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Out of Depth's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #16 | 4.717 | 4.717 |
| Overall | #161 | 4.120 | 4.120 |
| Enjoyment | #355 | 3.873 | 3.873 |
| Creativity | #1033 | 3.771 | 3.771 |
Ranked from 205 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Our game explores deep sea gigantism and how deep sea marine life is at a bigger scale than that closer to the water surface. This theme is reinforced in the visuals of the game with the depth meter on the side.
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description for full credits
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Comments
Such a polished game ! I had great fun playing it ! Congratulations
Thank you so much for playing!
Your game reminds me a lot of a game I made for the ludum dare 48 on the theme Deeper and deeper ;)
But yours is so much prettier and better, I love it ! <3
I really liked the moment with the big "fish" at the bottom, it's so surprising ! However, I was so happy to have escaped it but I was disappointed to see that I wouldn't get my oxygen back when I surfaced and then the sharks finished me off before I got to the boat ^^'
Thank you so much! We might venture into some other jams too if the time allows for it! Ludum Dare is definitely my pick at least! We’re glad that the final boss gave you the intended experience (dying might be on you though) 😁 Sorry about having oxygen deplete at the surface. We wanted to change it but by the time our play testers commented on it it was too late :(
Very cool game! It feels like a full released game with how polished it is. Idk how u did it in such a short time. it reminds me of games like subnautica and we need to go deeper, good job!
Thank you so much for your kind review! We may or may not have lost a lot of sleep making this game so that’ll probably be the reason we got it so polished 😅 with so many people on our team we were able to work super efficiently and everyone is just so talented at what they do. I couldn't ask for a better group to be developing games with!
Excellent entry! Great art and effects, music, UI and polish. The scan time for some things was kinda steep, but the ambiance was so nice while doing it!
Thank you so much for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed the ambience, and like other players have pointed out, we'll definitely be focusing more on player enjoyment for our next jam (making things speedier, etc) :D
Thank you so much for playing our game!
Scan time was a directly related to the size if the thing being scanned so for a lot of the bigger fish that would be a long long time. There might’ve also been some bugs with the framerate of it making it take longer for some people than others which went unnoticed during testing since we all have slightly higher performance devices to run things on.
this game is very cute, i think it really succeeds in delivering vibe , or feelings i guess. like the cosy feeling of the shop and the scary feeling of being in the bottom of the ocean, kinda feels like cosy subnautica in a way
however i do feel it doesn't quite fit the theme, i get the idea but it isn't really reflected in the gameplay in any significant way
Looking back we do admit the idea of the fish getting bigger relative to the sub as you went down definitely could have been more pronounced and exaggerated. We’re sorry it didnt resonate with you as much as we’d hoped. That shortcoming is on us for prioritization the development of what we had without further adhering to the theme. Thank you for playing our game though and Im glad you still enjoyed the experience!
This is an amazing game. Super pretty, super engaging, and I love the surprise boss fight and the progression. The music is great. The gameplay is great. The only issue I had with it was that it doesn't really fit the theme at all. It's an amazing game and you should be very proud
It is one of our big regrets that we werent able to effectively incorporate the idea of progressively increasing size and a difference in scale as the dive went deeper. We’ll be sure to exaggerate this more if and when we revisit the game!
Woah! Great job on the game, a ton of content and very good visuals. One of the few game jam games that feels like a full experience. The concept is pretty cool, I like underwater settings and the sea creatures here were drawn very beautifully. GG!
Thank you for playing! We tried very hard to make a game that feels complete this year, and despite there being some unfortunate bugs, we’re glad it came out okay in the end :) I’m happy you liked the sea critters as well!!
Wow, incredible how you guys managed to put a game this polished, with that ammount of content. Incredible. My only issue is that I spent a lot of time scanning a lot of creatures and it only showed I scanned the great white shark, which was a tad dissapointing. Love the Simon & Garfunkel reference xD. Would appreciate it if you guys checked out my submission.
Yayy! I'm glad you enjoyed playing our game :) I think you might've experienced the bug that happens after you scan a bobbit worm, unfortunately. We will definitely be touching up on that issue if we ever work towards an official release. In the meanwhile, thanks for the review and I'll check out your game for sure! :D
How god, what a beautidul game,
And wow the game feels so good, was totaly under the sea,
at first chilling finding news fishes, and then get streesed when I get down a lil too much, gettinng shased by giant monsters !!
Realy well done I get lost maybe 20 minutes onn it !
Thank you so much!! This review totally made me smile :)
Gorgeous game, lovable characters, entrancing soundtrack! I think you all did a fantastic job! You should be proud!
Thank you so much!! Especially happy you mentioned the characters were lovable hehe :) I really appreciate your comment!
It's really beautiful and relaxing (except, of course, when, you know...). It's impressive how much content it has for a jam game ! Definitely going to check out your commercial releases, excited to see what you can do with a lot more time
Thank you so much for your support! It means a lot that we’ll at least have one or two people willing to stick with this game if we do settle for a full release :D We were really excited about this game as a concept and we’re glad the execution came out decently as well even under the time limit!!
Beautiful, fun, chill. Played it for more than an hour!
Few issues: after scanning the boss and ending the run - I'm not getting any scans or any money :(
And sometimes boss runs in circles, trapping me inside itself, so I cannot do anything, only glitch out through collision in some cases.
Would love to play a full game! <3
Aww, yeah, that’s unfortunately some of the bugs that we only found out after the release :( I’m so happy to hear that you spent over an hour on it though!! I feel like our efforts pay off the more people are able to enjoy the game! Thank you for playing :D
Genuinely astounding. There aren’t enough rating categories the quantify how much enjoyment I had! Congratulations to everyone that worked on it, I spent so much time discovering species and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so ready for a comfy aquatic adventure but then you went and shot my heart-rate sky-high (worm = bad). I’ve given all of my reviews constructive feedback, so it would feel like favouritism if I only gave positives here:
-I spent a lot of time maxing out east-to-west travel, expecting some rare species or secret area, but unfortunately t’was only sardines!
-I do appreciate how many fish behave differently, and while it was still impressive to have such a roster made in a short time, their behaviours could be even more varied/interesting to change up the gameplay loop.
-Yada yada slow movement speed yada yaada. I thought it was perfect. Art, Narrative, VA, UI, Programming, Audio, anyone else I’ve failed to mention… Hats off to you guys! Glad to see another submarine game, especially one I fell in love with <3
This is such a thoughtful comment :’) It means a lot to hear that you enjoyed the game as much as we enjoyed making it (ok, well, besides the times we didn’t). I really like how you listed out all the elements that I love so much as well! Not only that, your feedback is super insightful and brings up new stuff we haven’t gotten before. As an artist, when I first played this game I could relate to the first point too! Thank you so much for your support, it really means the world to me and my team :D
No problem! Even as a game, not just a jam entry, I’m now the biggest fan. Would buy merch.
if we ever make any (its entirely possible) i’ll personally send some to you.
The concept is great and the art and mechanics all mix together so well!
Thank you so much!!
Great art, great idea! I really enjoyed exploring the sea creatures (and they are so cute ♥ )
Thank you, I’m happy to hear that you liked the critters hehe :D what’s your favourite one?
Incredible art, but it's kinda tedious.
Thank you for enjoying the art :) We’ll work hard next time and focus more on player enjoyability for sure!!
This one is impressive ! Art is really stylish, game idea fits the theme and is fun to play, and the amount of content for a jam game is huge. Congratulations !
Thank you so much for playing!! I’m happy to hear that you had fun and liked the art :D
Hey Daniel and team! Good to see you again! Congrats on submitting your game!
The art, music, world... overall presentation on this is fantastic. The light rays, small background fish, bubbles, coral growths - everything contributed to a visual feast that really stands out, especially in a game jam.
I love the loop of discovering new things and improving my exploration abilities. But this missed the mark for me just a bit. Some of the scans felt like they took just a bit too long, like the big jellyfish. I was just sitting there, not really doing anything for what felt like forever. The baseline movement was too slow and made my first run feel tedious, especially when I realized I had oxygen and had to slowly navigate my way back to the surface. And backtracking to the surface is what spoiled the experience for me, I think. Slow movement, no additional exploration, and the requirement to remember how I got around certain land formations made the second half of each dive feel like a waste of time. I saw there was an upgrade to increase return speed, but I think that's not really going to fix it either.
Games for a jam, like any game, can benefit from knowing the target audience. In this case, that's other jammers. And knowing that other jammers will probably want to rate a bunch of games and give a bunch of feedback means that time becomes a valuable resource. Spending mine to slowly return to the ship instead of getting to play the next segment of the game felt like a drag. Perhaps in a full release experience, this might be more tolerable. Or there would be more time to develop and make the return process more engaging. But that would require way more time than 96 hours affords, even with the broad team of talent you have with you.
I hope this doesn't come off as too harsh. I type out this much because I really liked what I saw. I want the makers of every game to value their experience making games, and be able to learn and grow from it! Please keep making games, especially if they're going to be as gorgeous and cool as this. And be okay with a slightly smaller scope - or in this case: scale ;)
Thank you so much for giving us such a deep dive into your review of our game! I do agree with you about the game loop taking a bit too long and we initially did intend for it to be possible to simply emergency escape to the surface (we even had the art assets ready for such a thing) but like you said, 96 hours is only so much time. By the time we got to the last couple of hours there wasn't really much of a way to get the feature in which to us was one of our big disappointments in our entire experience as a whole. A lot of the team was fresh this year, as Daniel might've mentioned earlier and since all of us are students there were some issues with keeping the entire team at a similar operating capacity throughout the jam. Moving forward next year we will likely be in a better position to use our time better. As the one largely coordinating the team, I'll be sure to improve my understanding of good team management as well as getting to know the ins and outs of my team to make next year an even better success for us.
Everyone on the team is always striving to learn and grow. Our hope is to keep doing this game development thing, not just again and again but also better and better!
Thank you so much! We look forward to coming back!
And perhaps we'll tone down the scale of the game too. By the time we figured out that we needed a gosh darn fish AI (even if it was decently simple) we knew we bit off more than we should've.
Managing a team is TOUGH. I've done it for a jam once, and that was unlike any other jam. Keep up the awesome work! And thanks for the thoughtful reply <3
Hey CFHM, thanks so much for the really detailed critique! I think this time around we had a bit too much of a focus on how the game looked in comparison to gameplay, I'm very grateful for the feedback on movement and exploration (this project was 100% overscoped and had to be reigned back towards the end lol). This was also the first jam for both artists so I wanted to ensure their abilities played in as much as possible as well.
Thank you again for the detailed review and good luck for the rest of the jam! It was great to hear from you again
I'm always so shocked when people manage to put together a full team for a jam (full-time jobs & life getting in the way)! It's so hard to get people to commit the time and not clash with each other. Super well done, the art is amazing and I can't believe there's even voice acting. Overall really enjoyable I hope you guys are proud cause its super good :D Would totally play a full game of this
We got lucky! The entire team is a group of high school and uni students so most of us were free all the way. Our musicians flight got delayed so he composed a lot of stuff while on his flight and I myself was travelling as well (my flight got delayed 3 hours the night before submission so that added quite a bit of stress in the last minute push).
Thank you so much for your kind words!
This reminds me of Dave the Diver. The gameplay loop is simple yet addictive. Farm, upgrade repeat. The simple stuff never fails!
Thank you so much for playing our game! I hoped to make as polished of a simple mechanic as our time allowed for in the jam so I love that other people believe in this philosophy too!