Really fantastic work on the art - maybe the character animations felt a little stiff, but maybe that’s just my imagination because the movement felt stiff. Loved the UI art in particular but really it was all great. Maybe the letters 02 blend in a bit too much with the background.
I found it confusing that there were objects in the same/similar color to the relics that weren’t relics, like the starfish and that real cute fish that chases the other one (really nice touch), since we weren’t told what to look out for. I also definitely did not realize the gold coral was a relic until I accidentally picked it up, and the one hiding in grass was nearly too tough to spot.
I feel like the golden rule of platformers is that it should be fun to just move and jump around in the world, and this didn’t quite get there for me except for the boost jump which was great. I’m guessing you were going for a kind of realistic underwater feel but especially the gap between landing and being able to jump again, lack of ability to do a short jump, low gravity, etc. just made traversal kinda a chore.
I didn’t understand the hull integrity mechanic, so I just ignored it since I’d get a warning within seconds of leaving the ship, I just made a point to always bring scrap back and I was fine. Also seemed like dying was the intended way to return to base, which is fine, but strange. Sometimes there was that oxygen efficiency game but I had no idea what would trigger it and how to interact with it at all besides hitting up a few times until it let me go? I promise I was really trying to understand!
I felt like the hacking game was maybe a little on the tough side. Memorization minigames usually don’t feel right, but in this case I think it really played nicely with the core gameplay loop since they’re both effectively memorization games at wildly different paces. I don’t know if that was an intentional design choice but it felt like a really natural and great complement to the main gameplay, great job with that :)
While I have my critiques, overall this is a really awesome and impressive jam entry and definitely something to be proud of. Good work!