Echoes of the deep by BadPinkChicken

🌊 Into the Abyss
If the game dont restart, press F5 the save is still there :)
Note: If you're playing on the embed and run into asset issues, you may need to download the source and run it locally.
It runs on Node.js — justyarn installandyarn dev.
Dive into a pitch-black underwater world, piloting a submarine where the only way to see is through sound.
Use your sonar to reveal your surroundings — but beware, it also attracts enemies.
🎮 Controls
| Action | Keyboard & Mouse | Gamepad |
|------------------|--------------------------|------------------|
| Move | WASD | Left Stick |
| Aim | Mouse | Right Stick |
| Sonar | Space | X |
| Switch Torpedoes | Scroll Wheel | L1 / R1 |
| Fire | Left Click | R2 |
🌀 Roguelike Depths
Each run is unique. The deeper you go, the more dangerous it becomes.
After each death, you can spend collected currency to upgrade your submarine, improving your chances for the next dive.
Collect powerups during your run to spice things up — and choose your torpedo loadout carefully!
⚙️ A Work in Progress
Most assets were generated with AI and tweaked manually — though in the deep dark ocean, there's not much to see... by design.
If I had more time, I’d love to add:
- More enemies & underwater threats
- Unique challenges
- Richer content and discoveries as you descend
Have fun and dive deep!
| Link | https://github.com/Salnika/ludum-dare-57-2025 |
| Link | https://salnika.github.io/ld/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/echoes-of-the-deep |
Ratings
| Overall | 254th | 3⭐ | 78🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 268th | 2.707⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 247th | 2.753⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 68th | 3.888⭐ | 78🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 237th | 2.993⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 236th | 1.913⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 155th | 3.36⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 65🗨️ |
great job!
The sonar helps you to find the enemy, but it also let enemy to find you. However I found that I can just avoid using sonar by turn the light around the submarine. It makes my viewport much larger that I can see the enemy around me clearly without sonars. Then I always upgrade my hulls, so that I can dive as deep as I want......

If the main objective is to get deeper, I would expect there to be upgrades to help get deeper faster. Otherwise if I'm not using the sonar I'm just spending most of my time waiting to descend with very little effort to dodge the enemies.
The concept and feel is great though. This could turn into something great.
Anyway, it's pretty addictive.

Gotta try again then :)

UPD: new record - ~1500
Anyway, I like the feeling of submersion and the mystery of the unknown. Makes me want to keep playing more. I think you did a good job of conveying that feeling.

Some things that slightly confused me at first:
- The death message seems to always be "You went too deep", which left me wondering "Huh, but isn't the point going deep? Isn't it going deeper on its own? Is it just forcing me to die and buy upgrades a few times" until I experimented by immediately slamming into the wall and saw it was the same message.
- The first torpedos are "light" torpedos with no description. I assumed this was as opposed to "heavy" torpedos at first, like "not very powerful torpedos" and so fired them off the bottom of the map thinking they'd clear away enemies. Only after one got stuck on a wall did I realise that they're torpedos that exist to emit light.
Overall though, great job!
Otherwise I think some extra explaining would do this game a service, I was slightly confused from the beginning. But once you get into it, it's pretty fun!
I think that there is a bug that when you're moving while the upgrade window pops up, you keep moving on your own (even with no key pressed), until the inevitable crash, perhaps upgrade window should reset the movement temporarily to 0. Otherwise definitely my favorite atmosphere so far. :slight_smile:
Besides that, yes very interesting that we both had the same idea but the execution was different, yet similar. I really like the sounds. It sets the mood and atmosphere.
Also hit a bug: I finished a level while holding a direction key, and when the upgrade screen showed up, my input kept going. When the game came back, my sub slammed into a wall and then a squid, lost 2 hull points without even touching the keyboard.
Didn’t really click with me overall, but it’s got a lot of potential!
I found a little bug! When you use all your energy, it would go backward ^_^
Nice game! Wanna some goals and milestones maybe ^_^
I also found that in most cases using the mouse to detect enemies was much better than using a sonar, maybe remove the mouse light and replace it with a different indicator so the sonar would play a much more important role?
The gameplay felt a bit lacking - it was too easy to constantly swivel the light to see the enemies and ignore all other mechanics, perhaps the enemies should react to the light rather than the sonar so that you are incentivised to avoid using the light and rely on the more limited sonar?
The mood is very well done - great job on the underwater audio and the simple visuals do their job of engulfing you in the dark depths very well. Good work!
Playing with the light is an interesting idea.
It's quite easy and i would have liked more ennemies type but you have done a great job !
As others have said, I would have loved some increased difficulty as time went on, but at the same time it was a very relaxing and zen experience to just chill and go down. (I went 3000m deep :stuck_out_tongue:)
Great job for a solo dev and in 2 days only !
You also took a couple radial gradients and turned it into something quite atmospheric. I love the way things blend additively, and the way things fade into darkness. I like the design of the sub and enemies, but it really shines with the way you blended stuff.
Good audio design too, the water and sonar sound good.
I also like the idea of making something like this a roguelike. I've had the most fun with games like that this jam, ones with a sense of progression. And you have a cool nice set of upgrades to choose from.
-------
My first issue is, unless I'm mistaken, the whole "progression" thing is not working. It seems clear the intention is each run gives you more and more stuff to upgrade and improve for each run. But unless I'm missing something, it seems like things fully reset after you die. The upgrade at the beginning appears to be the only choice there is to make.
Now I'm prob totally wrong about this. In which case, it may be an information conveyance thing. Its really not clear to me what is supposed to be accumulated or earned from each run. Although good chance it's a cognitive skill issue on my part :)
With that, I don't think it makes sense to have the "Torpedo" menu at the beginning. If I am mistaken and there is a reliable way to get more torpedo types, then the menu should only pop up if there's more than 1 torpedo to choose. This is just a nitpick
Also while this was important for the game balance and mood, I did feel like the range of your flashlight was quite short. I can of course see why, but in contrast, it also seemed like the sonars range was pretty short, and sometimes the "sonar vision" would disappear right away. You did good to set up some interesting pros and cons with the sonar, but I feel like these additional issues made it often not feel worth it to use.
I think the death screen info is pretty confusing more than anything. The info about upgrades doesn't make much sense when it shows something like the number of points and then also a fraction next to it. And none of that info can be viewed or validated elsewhere. Numbers don't scare me but frankly these numbers are confusing me.
Another nitpick, it would probably have been pretty quick to add a couple different death messages than "You went too deep". At least something like "You met a jellyfish" or "Your sub found solid ground". At first I was confused by the message until I realized you can die from hitting the bottom of the screen.
Overall, I think this is a solid concept, and you executed on the gameplay well! I have really no complaints there, just some balancing nitpicks. I think really the main issue is with a lot of information conveyance. I really wanted to dive into the progression/roguelike features but I was not able to. I think if you update the info page with a clearer explanation of the upgrades and how they work, it might get more people to enjoy the roguelike aspects.
All in all great stuff!
Only the upgrades after your death are used for the next run. The ones during the run are only for the current run
also the sub could have a low humming engine noise where the volume matches your speed