Thanks so much for playing and the feedback!
This was my first attempt at a PS1 style game, and my first attempt at something spooky in several years so I'm happy you liked it! The enemies for the most part came together better than I expected, though I wish I had more time to work on the model for the mermaid enemies. I did put a lot of time into the sound effects and ensuring they were distinct, creepy and sounded like they were travelling through water in a PS1 game lol. The glowing eyes I had thought of not only because they're creepy, but they also allow the player to see enemies in the distance. I wanted the player to find the enemies eerie, but not because they suddenly jump out of nowhere (well except for the shark I guess lol).
I'm definitely gonna be looking at adjusting the movement speed post-jam. I think it can work for when the player is actually progressing and encountering enemies, because I find it builds tension more than if the player zooms through the level. But it is clearly tedious when having to backtrack or get through the second level. I'm happy to hear the underwater effects worked, during development I was kinda worried it would feel like the player was just in a dark warehouse or field.
That's surprising actually, every other player I've seen so far has said the combat felt unresponsive, which I tend to agree with. But hey I'm happy you liked it! Regarding the AI yeah this was technically my second time using A* navigation, but I was never able to get the enemy attacks right. I'll have to try your suggestion after the jam, during development I decided to leave the AI broken so I could focus on every other aspect, which I think in hindsight was the right decision!
So the "audio logs" are technically the dead speaking to the player character directly. The distortions are effectively ghosts, or mentioned in the game's description as "anomalies", which speak in that distorted whisper which is then decoded by the players fancy hydrophone. I took the idea from Bungie's old FPS Pathways Into Darkness, where you can actually talk to dead characters by entering keywords. I wanted to trim down the scope and decided to just have the dead talk to the player once, and the player can't speak back. I wanted to have a bigger ending, but in hindsight I think the current one is more fitting for cosmic horror.
It's kinda funny to say now but I actually didn't really intend this to be a horror game, it was more intended to be a dungeon crawler with an eerie environment. I was more inspired by the Metro series and Space Hulk: Vengeance of The Blood Angels than I was Resident Evil or even Silent Hill. But I'm really happy you enjoyed it and thanks for the kind words!
Thanks again for playing and the feedback!