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 ;)