What a lovely character design!

I love that you did a twist on this common theme style and changed up our character.

Excellent work on this game?

What inspired the artwork design?

@popdaddygames
Thanks for the feedback! This was the first game jam for part of the team and our first 3D project in Unreal.

We aimed for a semi low-poly style to simplify animations and model production.

As for the fish transformation—it’s based on a real-world fact! The blobfish actually swells up at the surface and shrinks under pressure in the deep sea.)

aw I love this. The comics are a great addition.

good job, the game sticked to theme and remind me last levels of indie gem - outer wilds

First of all! I really liked the atmosphere, music and visual solutions. Good use of different water creatures and garbage as gameplay mechanics. The comic in the intro was very nice. The parallax effect is amazing.
But:
1. The blob does not want to swim up / north, and visually it is not clear at all, I tried for some time to understand what was wrong with the controls. The area where you can not swim should be somehow visually marked.
2. It is not clear where to swim. It feels like I swam all over three times and did not find anything. At the same time, I poked in all directions, which is generally bad, there should be some kind of clear goal or direction at least.
3. As part of the previous point, I still do not understand whether this is a top view or a side view. At first it seemed that this is a top view, because of the blob and because of the background. But it is not clear why it cannot swim "north", and where to move at all. Then I remembered the jam theme, and thought that probably it was a side view, and then the goal would be to swim down, but it looks like you can swim "down" for a rather short time.
In general, it is not very clear where we are, how we are and where we are.

Anyway, great job!

Poor fish :( It was a bit freezing, but the game still great :3

@slow-chaz @sepjani @razdray
Thank you so much!

@heiden-bzr
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to implement everything we planned. And as usual, did all the testing just an hour before the deadline. :) Thanks for the feedback!

Very cute game! Loved the cutscenes, loved the art and vibes, managed to make it home :). Took me until pretty dang far down that the shrimp not only heal you but speed you up -- I was saving them in case I got damaged but that was a silly idea lol. No clue how many paths there are to the bottom, that seems like an interesting challenge of level design since there were any number of directions I didn't follow.

Great entry! Loved the visuals, the music and the overall mood of the game. I got lost and kept going deeper into the ocean, at the point I've reached the bottom I think I was able to swim through the ground, maybe some collision issue in there. I didn't understand exactly where I was supposed to go after that, but I had fun playing it. It looks good, the music and SFX are great, the whole atmosphere was cool. Great game, great use of the theme. Happy I got to play it :smile:

Loved the comic cutscenes and the overall story of the game! Getting the poor fish back into the depths where it belongs was a great mission for a game. controlling the fish felt fine but some of the interactions felt a little iffy, a couple of the jellyfish seemed to have very large hitboxes and I saw several sharks swim through walls or just disappear. It is shocking how full of trash our oceans are! I thought the music worked well with the mood of your game. Overall a fun experience, well done!

Nice game, cutscenes are amizing!

Had a lag spike at the start, but fixed itself after 5 seconds or so. I like the art and atmosphere:)

The game is so good!

good art, game is great:3

At first I thought that the garbage should be collected, but it turned out that it just slows down. Shrimp meow cutely. Sharks swim belly up. Cool comics. ++

Awesome cutscenes, definitely the highlight for me. Both the individual frames of art as well as the way they were animated in engine was top notch. I do think the disconnect in style between the cutscenes and the gameplay was a bit jarring, a bit more polish on the in-game look would go a long way. I did like the presentation of a 2D game while using 3D assets, that's a neat touch. Blob fish is very cute :) I'm more of an audio guy, so I've got some detailed thoughts on that up next.

I liked the music a lot, although there were some times when it would cut in and out suddenly which felt a bit strange. That said, the writing, instrument choice, and performance all gave me cool underwater vibes, and it sounded great on both speakers and headphones. I think you would benefit from a mixing pass on the sound effects relative to the music - it's clear from the music that you know what sounds good, and if you want to bring the sound effects to the next level, you almost have to start treating them like tracks in your songs. Definitely good stuff overall though, and the sound effects in the cutscenes really helped sell the story.

Gameplay wise, I'll first give you props that it mostly worked smoothly with very few noticeable bugs. That's always worth a shout out in jams. Well done! That said, I do think there are some potential areas for improvements. For starters, I think the sharks look great, but could be made more interesting - I wasn't sure how they were intended to behave, but I kinda just swam past most of them without issue. When one did start chasing me, it was always super easy to escape them because of how slow they are. If I had to hide from a shark patrolling the opening to the next area, or lure a shark out of a tiny hole I need to get through, that kind of interaction could make the sharks much more interesting. I think you were going for some of that, but in the current state they just aren't threatening enough to quite fill that role.

Beyond the sharks, I felt like the game could've done with more work being put into progressing through areas. Right now it's basically a maze solving game, which works well and is a fun type of game, but I think with this structure you could push it further by requiring players to explore around to find items needed to progress further in the game. This would help players have a better understanding of their goal and a better feeling of making progress as they find items.

Another way to spice up the gameplay could be to hide secret collectables or power ups. Hiding some things around the map that reward players for their exploration is fairly easy from a development side, and has big rewards. Something like a 20% speed upgrade, or a shield that will absorb some damage, something like that. Adding these kinds of things would make players take their time and explore around instead of just trying to run straight to the exit.

The game ran great on my pc, and I appreciated the inclusion of a volume slider. That stuff is always great to see in jam games. Overall a solid entry from an impressively sized team! Good work, hope to see you guys making more stuff in the next jam!

Wooo the transition on the fish was really really well done! I never saw a pop where the model or color changed, so did you guys do that programmatically? Really really cool.

Some of the collision detection I would recommend making unrealistic in the players favor. For example the big clumps of bags, I seemed to get caught in them when I didn't expect to. Maybe try shrinking the collision detection and see how it feels. Otherwise awesome job!

Love the comic cutscenes and the blobfish’s adorably weird design!The atmosphere and music totally nail that deep-sea mystery vibe. Got lost a few times—maybe subtle sparkles guiding the path down? And the sharks… their upside-down swims were more hilarious than scary, ngl XD Amazing work for your first Unreal 3D project—y’all killed it!

Really loved this, the art was amazing especially the little comic cutscenes. Simple controls yet so fun to play. I actually really liked the story even tho it was kinda simple and the ending was wholesome. You guys did an amazing job on this game! :)

Cool game, cool design and addictive gamelpay)

Great game! It lags a bit, but I managed to beat it on the first attempt. The blobfish's face in the second cutscene was gorgeous! 😆

Cool game, very nice entry

Nice game, stick to the theme! I loved the cutscene gg :)

Cute, especially the intro/middle cut scene. Nice entry :).

Здорово получилось, комиксы хорошо оживляют игру ^_^

Interesting game! Very cleverly combined with the theme！