Depths of Color is an endless scrolling game where you pilot a cheerful yellow submarine...or pink, red, or blue! Whichever color you are, there is plenty of aquatic life for you to add to your collection (by the very scientific method of running into them).

But take heed! Colliding with jellyfish and squid that don't match your color will damage your sub. Collect the correct ones to heal yourself back up.

Keep a sharp lookout for the speedy rainbow "Colorizers" that appear from time to time. If you can snag one of them, it can save your life by changing all the jellyfish and squid in your vicinity to the same color--just note that it changes your sub, too!

Controls

ARROW KEYS moves your submarine.

SPACE uses a Colorizer, if you have one handy (Hint: Check the upper left corner of the totally finished UI to see what you have).

Z zooms the game in windowed mode.

F toggles full screen mode.

R restarts the game at any time.

ESCAPE quits the game.

I toggles some debug info, including the "depth" you've gotten to, if you're curious about that.

Credits

Art, programming, and sound by Kris24

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  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Very challenging game! I included it in my GM48: Colors are Important compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/5oPza5MRAiY

  • Naxos
    Lv. 7

    Nice game! Somehow both relaxing and challenging at the same time. The music and sounds were well done! The submarine felt appropriately floaty and sluggish. I like how you have to manage your colourizer resource and try to pick the best time to use it, and I like how it acts as both a defense and a healing mechanism.

    The big squids were intimidating -- fast and high damage. It felt nearly impossible to escape them (I think I did maybe once?) but maybe that's what you were going for.

    The other thing was later on, the squid lines got so thick that I had no choice but to either pop a colourizer or find the weakest spot in the line (either from there being few squids or a lot of squids that shared my color) to crash through. I mean, I like that you have to make that choice sometimes, but in the end, I was making the choice frequently enough that I could not avoid destruction. Though that may have been intended. I'm not sure if this is meant to be 'infinite'-able?

    Overall, this was a fun and mostly relaxing game! Well done!

    PS. I wish I'd paid more attention, but I think I got in the 700-800s on my playthrough.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Wow! I think you scored higher than I ever managed to do while playtesting, so good job, haha! Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it. The difficulty scaling is a bit off - I wanted to make sure it wasn't too easy but I maybe went overboard. My post-jam version limits the overall number of jellyfish (which otherwise keeps increasing with each wave) which keeps it from becoming just completely blobs-ville

  • FrogWax
    Lv. 5

    Hey, I really like the momentum of movement in this, really works to give the underwater vibe. I wish I'd had more of a defence mechanism against the squids, as I struggled to avoid them and get through the walls of jellyfish when I had no charges on my colorizer. The audio was spot on, and the whole feel of the game was really nice, I just wish the difficulty curve was more gentle.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!

      Balance was one of my issues this time around but I'm really happy to hear you enjoyed the audio as that was one of the things I really wanted to focus on for this jam.

  • trolog
    Lv. 6

    Hey,

    A nice and simple dodging game.

    I like the controls of the sub, nice and floaty feel to them, and bouncing of walls. I also like the soft glow of the jellysquids.

    I love that you can't change your color without collecting charges, this is done well, most games just let you change colors on the fly making it easy. I prefer having chrages.

    The music goes well with the game, good pacing.

    I'd say the art is lacking as there isn't much there and the overall gameplay could have been improved with more features.

    I'd say use a decent font, this could have helped drastically, and increase the size.

    EDIT: I got a score of 400+ (died just before I got count, would be nice to keep this on screen after u die)

    The text in the top left is a little small and out of the way, it would have been nice for it to be a bit more obvious, is what I meant. Hope this clears it up. I keep trying to beat my best score, I love how you should really conserve the color changes.

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and giving your thoughts!

      When you say size, you're referring to the font in game, right? Yeah, I wish I would have had time to work with that (it's just literally default GameMaker font/Ariel for the HTML5 version), I know that hurts the visual appeal a lot, besides the unfinished art.

      I appreciate the feedback, very happy to hear there were aspects you liked too!

  • Jon Drobny
    Lv. 3

    Good entry! I think the core mechanics are strong. I had some trouble making progress the first time I played, since it gave me one color changing charge and then didn't give me another for several minutes. When it did put more on the screen, it gave me three at once and they were surrounded by a screen-filling layer of jellies! Definitely had some good emotional tension though; a little balance on spawning and some more enemies and this would be a complete game. I wonder if you could make the sub more responsive without losing the feeling of being underwater - maybe some nonlinear acceleration or something? I'm not sure. Keep up the good work!

    Petri
    Submitted

    Petri

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and commenting! I do wish I would have had time to tweak the spawning a bit more as well as adjust the parameters more. At the last second I turned down the healing factor of the "correct" jellys which makes it hard to counteract the inevitable collisions with "wrong" ones that happen when they flood the screen.

  • Hyper Freeze Games
    Lv. 17

    Fun little game! The squids scare me, tho T-T Risk/reward balance is quite fun!

    The music was very chill, and the little "cling"-sound when collecting jellyfish was satisfying.

    I think it lacks content a little, but it's a promising game to be enhanced further!

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! I hope to keep working on it a bit to finish implementing all the ideas I had that I just didn't have time/knowledge to do.

  • Nauris
    Lv. 2

    Neat little game! Lovely ambient music and the art was ok too, while very simple. The gameplay was a bit hard however, it very quickly spawned full screen of jellyfish that were basically impossible to avoid, so you were guaranteed to take a lot of damage. It would have been better, if the spawns were a bit more thought out. But good job overall!

    • kris24
      Patron
      kris24 Developer of Depths of Color

      5yrs ago

      Thanks for playing and reviewing! Glad you liked the music; the sound was kind of hastily thrown together in the last hour before the deadline but I was pretty happy with out it turned out, considering.

      Of course, I wanted to do lots more with the art, as well as give it a bit more "juice" but ran out of time. As far as the gameplay goes, yeah, it's not balanced well. I guess in principle I was thinking that the player will end up taking damage no matter what, but it's up to judicious use of the powerups to avoid the worst of it and to heal yourself back up.

      Your game was my favorite that I've played so far; incredibly polished for a 48hr game!