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A jam submission

Dungeon DiverView game page

Underwater Dungeon Crawling Adventure
Submitted by Rebello — 23 minutes, 21 seconds before the deadline
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Dungeon Diver's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game?#74.3234.323
Gameplay - How fun is it to play?#163.8393.839
Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing?#184.3234.323
Overall#193.7873.787
Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme?#533.2903.290
Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music?#1003.1613.161

Ranked from 31 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Viewing comments 20 to 1 of 26 · Previous page · First page
Submitted(+1)

Very solid submission, you have so many components of a complete game, that it feels like a complete game. I enjoyed playing it, though combat felt a bit slow and a bit unresponsive.

Very good tutorial and level design, it looks like it was really thoroughly planned.

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game. We tried to make it as complete as we could in the time. Sometimes that has its own cost as we missed some audio effects out when we ran out of time. We'll definitely work on the combat to make it more engaging and faster paced, thanks for the feedback on that. We're glad you like the tutorial elements and the level design. We did do a lot of planning and if you want to know more, feel free to check out our devlog that explains how we did it all:

https://rebello.itch.io/dungeon-diver/devlog/514563/how-we-made-dungeon-diver

Submitted(+1)

Great atmosphere. Smooth movement. 

I had some trouble lighting the flares, until I figured out you have to un-stack them.

Solid submission, great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing our game, we're glad you enjoyed it. A lot of people had problems with the flares so we've tweaked how they work for our post-jam release. They no longer stack is the major change (and they last longer). We look forward to playing your game soon. Best of luck in the jam.

Submitted(+1)

"Game completed - Congratulations"

This was amazing.


I think the save system does not work properly, the tiles where you left dead enemies are now stuck. When I realised that I just saved at points where I could not go back and it worked.

I did not use the dynamite, where you supposed to use it for the boulder stack, at first?


It took me a while, it took me some time to find the first underwater key, the maze I mapped with pen and paper and it's actually not that big so it went fast but then the last sequence I truggled with, in part because I did not want to save and get stuck so I kept restarted the entire sequence and got smashed by the boulder a couple of times before finding the right solution to the boulder problem.


The game looks and sounds great. More important since you dealt with 6 directions, it controls great (for some reason pgup and pgdown did not work, but right click is perfect).

Combat works, I was doubtful at first but after you get the knife it does not waste your time. You can step dance if you want to but don't have too and I think it's fine this way.

However the best part of the game is obviously not the combat. The dungeon is excellent, it's just traditional dungeon mechanics put into a 6 direction maze, and it works great.

You've got an involved inventory system and resource management is good too.


The game is quite big, and I loved every sequence. Congratulations.

Developer

Thank you so much for playing our game, and for completing it. Thanks for the telling us about removing the rock pile at the end without the dynamite. We treat the rock pile as a barrel and yes, you can indeed remove it with the crowbar we just found! Doh!!!

Sorry about the load/save problem with the enemies still blocking the square. It was a bug we introduced at the end of the jam when trying to get enemies to disappear once you'd killed them, and we missed a crucial line of code.

We'll definitely work on making combat more engaging post-jam.

Feel free to check out our devlog if you want to see more in depth how we did it all:

https://rebello.itch.io/dungeon-diver/devlog/514563/how-we-made-dungeon-diver

Submitted(+1)

Combat is good enough and your timing twist is fine, it was perfect for the jam. 

If you expand on it I'd say that in this kind of real time games what can be fun about it too is fighting enemies under doors, make them fall into a pit by stepping on a plate at the right moment, in your case you can have harpoon traps underwater that the player has to avoid but can then be  used to their advantage to damage enemies, maybe something triggering mines is possible too although I can't think of a good way to do it right now.

I forgot to mention the enemies' name in my previous comment, giving cute names to things you're going to smash is rude and hilarious, I love it.

Submitted(+1)

Hey, I played your game :)

  • Its great to see someone that submitted his game like ~20 minutes before the deadline :) I thought I was late when I submitted mine like 2h before the deadline :)
  • lovely title screen and background music.. I love when some love and work is put on introductory title screen :)
  • superbly detailed walls and graphics! Loved the character subtle bobbing and movement, very professional looking and feel!
  • great first puzzle, pulling the wooden box.. very classical puzzle, loved it.
  • superb sound effects.. Nothing better than listening your steps and the dungeon sounds :)
  • commercial-level tutorial with these scattered notes
  • chests, barrels, climbing up and down to other parts of levels, so classical I want to cry :)
  • water level as well? omg

Overall, you really need to make a commercial game out of it :) A 5/5 game, so not looking as a 7-day jam entry :) Definitely on my radar for the future, please continue on this :)

Developer

Thanks you so much for playing our game, and your kind words. We do plan on making a commercial game out of this. We did our best to pack in as much content as we could into the 7 days. Hopefully we can expand on it a lot more in the coming months. Take a look at our devlog if you want to get an idea of how we did it:

https://rebello.itch.io/dungeon-diver/devlog/514563/how-we-made-dungeon-diver

Submitted (3 edits) (+1)

Thank you for bringing this to my attention in the discord chat. I would have missed it out otherwise. I really liked the unusual scenario for the game. It reminded me a bit of "The Forest", which has similar "cave-diving" levels. Claustrophobic underwater mazes with survival elements is a cool mix and makes for a great creepy athmosphere. :)

I too had problem in the first underwater passage, but reading the comments helped me with the movement controls. I also died on the first stone trap later on. Didn't save until then, haha. Should have made a warning there, had to start from the beginning again. Apart from that it was pretty smooth sailing though. Dungeon gets more creepy the later you are in the game. :D Also lol@ the final trap at the end.

There are also a lot of cool mechanics in the game, like the pushing crates around or destroying barrels, the rock traps, etc. You managed to do a lot of stuff there and it adds some great depth.

I enjoyed it thoroughly. :)

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game, it was good to chat to you about yours in Discord too. Sorry about the lack of information on the free-look to dive. The falling rocks trap at the start was a bit brutal without checkpoint saves, we're glad you persevered. Glad you liked the final "Indiana Jones" moment, it was fun coming up with that one. We'll be fixing everything you spotted post jam  so thanks for the feedback, it really helps us get better as game developers. Well done for finishing our game and congratulations on Whispers of Fate again, it really is a great achievement for a single person in 7 days.

Submitted(+1)

Nice game, very atmospheric and beautiful to see

The gameplay works, I did had fun exploring these carverns.
The only little flaws were :

- No sound to inform the oxygen tank is about to get empty as the HUD hides while in free-look which is always kept on while exploring the deep blue, especially at the end with the big submerged grotto in which we have to explore each bit of it to find the next way to go

- I did accidentaly dropped a coin while trying to grab it and could not ever after grab it again, though maybe it was just bad luck and fell where the raycast could not reach it

- Autosaves so dying would not make us start all over again

- Informing us about using the freelook button to dive (unless I missed the instruction?)

Anyway, for the rest it's all fine, the gears offered is generous, we can manage to find our way without much extra help and the enemies offer a challenge but a well balanced one

A strong entry with a strong gameplay and visual

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game, we really appreciate it. You're so right about the lack of audio (and visual) feedback on the tank when it runs empty. We'll change it so the Oxygen tank to be visible all the time, even when free-looking. Physics is a fickle beast, and sometimes it has a mind of its own when it comes to collisions, even with continuous collision detection enabled, which should have avoided this very problem. Sorry we didn't add the autosaves in. We spent all that time doing load/save and adding in checkpoints would have been easy by comparison. It's coming post jam. We told you nothing about the free-look to dive and that was a mistake on our part. Again, it's coming post jam. Thanks for all the feedback, it's great to learn from what works and what doesn't. We saw your game being streamed earlier today and it looks very good. We'll be playing it soon.

Host(+1)

Instead of mentioning everything I love about this game I'll list the things I would like to see changed or improved.

1) ...

Welp. How can I knock a game that put my ugly mug on a collectible? :)

Great job!

Developer

Thanks Zooperdan. We really appreciate you playing our game, it means a lot to us. We couldn't resist make you a collectible trophy, especially when you said how much you liked hidden walls, we added them in just for you! We'll make some fixes post-jam that should make it a bit smoother to play too. We're looking forward to you being 100% again and playing your entry into next year's jam!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I only managed to get to the under-water bit.  Not sure if I was doing something wrong, but it seemed like I wasn't descending at the second drop-off.

But as far as I got it looked, sounded and played great.  Very smooth interface.

I wasn't a fan of how many movement inputs it saved.  For me, just remembering the next potential movement is ideal.  Any more than that and I tend to over-shoot.

The flare stacking and respawning was a little annoying, but I assume that's not finished.

EDIT:  I got it.  I actually really like the free-look mode and the way it snaps to the closest grid view when you let go.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game, we really appreciate it. Good catch on the movements. We are queuing up more than one, perhaps we should just make it one as you suggest. The flare stacking is a work in progress for sure. We'll work on it post jam. We're relieved you worked out the free look mode. Sorry for not explaining it at any point! Another lesson learned by doing a game jam. 

Thanks again for the feedback and we look forward to playing your game soon.

Submitted(+1)

very atmospheric game i like it!

Developer

Great to hear and thanks for playing our game and giving us some feedback! We look forward to playing your game too.

Submitted(+1)

This is great! Great graphics, great environment design, authentic dungeon-crawler "feel" to puzzles and gameplay.

Great job! :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback and for playing our game. We look forward to playing your game soon.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hey! I decided to check out your entry and I have to say I'm pretty impressed!

here are some things I liked 

  • I very much enjoyed the moving crates around puzzle!
  • I liked being able to look around freely
  • enjoyed the graphics
  • Liked the feeling of discovering chests and looting them, made me feel like I achieved something 
  • Game definitely has an initial "creepy" and unnerving vibe in beginning which I liked

Here are some things I think can be improved on

  • enemy dying animation takes a bit too long to occur, making me think its still alive and going to attack me even if its health is below 0
  • I felt like the narrative could have used a bit more work, instead of just having the player get dropped into a cave, maybe he's a cave explorer? or maybe he survived some sort of shipwreck and has to explore underwater caverns to survive
  • needs some sort of sound in order to alert when you're about to run out of oxygen, perhaps like a drowning sound or whatever, because I didn't even notice I was losing HP rapidly after my oxygen tank ran out

Other than that a solid entry!!

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game, we really appreciate it. Glad you liked the graphics and the puzzle mechanics.

You're spot on about the enemy dying taking to long. We should have interrupted the animation as soon as the enemy was dead and then done the death animation. Instead we let their attack animation complete and then started the death animation. Another lesson learned!

You're right about the narrative as well. We did want to do an intro sequence that explained why you were in the cave. We had it as text in the itch.io page but that's never good enough really. 

Again, you're so right. Sound effects were a last minute addition to the game and we ran out of time to put them everywhere we wanted to. 

Thanks for the feedback. Great job with your game too.

Submitted(+1)

I ran into a bug in the High Fall area that prevented me from continuing - it was once I had dropped the second crate that there was an invisible wall blocking my progress here: 

I suspect that this was due to me saving and loading in that room earlier (I was facing out from the alcove in the switch after having dropped one crate when I did so).

No final thoughts yet - I'm planning on restarting from the beginning to see if it'll work for me if I don't save there, but I'm very impressed so far.

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game. It's great to see how far you got. Sorry about that load save bug. We'll fix it post jam for sure. Given your screenshot and description we were able to work out that any killed enemy keeps its grid square blocked when you reload, even though they're dead. For now, if you do save, make sure you can walk around the enemy before you kill it. Not the best workaround but it's all we've got for now.

You made it to point 5 in the map BTW. Good job, you're probably about 30% of the way through the whole game:

Dungeon Diver by Arlorean on Sketchfab

Submitted(+1)

Went back to this to try again and beat it this time. Getting stuck was for the best, as I didn't miss the spear this time. I'm beyond impressed with how much work you both did. That murky area at the end was quite unsettling! My only suggestion would that it would've been nice to have some way to quickly add items to the inventory, as the drag target to put them into the general inventory was pretty small.

Developer

Thanks for persevering Kevin and we're glad you didn't fall fowl of the bug the second time around. You're absolutely right about the size of the quick drop inventory button being too small. We noticed ourselves but ran out of time to make it bigger. We'll make it bigger post release. Thanks for the feedback.

Submitted(+1)

The visuals and systems feel very professional; I wouldn't be surprised to see these in a published game.

Unfortunately I drowned in the first underwater section, because I couldn't figure out how to ascend or descend; it's pretty tough to have a time limit when trying to figure out new controls without a tutorial! I absolutely get that it feels much nicer to be able to navigate the ladders above water with the ordinary direction buttons, but it might still have been best to force the player to learn the up and down controls then, rather than only requiring them when drowning? Also, I'm not sure whether you were able to implement saves/continue points (there is a "load game" in the main menu, at least?); if you were then I think one before the first drowning section would have been a very good idea (or even before the first combat; ideally you don't ever want players to be replaying the early sections of the game that have no challenges).

Still, a very solid entry overall (and of course as I've mentioned I'm a huge fan of the verticality), so great work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game and we're especially grateful for you kind words. We hope to publish a game at some point in the future.

We should have done a tutorial on the controls for sure. It would have been easy, in hindsight, to at least put in a note somewhere to say to use the right mouse button or PgUp/PgDn. This is why it's great to cut your teeth on these things in a game jam like this. It's a reminder to not forget the basics of tutorials on game controls and mechanics.

We're really sorry we didn't add in a checkpoint system to auto save. We spent the best part of a day making sure load/save worked, doing the checkpoints would have been trivial in comparison and yet we missed it out. You are so right here.

Thanks for your very constructive feedback on our game. We look forward to playing your game this week, it look very stylish. Best of luck in the jam!

Submitted(+1)

Ah, then was there a manual save? My bad, in that case; with manual saving that death would be on me. I guess it was on a menu I never opened.

Best of luck with your publishing ambitions!

Submitted(+1)

The art/graphics in this entry are superb. I loved the the underwater aspect and want more!

The only real disappointment for me was a lack of music and sound effects.

Incredible work. I hope you release a post game jam version <3

Developer

Thanks for playing our game.  We're glad you liked the graphics and artwork. We spent a long time getting things to look they way they do in game. The underwater part was a key mechanic to our interpretation of the duality theme so we're happy to see you want more of it! You're absolutely right about the sound effects. We ran out of time in the end to add them all in and it was disappointing for us too. We do plan on continuing to develop this game further. Many thanks for your feedback. We look forward to playing your game this week. Best of luck with the jam!

Submitted(+1)

This was really intruiging! I was pleasantly surprised by the ability to swim. I ended up dying my first try since the camera movement was a bit sensitive on my side. It would be great to have a key to press instead to factor for different mouse sensitivties. 

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for playing our game, we really appreciate it. You make an excellent point on the mouse sensitivity. It was definitely tuned to our local settings. We'll definitely add a slider to help with controlling mouse sensitivity.  We also found that some people are not mouse users at all and want everything to be completely keyboard driven! This is what we love about game jams, we learn so much about how users play (our) games. Thanks for the excellent feedback, it's incredibly valuable to use top get this. We look forward to playing your game this week. Best of luck with the jam.

Submitted(+1)

the ambience was amazing! lots of penumbra and subnautica vibes. my main issue was the combat, there were no sounds, and i was just staring at the corner skill check the whole time. everything else was great :D

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for playing our game, we really appreciate it. Glad you liked the feel of the environment, we spent a long time getting it like that. Good catch with the sounds. We ran out of time to add sound effects to everything unfortunately, "that is the way" of a game jam. We were very experimental with the combat and we had the same observation as you, that your focus was on the action bar and not on the view of the enemy itself, so it's good to hear if from someone else too. We're going to iterate on this in future games. Thanks again for your feedback and we look forward to playing your game this week.

Submitted(+1)

After your entry from last year, I was looking forward to seeing this, and I was not disappointed. Well done! The nitpicks I had were minor and mostly came down to user error. Right-clicking and moving sometimes made me go in unexpected directions, especially underwater when I ran out of flares :D The only real downside was having to start over when I died. Also, I got a chuckle at your zooper-trophies. Well done!

Developer

Thank you so much for playing our game, we really appreciate it. We learnt a lot from doing Robots and Zombies that we tried to do better in this game and hopefully it showed. Thanks for the feedback on the movement and free look. We spent the best part of a day trying to get it to feel right, we were happy with the result but there were still a few edge cases we didn't nail in time. You're not the only one to run out of flares unfortunately. We will put more in next time. 

We put game load/save in this time, which took another day, but we didn't put in auto-save checkpoints, we let you (expected you) to save manually when you wanted. Next time we'll do checkpoints. Sorry we weren't more explicit about the load/save feature. 

Glad you like the Zooperdan trophy, he deserves a bit of glory with all he's done for the community, what better way to acknowledge this than by making him a collectable. There are 12 to collect if you can find them all, some are in hard to find places. How many did you find?

Thanks again and we look forward to playing you game this week.

Submitted(+1)

I'm surprised this can smoothly run on a web browser, the graphics were great and the mechanics were spot on. overall amazing job Rebello :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game. We're amazed it ran so well in a web browser too. We did do our best to create most of the pickups, doors, chests, furniture, etc. all from a single texture trim sheet, that probably helped.  Last year we did a Windows download only and we got less ratings than other games that ran in WebGL so we wanted to support it this year.

Thanks again and we look forward to playing your game this week.

(+1)

Love the inventory system. Graphics are fantastic and fit the theme you went with. 

Developer

Thanks so much for playing our game and giving us your feedback. Last year we didn't do an inventory system so we wanted to stretch ourselves this year and give it a go. We're happy with how it came together. 

We love the fact that you went with the underwater theme too and we're looking forward to playing your game to see how you did the mechanics and sound effects.

Best of luck in the jam.

Submitted(+1)

This is very good. Combat feels good, although I feel bad killing all these named creatures.

Models and artwork look great.

SFX are minimal, and I didn't hear any music.

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game. We were happy with how it came together (eventually). Did you like having the creatures named or would it have been better without them, or just say generically "Rat"? We debated this ourselves during the jam and felt it added a bit of humour to it but we could be off the mark.

You're spot on with the Sound Effects. We had no sound at all in the game until 10:30pm on Friday (the last night of the jam). We pulled an all-nighter on Friday night and spent the last few sleepless hours putting in as many sounds effects as we could. There were lots of things we really wanted to have sound effects for that we just ran out of time to put in, which was disappointing. We had two ambient noise track loops, one for above water and one for below, but the effect was so subtle you couldn't hear them unless your sound volume was at max. In conclusion, next time we should be a team of three (instead of the two we are now) and reach out for an audio person to join us.

Thanks again and we look forward to playing your game this week. Best of luck in the jam.

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