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Echoes of the Abyss [Jam Version]'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #5 | 4.294 | 4.294 |
| Overall | #9 | 3.662 | 3.662 |
| Gameplay/Design | #10 | 3.471 | 3.471 |
| Enjoyment | #14 | 3.176 | 3.176 |
| Originality | #17 | 3.706 | 3.706 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your entry fit the theme?
Deepsea creatures use echo-location, sonar
What would you like feedback on?
game ideas, coherence, scope and mechanics
What assets did you use (if any)?
All made inside time period
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Comments
Really enjoyed the game and the way you visualized sonar was cool! Couldn't get the upgrade system or missiles to work. Also O2 doesn't refresh on surface (if I understand how it works). Enemies are also really tanky. Awesome game though, good job!
I really enjoyed the game, good sound effects, unique use of the theme, I felt the submarine was a bit slow and the enemies were a bit tanky
Did you try the upgrades? at max engine speed you should easily be able to escape from enemies
I really enjoyed this game, and it is some of the most fun I've had playing games in this jam. The grinding is addicting and atmosphere is really immersive. One pretty large issue I encountered is that the maxed out sonar stops working, leaving you blind mostly. My guess is that it's due to some entity/gameobject limit causing new sonar dots to not be spawned. I would also love a little more feedback in terms of combat because it was hard to tell if my shots hit at times. Finally, I was unsure how the oxygen mechanic worked or if it had been implemented fully because I didn't die when it ran out or anything like that. Moving past that, I have a lot positive to say. The music was perfect for this game and really captured the vibes of it well. Your use of the themes was really enjoyable and an integral part of your game. The size of your upgrade tree was nice because it gave me a lot to grind for. The boss at the end was very impressive, my mouth quite literally dropped when it starting throwing it's crazy attack at me. Great job!
Having spent a couple of hours designing the boss im glad to hear someone actually played it all the way through to see it :D. Thank you very much for the feedback and actually spending time on the game :)
This is one of my faves so far for sure! At first I thought it was just ok during my first run, and that it was a little annoying how tanky the orcas were. But upon dying and realizing there was an entire tech tree, I was really surprised!
Immediately I felt engaged and spent time grinding out the money to get the engine upgrades and torpedoes, which felt good to use against the orcas that gave me so much trouble in the beginning.
I was a little disappointed to come to the realization that there was no actual end to the cavern, and that it just endlessly looped (unless there is, in which case sorry!)
A piece of feedback I'd give is that enemy variety is important for a game like this, atleast to me. In the context of a game jam, a quick and dirty hack you can utilize to get atleast *some* variety is to slightly randomize the size of whatever enemies you face. And in this game, slightly randomizing their speeds would have helped avoid them all clumping up together into big orca masses, and would provide some extra engagement in that players would want to target the faster ones first!
I can surprise you and tell you that there actually is and end to the cave, and you might even find a big encounter at the bottom :0. Yeah, we wanted to make more enemies as well, but it just got away from us, and good idea randomizing their speeds, we should probably also have made the orcas not collide with each other. Thanks for the feedback :)
The concept of a roguelite-ish submarine game is cool! I had some issues with understanding the upgrade system. And also the enemies was way too tough in the beginning. Especially when suddenly 5 spawned a the same time in the beginning of the level. But there is some good potensial in the game and I enjoyed it quite a lot!
yeah they tend to group up when stuck behind walls, but i can assure you only one spawns at a time, and they spawn far a certain distance from the player, so you wont ever see them spawning
i really liked that the game is long because you can upgrade until reach the deepest (i think its long, did not play fully), overall idea is great and i enjoyed the atmosphere of it, i think its good game for the little time
Love the atmosphere and think easily the best part of the game is the echolocation system, I think focusing on this element could be really interesting. Also props to the music, really impressive to make in such a short time period.
I feel some story could go a long way to engaging players a bit, some sort of goal or something. I also feel some sort of movement mechanic could be interesting to complement the sonar.
The concept works great however the gameplay could get more polish to be really fun. The boat is slow, the gun barely deals any damage to the orcas and there isn't a lot of feedback on the damage dealt or received. The sonar is really good though !
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah we had a lot of problems with scope creep and that resulted in a not as polished product as we would have liked. The gun is supposed to feel weak so it feels rewarding when you buy the seeking missile :), with more time we would also have added upgrades to the regular gun
This has a lot of promise!
Very on theme, and love that it starts out nearer the surface and sets context for the player, slowly introduces you to going deeper and then to enemies and so on. It might be interesting to start with some sort of understanding of how one might earn money and thereby kit out the sub for future missions etc. - potentially you could start with some money available to you which you use for a basic upgrade and then go on from there. I think that could help the player be invested from the get go.
The art and music is impressive given it was made entirely during the period of the jam! the music was quite immersive (pun intended) indeed.
All in all, I think it's a solid starting point and I'd love to hear from you if you make more levels and ship this one!
Do check out our submission Reverb. We'd love to know what you think: https://itch.io/jam/pjp-game-jam-2023-1/rate/2079583