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Nah that's on me. After it would have been more obvious if you were not looking up from the start. I'm glad you had a great time!

For the chest, indeed, I'm not scaling it. The game is actually in 3D with 2D sprites so, you're actually getting closer to it. You just don't notice that it's 3D because the movement is very restrictive. You can only swim up and down.

Hey man, I'm glad you enjoyed the atmosphere!

Actually to swim, you can't swim at the start while looking up because, you're already at the surface. You need to look down so that you can swim downwards. Hope this helps!

Hum.... you said that you just want to make a living from making games, but it does involve your game having a certain level of fame. Lots of people are expecting everything to be free on mobile so if you want to make a living from free downloads and Ads revenue, you really need a huge player base to pay the bills. On the other hand, if you want to sell your game on mobile, people will be scared away really fast if you go above $5 for the price so, you also need a large player base to cover that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not saying this to take a hit on your motivation but these are genuine concerns I have. If making games is a hobby for you, then not actively trying to market your game is fine. I'll even go as far as saying that it's the most enjoyable game dev experience you could have: making games with 0 pressure. If you want to pay the bills only from Game Dev though, you sometimes have to get your hands on some stuff you don't like, like preparing and conducting a Marketing campaign to make sure that people see your game. Stores are flooded with so many games right now. It has become very hard to stand out from the crowd.

If you ever release the game, I'll be curious to see the next version! I'll follow you here on itch to make sure I get notified. I wish you the best man! It was interesting having this conversation with you!

Judging by the game you've submitted, I could tell you're experienced in the Trijam. Now, you've confirmed my suspicions. Props for your work! I respect your dedication!

Hum... I've followed your reasoning but honestly, I think I'll still strive to do games under 3h when I participate because of the following reasons:

1. I would like to build a lot of prototypes but I don't want to spend too much time on them. I like the Trijam because, with the 3h rule, you can make a game without sacrificing your whole weekend. If I participate in a big jam like a GMTK Jam, I have to take paid leaves at work or else I'll be very drained the week following the jam. With the Trijam tho, I can just work on a game for 3h on a Saturday morning and still have time to hang out with my friends during the weekend. That's the primary reason why I participate in the Trijam and not the Mini Jam.
2. Your ranking is a honest vision of what people think about your game. You can rank low and still have very nice comments. It happened to me in other jams. If people rank your game high though, you know for sure that they really enjoyed it. I've worked on a game called "Poly Dash" for the 2023 GMTK with a friend. The game ranked 108th in the "Fun" category and you could see in correlation that it was, indeed, the most fun game I've ever contributed to in a Game Jam. Ranking in Jams is usually fair. People will rank your submission high if they enjoy it and low if they don't. It's an easy indicator to see if you did well.

I'm dragging a bit too much my response here but, that's the reasoning behind my madness. 😂

Ho, you might go for a mobile port huh? Understandable. With the current controls, the game does in fact scream "touch screen". I've just tested it on my Samsung Galaxy S10 (Android) and it works since it's a WebGL build! The snake is indeed easier to control this way! Do you still want to have a dedicated mobile build?

About the limitations you've mentioned, yes it's fair. For these kind of games, "why should the player play again" is really a key point and the player usually stops playing once he feels like "he has seen everything the game has to offer". Adding more power-ups and more enemy hazards would be indeed a way to increase the lifespan of the game.

Honestly speaking though, are you sure about aiming for the mobile market? 10 years ago there weren't that many games on mobile so a lot of small but fun games could make it big like Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, Temple Run, Flappy bird (and so on). Nowadays though, making games and shipping on every platform has never been easier so, competition is at an all-time high. The Google Play Store is now flooded with games, both short and long and it has become quite hard to make a place for yourself. Are you sure that you want to dive into this market? Or are you not taking it too seriously?

Yes indeed! With only 3h to make a game, you really have to do everything you can to cut corners and ship in time. Doing more with less is definitely an essential skill for this jam!

Ho. I see 😅.

Well, you have good taste in assets! And building a game in 3h is still quite a feat!

The pixel art is simplistic but it's really consistent which makes for a beautiful world! I especially like the particle effects behind the player has he's diving. Great job!

Ho man, I went in the game blind and I thought I was just going to gather minerals. I was REALLY concerned when I went back to refill my oxygen and I saw red lights moving on the map. I was thinking "Wtf is this??? 👀". When I came close to it and I saw the HUGE fish, I was spooked!... but then I realized that the fish couldn't hit me which was a bit anti-climatic. Don't get me wrong, I've seen your to-do list and it's great that you were able to do this much! I also like the mechanism to gather minerals! It made me think about the system to attack in Undertale!

Overall, great work! Keep up the work!

Well done! I've read the comments below and it's very nice that you were able to make a procedurally generated maze while also making sure that it can be completed! I'm also a fan of the 2.5D art! I also find myself using it pretty often in my games. A callback to the PS1 era.

Great work!

Damn dude, this level 2 was no joke. My fingers hurt from trying to win. 🤣

Great job! The pixel art looks amazing, especially the monster. I'm amazed that you were able to pull off this level of art and still have the game working in less than 3h. Props to you man!

That was a fun game! I wish it lasted more honestly, or that the level was procedurally generated.

The controls feels very good. I've seen other submissions were you have to dodge hazards while diving/returning to the surface but I think this one has the best movements. It feels good to control the ship with the mouse and fine tune the speed with W/S.

While you keep working on the project? If yes, I wonder what will you add in the future. 🤔

Thanks man! 

I had FNAF as a reference in my head that I've tried to twist and adapt to a sea horror game. I'm glad you've enjoyed! 😁

First of all, I need to thank you for this post man. I think I really needed to hear that.

I think I'm too focused on the competitive aspect of it because I've never made a game that was fun while working alone. I'm primarily a Game Programmer, but I've learned programming to make games I've dreamed about in the first place. Not having made any games that were interesting for a player base (not even like 10 players), that really hurts the morale. It's not about the money, it's about pride. "My games are trash". That's a pretty sad though to have really.

Maybe I don't enjoy this game because it's far from all the features I had in my head if I had more time, but if you say that you've enjoyed it, than I'm glad I could at least distract you for a bit. 😁

Indeed, you are right. There is no end to this game. 😂

I've tried to balance it so that you have a harder time after each consecutive dive. For example, the chest gets deeper, the shark appears more often and he becomes less forgiving. With that being said, I agree with you. The oxygen deserves more balancing. You don't have to take many risks as of now.

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed my game! 

Damn. A very interesting entry!

This might be the most visually appealing game of the jam yet, you're only combining primitive shapes together. Impressive. I'll have to note it down in my book. The particle system and the music are very simple yet, they are very effective at conveying the fact that you're underwater.

This game brings me Agar.io flashbacks. What would you add to this game if you had 3 days instead of 3h to work on it?

I see. So it was scripted indeed!

Aight, I had doubts since I felt like I was fishing pretty well and my mouse was really staying in the circle. I guess I got some mysterious Kevins instead. xDDDD

Thanks for the clarification man!

Nice puzzle game!

The controls feel very natural. You don't need much explaining to understand what is needed from you. At first, when the shark was going from one point to the end of the screen, I was wondering if it was a bug but then I understood that it was actually the core mechanism for the puzzle. That was very entertaining. Great job! 😁

Honestly, a great submission! The music is great to set the atmosphere and the fishing mechanism is really entertaining! I couldn't catch the Bertha but I was engaged until the very end.
Is it possible to catch it by the way? Since it's supposed to be an horror game, I'm wondering if my death against the Bertha was scripted or not. 🤔
Regardless, great job!

Damn. We really have some work to do on that tutorial 😅

A good fix for missing the gun in the first room could be to have the teleporter disabled until you take the gun.

But hey other than that, we're glad you had a great time playing our game! 😁

Thanks man, I'm glad you've enjoyed it! 😁

Indeed, the improvements are solid:

• We didn't have any tutorial in the game as it was mostly based on knowledge from Elden Ring (less the guns xD)
• Yes the progress was too slow for a jam. It's again quite similar to Elden Ring's progress but Elden Ring is a game were you spend many hours unlike a Jam game so, that was a bad reference on our part for that one 😅
• Ho you can sprint with left shift, and jump with space. That was on the page but not in the game, which brings us full circle to the first point. In game tutorial. Noted. 

xDDDD

That was a long time ago man 😂

But I'm still lurking to see your submission. Always a great time!

After the jam I had reflections about "what if I did a tower defense instead?"

Well you've just confirmed to me that it meshes very well with the theme 😂. A great game with an amazing presentation to back it up! Nice work! 

Thanks! 😁

Indeed shooters aren't for everyone so we understand. We're glad you liked the concept tho! 👏

I'm not a clicker guy usually, but I went as far as getting every single upgrade in this one. xD
I guess everyone likes big numbers. 😂
Well done sir!

What do you mean you're scaling my window? 😂

Real talk tho, that was great! The game is driping with polish!

Scaled ammos has a soft spot in my heart. xD

Hey, thanks for the feedback man! Indeed, you're right. This game needed more time in the oven before it can be released but hey, we were a little over confident with the 2 additional days to work on it.
The leveling system wasn't balanced enough to feel a real difference. In Elden Ring the jumps aren't that obvious either but it's a game that you play for hours but this game is probably like a few minutes of gameplay before you move on, so that's indeed time that could have been used for something else.
For the guns actually we had plans to have different powers, like:
- Poison bullets for damage over time
- Freeze bullets to slow down your opponent
- Bleed bullet for damage over time
This kind of stuff. But we were only able to prepare the basics of the system. Even in the environment, we had plans for other hazards, like poison swamps for example xD.
Next time, we'll go for something less ambitious tho.

Thanks man! We appreciate! 😁

Thank you! 😁

Thanks man! 😊

He he
Nice to see you again for this game jam! As always, the game was super fun!
The Art is really cute and having the controls explained inside the game was very nice!
Also please let the shop keeper have some rest. Dude doesn't deserves this, but he looks happy regardless... 😂

Thanks a lot man! Props to Enra for the music, he said he wanted to try a LoFi one and honestly, I was really impressed with the music he was able to come up with! 👏

About the controls, yes unfortunately we've received a lot of complaints about this 😅. I'm wondering if the swiping mechanism was misunderstood or if we just didn't test enough (was working well for us but yeah, we're the devs). We'll keep notes about this for future jams! 

Thanks! Indeed we've really turned on speed run mode for that one!

Hum about the controls tho, we're sorry to hear that...😅

Thanks man! 👏

THANKS MAN! 😁

Thanks dude! 😁

Hey, about the cleaning robot being a temp upgrade, the idea can also be tested to see what it implies inside the game, but I think indeed that having this being temporary would be more sweated to our game 🤔

About the delay between clicking and placing a block tho, we've tried it during development and it wasn't as fun as just drawing a continuous line. Basically, to avoid the player being overpowered we had 2 main ideas:

1. Player has a limited amount of blocks and must use them wisely

2. Block placement has a cooldown so the player makes sure he doesn't overdo this.

Solution 2 nerfed a lot the player and took away a little bit of the fun of the game so we decided to stick with 1. According to your comment tho, this still needs some balancing. A lot of comments suggested having fewer blocks to make the player use them more wisely. I think we're going to try this one and see how well it holds up! 👏

Thanks a lot man! 😁

Indeed upgrades screen was done on the last day so, not really the nicest screen in the world 😅 but we really wanted to get it in because upgrades and achievements were here to answer the question "Why would anyone want to play again?". Achievements show you that, you haven't discovered everything the game has to offer and upgrades make it easier for you on your next playthroughs.

About the removing block mechanism, we saw it as a reward for playing right: you can stack up a lot of blocks at the start of the game when it's easy and use them when the game takes the difficulty up a notch with the shooters and the wind zones. If a robot takes back your blocks for you, it would be like having infinite blocks, making the game way easier so, some balancing is required there. Should the robot be super hard to get? Should we make the game harder when the robot is here? Should we make special levels where we can have the robot and take the infinite blocks into account when balancing? We need to think it through but, your feelings about this have been heard. 👏

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing our game! 😁

Thanks a lot mate! 😁

Indeed with a larger timeframe, adding more upgrades/mechanics to the core concept of this game could take it to the next level and make it more enjoyable! We'll do our best to try to put the game in this direction. Thanks for playing our game! 🤝

Thanks a lot man! 😁

Indeed, at the start, it's easy to collect blocks when things are still going at normal speed. Later tho, when it starts to go faster, you can't do this as easily so, you'd better have saved some blocks for this moment!

About Blocku-dono, ho man, a lot of time has been invested into its AI to get it right but its brain is so simple tho 🤣.

Still, we're glad you had a fun time playing our game! 😁