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A jam submission

UnderexplorerView game page

Precision-platformer on the sea floor.
Submitted by kaelsen — 4 minutes, 57 seconds before the deadline
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Underexplorer's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Music & Sounds#404.1674.167
Theme Relevance#534.5004.500
Mechanics#723.8893.889
Is it Fun to play?#1393.6673.667

Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Discord Username
kaelsen

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Great controls. Feels a little floaty in the appropriate way for the theme. I wish there was a way to look around in order to see where to jump to, like in the second level for instance, you have to leap into an unknown and there is a spike right there.

Submitted(+1)

A bit difficult but it's fun

I love the boost mechanic, made for some fun ways to get around!

Submitted(+1)

Nice mechanics and visuals, liked the way you placed the areas. Great job!

(+1)

Kael promoted this as a relaxing platformer, and game does not disappoint. Would 100% play this when I'm stressed or angry to relax!

A lot of testing went into getting everything just right for the challenges though and that is really appreciated. I really loved the Aquatic moonwalk like movement and gravity that gave this it's uniqueness.

I'd tell everyone to relax and play this game anytime!

Developer

Very much appreciated, Glim. I did enjoy your play through of the game and saw how relaxed you were as you went though it. Very much appreciate you playing my game in your stream.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

This was a really fun platformer. It is really hard and the checkpoints are really sparse, but I managed to beat the whole game. The path on the right in the submarine is insane, I gave up and took the left path lol. I really like the vibe that's created between the art style and the music. I like having nice calming music for these super hard games like this. I think the spike hitboxes are a bit big, it's kinda hard to tell if you're going to hit them usually, especially when you are doing the dash between a spike tunnel. Overall tho this was really fun, I had a good time playing thru it.

Developer

Thank you! I'm surprised you found the right path harder, as it was meant to be a shortcut, and everyone who tested found it way easier than the regular route. As for the spike hitboxes, they do move up and down a bit, and their collision boxes are actually slightly smaller than their sprite. If you're hitting them while doing the dash/boost swim thing, it's move up ever so slightly while doing this, which is never mentioned in the game or description. xD

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Woud've appreciated the flying time to be longer and the character is slightly too slow, but nice vibes! Definitely water-accurate though lol

Developer

Thanks. I have been wondering if the "air" should be a fixed value or not.

Submitted(+1)

Pixelart is cool

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Really tough game! I was able to get to the submarine, but just was unable to overcome some parts of either the left or right path. The precision on a few jumps was extremely tight and I got a little exhausted rerunning the full length without checkpoints after doing it 30+ times lol. Would be curious to see what was after that or how much more was left.

The most difficult part for me was probably the non-linear falling speed combined with needing to time a dash through a one block corridor. The rapid change in speed as you are falling made the timing window for some of those falling dashes extremely tight to the point where I would feel like I got it, but it would be off by only a few pixels and I die :(

Overall, really nice precision platformer. I’m definitely not an expert at this style of game, but I found it overall enjoyable, especially with the smoothness of the character’s animation.

Developer (1 edit)

You bring up a good point. I did not fully think about how gravity works underwater. I'll look into that and maybe settle with a fixed value. The checkpoint feedback has been a very common theme. I may have overly front loaded my trap layout before the checkpoint, as people who tested it said that the levels were easy AFTER you reach the checkpoint... then there's the 3 who speed ran the game in less than 10 minutes...

(+1)

Atmosphere is awesome. You've captured the feeling of being under water really well. Controls feel smooth and overall gameplay is fun!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! 

Submitted

good vibes and cool color palette. Love your art

Submitted(+1)

You captured the feeling of moving around underwater really well, the floaty jump feels spot on. I think you maybe could have added more checkpoints for a jam game, especially before jumps where the player can’t see what they’re about to encounter (falling into spikes, for example). Enjoyed the challenge nonetheless! Nice work :)

Developer

Thank you! That's what I was going for. I did realize that my checkpoint placements were a bit lacking, is the very common feedback that was given to me. Probably 2 checkpoints per level after the tutorial, would help then making the latter half a bit more difficult as well. You'll notice a sudden drop in difficulty of the layout as soon as  you reached a checkpoint. lol

Submitted(+1)

love the tone of this music and the vibe of isolation in an alien planet kinda of experience ... the jumps and animations feel real slow and kinda heavy but i wonder if that was deliberate to show a kinda moon walk type of experience

Developer

My target was more of you're underwater, but agreed that it does have moon walk type of feel. There were supposed to be bubbles that spawn in the foreground at random intervals to make it easier to identify being deep underwater,, but I couldn't get it to function properly.

(+1)

Love the music and the game

Developer

Thank you!

(+1)

lovely floaty vibes and great artwork!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Adorable aesthetic, floaty controls made game play a bit tricky, but it seems like that was the idea. Great work

Developer

Yup, that was the idea! I wanted to sort of emulate being deep underwater with those state of the art deep dive suits from movies.