This is a great submission! It's clear that this was made with a lot of love, and handles the theme well. The experience of diving deep into an increasingly bizarre and twisted underwater environment is really memorable and something I enjoyed quite a lot.
You mentioned you were inspired by Frontier Diver. I remember that one; I think this does a similarly good job. You nail the controls and movement and the UI complements the feeling of being in a submersible quite well.
One strength of this game is using the 'scan' feature, similar to something like Subnautica, to give contextual information. This is really fun and allows for what I like to call 'environmental horror' - the story is completely told from the environment itself!
Some constructive feedback:
- Choice of assets is really important; whilst obviously variety is a fixture of good design, trying to make assets thematically consistent or fit a theme can help with the cohesion of the game. The transition of the assets from 'underwater' to 'industrial' to 'patchwork nightmare' sort of worked but it was also a bit confusing. The environment didn't quite aid the understanding of the nature of the anomaly/fetus at the end or provide any insight. For instance, a biological/flesh theme might have worked better. But this is just totally me spitballing about a minor aspect of the game.
I did a playthrough below:
This is a great addition to the jam. I think you should be super proud of what you've made.Thanks for submitting this game to the HPS1 jam!