Posted May 29, 2019
So, after having played a bit of it, there's a few things that I think could be improved or changed.
1. Movement is very floaty and imprecise, which I have to imagine was a deliberate design decision for an underwater game. However, when the first dive site contains harmful obstacles, and you can receive damage merely from bumping into your surroundings too fast, floaty movement becomes a problem. My advice would be to go one way or the other - either lighten up on the damaging environmental elements and remove collision damage, or make turning and moving fast and reactive enough for players to navigate more easily.
2. I get the impression that this is a diving experience that's trying a little too hard to be a "game". A lot of the apparent difficulty and progression feels very artificial. Unlocking faster swimming speed and recharge time by collecting experience seems like a roundabout way of doing things. In fact, I'd argue that such a level of granularity in progression actually makes the game less fun. Why bother increasing the player's swim speed over the course of the game, when it only serves to frustrate the player early on?
3. Collecting treasure is, ultimately, not very fun. Once you've picked up one seashell, you've seen the vast majority of the types of treasure in the first area. Salvaging is more or less a collect-a-thon, and not a particularly interesting one. I'd advise taking a page from Endless Ocean: Blue World's book - have several distinct categories of collectible treasure, and make that known through the shape of the item. Once you surface, give the player the opportunity to appraise the items to find out their actual value. This adds an element of excitement and mystery to the collecting process, as you don't know just how valuable your find is until you finish the dive.
4. What is the point of having a limit on the flashlight? It's not for realism, obviously - any real-life flashlight should last for at least an hour of continuous operation, if not more. So, if not for realism's sake, why put such a low limit on something so necessary? Horror games have flashlights with short batteries for the sake of building tension and dread, but that hardly seems to be useful for this game. All a limited flashlight does in this circumstance is add another level of frustration.
There are other things that I would change, but these are some of the more egregious things I've noticed, just from my initial experience with the game. I think this game has a lot of potential, but I worry that several of the basic mechanics might need to be rethought in order to act as a solid, enjoyable baseline for future content.
1. Movement is very floaty and imprecise, which I have to imagine was a deliberate design decision for an underwater game. However, when the first dive site contains harmful obstacles, and you can receive damage merely from bumping into your surroundings too fast, floaty movement becomes a problem. My advice would be to go one way or the other - either lighten up on the damaging environmental elements and remove collision damage, or make turning and moving fast and reactive enough for players to navigate more easily.
2. I get the impression that this is a diving experience that's trying a little too hard to be a "game". A lot of the apparent difficulty and progression feels very artificial. Unlocking faster swimming speed and recharge time by collecting experience seems like a roundabout way of doing things. In fact, I'd argue that such a level of granularity in progression actually makes the game less fun. Why bother increasing the player's swim speed over the course of the game, when it only serves to frustrate the player early on?
3. Collecting treasure is, ultimately, not very fun. Once you've picked up one seashell, you've seen the vast majority of the types of treasure in the first area. Salvaging is more or less a collect-a-thon, and not a particularly interesting one. I'd advise taking a page from Endless Ocean: Blue World's book - have several distinct categories of collectible treasure, and make that known through the shape of the item. Once you surface, give the player the opportunity to appraise the items to find out their actual value. This adds an element of excitement and mystery to the collecting process, as you don't know just how valuable your find is until you finish the dive.
4. What is the point of having a limit on the flashlight? It's not for realism, obviously - any real-life flashlight should last for at least an hour of continuous operation, if not more. So, if not for realism's sake, why put such a low limit on something so necessary? Horror games have flashlights with short batteries for the sake of building tension and dread, but that hardly seems to be useful for this game. All a limited flashlight does in this circumstance is add another level of frustration.
There are other things that I would change, but these are some of the more egregious things I've noticed, just from my initial experience with the game. I think this game has a lot of potential, but I worry that several of the basic mechanics might need to be rethought in order to act as a solid, enjoyable baseline for future content.