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Mekanaut (DungeonCrawler2023 Jam)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #1 | 4.727 | 4.727 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #5 | 4.273 | 4.273 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.882 | 3.882 |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #20 | 4.045 | 4.045 |
| Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme? | #50 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #104 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Why did the cat go down so deep? Or are we the cat all along?
Great art style. The combat is just hold F until the enemy dies.
Indeed, who are we? Or are we anyone? It's open to interpretation. :)
I had ideas for deeper combat mechanics, but there wasn't time to implement all that.
Thank you for playing!
Sadly I was unable to beat it, but I enjoyed playing what I did! I really like the look and feel of this, the sounds are great, the monsters really cool, and the CRT filter is quite nice! I would have liked a couple more choices, whether it was in direction of exploring (felt pretty linear), or upgrading options, or pretty much anything =).
I spent way too much time on the graphics and audio, taking up most of the jam on those, and then I didn't have time or energy to implement the depth in the battle system that I had thought about initially. Though even with those ideas there wouldn't have been upgrades or builds to choose from, which is something that I've been thinking about implementing in later versions of the concept.
Btw the CRT / Scanline filter is literally just a dark line -sprite, drawn across the screen several times (tiled) and then you can from the ESC menu adjust its intensity (basically just changing the alpha of it by .1 ) so it's actually not a filter, just a sprite. :'D It just works!
Thank you for playing!
I did play with that option, although I could have sworn something more was going on =). I thought at least with the monsters as they were waving around I was seeing some red/blue bleeding going on, although maybe that was part of your underwater filter and not the CRT filter ^_^.
There was indeed an underwater filter and also a pixelation filter. Also the monsters "hover" up and down, and slightly to the side. This may cause some inbetween pixels and color artifacts, which all just affect positively to the visuals.
I rescued my friend.
Even if I'm not the biggest fan of the structure of the game consisting in one long corridor and grinding long battles, the overall presentation of the game is stunning, these sea monsters look very good, huge and different, the atmosphere of the game is perfectly rendered and for a game of such length it was enough to make the experience very enjoyable.
Congratulations.
Now, you can interpret the victory screen as you want. Which one of the characters was actually rescued? Hehe. ;)
Yes, I put way too much time on the atmosphere and the immersion ( no pun ) of the experience, but unfortunately that is then seen in the lack of some depth ( not another pun xD ) on the game mechanics themselves. But for a Game Jam I think this is good. I have seen less progress on people who have spent 2 years on their projects, so I can only be happy with these results. I will ofcourse continue the concept's development and improve upon the battle system and its frequency first, before touching upon other aspects of the game.
Thank you for the kind words and for playing!
Wow, I love the undersea setting for a dungeon crawler. Your monsters look so cool. Great sound design, UI, typography, everything visually executed extremely well.
Since you just random-battle farm for a drop, it’s easy to get confused at that first NPC blocking your way. I think you’re well aware that the gameplay/combat is shallow (no pun intended) right now, so I needn’t say anything more, haha.
I also think this game was meant to have extra up-down depth controls to get to shallower and deeper water.
It's true that I initially had the idea that you will reach a certain location where you can dive literally downwards, but that would've overscoped the project for a jam, and should be reserved for an actual commercial game with months of development instead.
I'm glad that you enjoyed atleast the atmosphere of the game!
Thank you for playing!
I love it! this is so beautiful ! nice game play ! Well done!
Lovely that you enjoyed the game! I enjoyed making it too, even if I didn't get to implement every idea that I had for it. Hehe.
Thank you for playing!
Very unique and cool take on a dungeon crawler. Great visuals with lots of atmosphere and tension.
Well done :)
It's my first time ever trying an underwater theme in a game. I'm glad it turned out nice and successful in that sense!
Thank you for playing!
I was recommended by another to test this, and I had such a great time playing this game!
The oddly relaxing yet claustrophobic atmosphere really added to the suspense, and I loved being able to rely on the clear maps and information panels to help me navigate the environment.
Underwater sci-fi adventures are my favorite kind of escapism - they’re so immersive and transporting. And you did an amazing job with the exploration aspect - it truly captures the feeling of discovery and wonder.
As for the combat mechanics, while I can see how they might be a little on the simple side, I appreciate the resource management aspect even if in just the form of saving up repair tools and keeping an eye on your health, because it adds another layer of strategy to the gameplay.
All in all, I think you did a fantastic job and I’m excited to see what else you come up with! 💖 Plus, it ran perfectly on my Linux machine using Wine—no complaints here! 😊 I’d give it a full 5 stars if I could!
Oh, nice! Recommended by who? I appreciate the nice feedback and the kind words! There seems to be quite a few MacOS and Linux users, so I might in the future look into it to attempt to include a build that works for those platforms straight off too.
Thank you for playing!
Good gameplay, mechanics and cute graphics
I appreciate the kind words and the illusion that you're the first person to also like the combat that's just holding down F. :'D
Thank you for playing!
I really like seeing Another World style blue sci-fi palettes. Enemies are pretty cool and music is nice. Not much to do besides hold F but this is one of few entries I've seen an ending to.
Nice comments that warm my heart.
I didn't think at all that the color scheme would somehow be similar to something like Another World, since this is underwater and that wasn't, but cool that there's some kind of a distant relation to such a cult game that's showing up everywhere if you search for retro stuff.
Thank you for playing!
Really enjoyed the aesthetics, underwater scifi adventure fits the dungeon crawling genre really well.
Exploration feels quite good, I was a bit unsure about the combat mechanics that feel a bit simplistic, even though I really felt the "resource management" side of it. Overall, really good.
I'm glad you enjoyed atleast portions of my game! I indeed like the exploration part myself too and it feels like it could be a neat little screensaver of its own with the chill music playing forever on a loop. Hehe.
Thank you for playing!
This is pretty sick, I like it a lot. I like the aesthetics of it, and would love to see a version with the combat mechanics more fleshed out.
Speaking of sick, I had initial ideas for the combat to have more depth, but I lost 1 day to reinstalling Windows during the jam, and for the last 2 days of the jam I was feeling quite ill, so I didn't dare to include deeper features that could introduce new issues and bugs to the project. Already barely submitted in time with 6 minutes left on the deadline timer. :'D
I appreciate the wonderful comments and indeed; the atmosphere, visuals, audio are my favorite part too and agreed that the combat could've been a bit better and less repetitive. Still happy what I came up with in basically under or in a week.
There are plans to improve further upon this concept of a dungeon crawler. I will try to make the battlesystems better.
Thank you very much for playing! <3
A real lovely game to play!
The ambient was top tier, the sound design was relaxing and well paced, the theme is respected.
The only issue I had with it was the repetitive farming to do which felt like a forced way to extend the game's life. It however not felt that much bothering thanks to the sweet visual and the peaceful music.
If there are entries to play at all cost, I would say this game is definitely among them!
Great job!
I'm glad you enjoyed the experience and I appreciate your kind words!
Indeed you called me out on it, I did place npcs to block the paths with some tasks related to interacting with the events spawning into the world. If there were no blockages like this, the game would've lasted only 2 minutes. Personally I play it through in 5 mins still, so it IS quite short indeed.
I spend a lot of time just listening to the chill exploration music though. It's almost like a cool screensaver with relaxing music. Accidentially made a nice music track that I keep humming to myself even when off the computer. Heh.
Thank you for playing! <3
I love the aesthetic, and the sound design!
The battles are a bit repetitive and drag for a bit too long, but besides that, it's a great game!
Yeah I noticed only afterwards that the sense of progression is super slow. Only after you get like 5 firepower upgrades you start to notice that oh yea I am stronger now. Thank you for playing!
I absolutely love the aesthetic of your game. The music and sound effects are wonderful!
The main down side is the game feels a little bit grindy. The enemies take a lot of damage while combat is not particularly interesting.
I loved the mini-map! The boat at the top was fantastic. I really felt like I was exploring into the depths. Great work!
Yeah on Discord I talked about different combat mechanics other than just pressing F, but due to feeling ill and the time running quickly out on the jam, I didn't dare to try to make such a system work in time, so took the safe and simpler route. Thank you for playing!
Very cool! I really love underwater level and themes and this was great. The deep sea monsters were great and the audio, animation and general feel was great. At some point, events would populate my whole map for some reason but I managed! Congrats!
Yeah basically the events keep spawning while you're in a battle, and as the battles take a long time to go through when your firepower is low, indeed the map gets filled up. :'D But I didn't have time to make the system any better, barely had 6 minutes left to deadline when I posted this game. Thank you for playtesting!
I really like the shader.
The enemies felt a bit bullet-spongey. I held down F. They eventually died.
It is nice to see another underwater entry. We get a few each year. This time I get to be a submarine pilot!
Thank you again for playing my game on stream. It was a pleasure to witness and always good to watch others test your game and find possible issues with it or what is good. Thank you for playing!
Wow! Really impressed with the creative and technical quality of this. Love the claustrophobic atmosphere created by the restricted viewport and audio/visual interference, yet feel fully in control because of the excellent maps/info panels and story exposition. Ran fine on Linux using Wine, incidentally.
Nice and surprising that it ran on Linux. I attempted to make it a browser game, but the browser building failed so I just went with a downloadable, because I had no time to try to fix the browser issue. Art, visuals, audio, and the rest of the technical quality took the most part of the development indeed, and it may show in the actual gameplay content and overall entertainment value. (Oops! xD) Thank you for the nice comment and for playing the game!
I'm glad you made it downloadable as my recent experience with browser games hasn't been good. I'm sure they're great games they just don't run well, if at all (probably my system, to be fair).
Yes, but on the other hand people do not like downloading anything (including me) nowadays, so I've steered more towards attempting to make games that run in the browser. But ofcourse, I can always have a downloadable version on the side as an option too! I'll try to keep this in mind.
Fair point.
The art for this game is great! I love the underwater and sea creature aesthetic too! Also maybe I wasn't picking up on something but I literally couldn't find any firepower on my first playthrough and kept getting battles xD.
Sorry and yes the event objects are all randomized, so there may actually be runs where you never see a firepower upgrade or a repairtool. I had no time to properly balance the spawning and appearance of battles, but atleast all of the content that's in the game is usable in some amounts. Also you only start to feel more powerful after you get 5 firepower upgrades so that's also a thing... Thank you for playtesting!
Woah this is really cool. The underwater setting really lends itself well to a tense atmosphere for the combat/exploration
I'm glad someone likes the atmosphere I worked so many days on, both visual and auditory! I feel super relaxed though in the exploration mode, because of the chill music track I accidentially managed to make for it! Thanks for playing!
The artwork looks great.
Thank you my friend! And yours too! Great atmospheres all around! Thank you for playing!