56). Also, if you didn't realize, I left a Sandbox Mode under Help menu, so you can have infinite time.
Also, if you are playing the HTML5 version, don't be a fool! Even if the progress is saved, the browser usually deletes this after some days of inactivity.
Other than that, it would be nicer if there were less soil blocking the hole and more resources to find so player won't waste time finding hole to get deeper and won't waste time to even see a resource.
TLDR, this game needs rebalancing to make it fun.
Progression felt a little slow, though.
@rbbhn , thanks for playing my game and for your feedback!
That said, the progression in this game feels sluggish, I played for a good 15 minutes and couldn't find a single of what I assume are gold and diamond. That said, this is a great game you have here, thank you for making it :pray: