SATURATION by swooty
SATURATION
GREETINGS DIVER. THE DEEP SEA REFINERY HAS A LEAK AGAIN.
IT'S YOUR JOB TO REPAIR IT.
TO ENSURE SURVIVAL, DO NOT HARM THE LOCAL WILDLIFE.
DOWNLOAD
SOURCE CODE
HOW TO PLAY
SUBMARINE CONTROLS
To steer the sub, use the A/D keys to steer left/right, and the W/S keys to steer up/down. To drive forward, hold SPACE. The CTRL key can be used to drive in reverse.
You also can use your booster by holding SHIFT, and can toggle your headlights by pressing F. Be careful not to crash into anything. Your proximity alarm will alert you if anything is nearby.
OBJECTIVE
Descend down to the depths and search for the leak.
You have a limited supply of oxygen to live off. Every time your sub takes damage, you lose a portion of your oxygen, and the remaining oxygen will start depleting faster. Be careful down there
The wildlife is easily startled by bright lights. Agitate them, and they will chase down any light they can find. Make sure you use the dark when you need it.
As you search for your target, keep an eye on your navigation bar. The rectangular bar will shrink the closer you get to your target, and your sonar will ping more frequently. Make sure you look at the height indicator as well. A circle means you are at the right altitude, an arrow means you need to go up or down.
Once you find your target, you must leave the sub to go make the repairs. Hold E to exit.
PILOT CONTROLS
When outside the sub, the controls are basic First Person controls. WASD to move. Use the mouse to look around. SPACE to swim up, and CTRL to swim down. You can also toggle your flashlight by pressing F. Be extra careful, as one hit from the wildlife will prove fatal
Swim up to the target, and hold R to make your repairs. Be careful, as this job will attract a lot of attention.
Once your repairs are complete, swim back to the sub, and hold E to board. This will complete your mission
FEATURES
- Advanced enemy AI
- Infinite random pathfinding
- State-based behavior
- Tracks and follows multiple light sources at once
- Can be distracted by different lights, or can be fooled by dodging in the dark
- Randomized enemy spawning, gets more dangerous over time
- Endless world
- Infinite pipeline "terrain"
- High performance chunk loading/unloading
- Randomized Objective Placement
- Custom ocean volumetric post-process with light transmittance calculation
- Ragdoll-based enemy animations
- 100% of sounds made from synths and home foley recordings
TOOLS
- Game Engine - Unity 2021
- Code Editor - VSCode
- 3D Modelling/Rigging - Blender
- Sound Design/Recording - Reason 12
- UI Graphics - Photopea.com
EXISTING CODE USED
Oceanic Volumetric Post-Process was pulled from an old prototype
FONTS USED
Cyber Alert by Sron Studio
PLATFORMS
Windows, Mac
(No HTML5, missing audio features)
| itch.io (With Downloads) | https://dsitnick.itch.io/ld57 |
| Source Code (github) | https://github.com/dsitnick/Ludum-Dare-57 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/saturation |
Ratings
| Overall | 123th | 3.536⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 264th | 2.75⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 171th | 3.196⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 38th | 4.161⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 47th | 4.103⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 72th | 3.661⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 51th | 3.897⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
However the game lacks clear goals which doesn't make it very fun to play, even for a slow experience it is quite empty, something like 3D arrows indicating a goal to reach and the position of the ship after you exit it would have been nice.
Good execution tho, I like the enemies animations.
once you figure out what works and what doesn't you can complete the game fairly
quickly (though with slightly raised cortisol levels :P).
The controls felt a bit unintuitive to me, especially given that they change
between when you're inside and outside the sub. I would have appreciated some
on-screen help.
Final note: the submarine reminded me strongly
of [Archimedes](https://watchmen.fandom.com/wiki/Archimedes).
Contrary to what some of the others said, I didn't mind the controls, I think you successfully captured the feeling of controlling a small submarine in the ocean depths and this kind of game needs to be slower-paced.
However, most of the challenge of the game, to me, came from figuring out the HUD. I read your description about the ping, and I left the submarine multiple times when I heard consistent pings before I understood the sub pings when it is near walls.
The arrows and the circle are okay to understand height, but the rectangle getting smaller when you are near the leak also took me a while to understand. I'm not sure what the better design decision would have been here, but I have a feeling there's ways these could be improved to be better game mechanics or more interestings parts of the experience. Maybe if it took inspiration from actual submarine controls to sell that feeling even more?
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it. I appreciate the details like descending into the ocean at the beginning, the way the monsters animate and react, and the graphics and mood of the game. It actually reminded me a bit of Outer Wilds. I'm amazed you managed to create this in 48 hours.
Great job!
Sounds are also really well made, and I just think this is pretty much flawless in this regard.
During my gameplay, I played around a little bit due to being curious, and I was like: "Oh, those creatures have adorable eyes" and then they bit me in the face; lesson learned!
I think sonar took me a little while to figure out. Though when you sit and think for couple of seconds, it makes sense, so, I'm not quite sure what I would suggest there. Maybe also left/right indicators, but it's a question whether that wouldn't make it way too easy.
All in all, very impressive and I would be very surprised if this didn't score very high, excellent job for 48 hours game!
Personally I prefer in game tutorials, and I couldn't figure out the controls. Honestly I didn't figure out the game - I understood the compass above tell me if I'm close or not, but the sumarine moved so slowly and the boost was so rate I got discouraged to explore
Maybe the gameplay is just not for me, the technical parts here are really something else!
The distance meter wasn't the most intuitive thing the guess what it was trying to say. Didn't help that I had no idea what I was looking for either. Obviously I thought more bar was better. Nope, obviously not! After trial and erroring with it in all the wrong ways, it was kinda easy in the end. How is the target spot generation? I think every time it was pretty much on the starting level for me so the whole up/down indication thing was kinda moot too.
The dual control system also felt awkward but I guess it makes sense as the sub needs to be slower in its movements and wouldn't really work with mouse controls that well. I guess you'd get used to it if the game was longer. But the controls both themselves were great. No issues there at all.
The game looked and sounded suberb! I have nothing bad to really say about it. Nice and moody. Very good UI work too with some nice color choices.
And of course, thanks for making a mac version too! It's sadly not too common, especially on compo side of things. Did have to do the usual chmod +x and right click to open shenanigans but the game worked flawlessly after that.
The game was easily good enough to stretch it on a little longer. The first fix is only like the tutorial and it was already over. Could have easily made it be like three fixes in a row with maybe the oxygen filled after each.
Anyways, good job! 👍
Your graphics and post processing are good as well.
Good job !
Had a nice time playing it on stream :)
Great liminal experience and very immersive! I bet it gets much better if you play at night in the unlit room!
~Xp