The Ocean is a Sublime Enigma

Hey, Mr. Forest!

Hope you're well! To preface, I write this to improve my skill in game design analysis & to appreciate and critique the undertaking you must have went through to produce this beautiful game. I won't take into account the game jam aspect, only because I have no context of elements take more or less time. Moreover, I think feedback should be agnostic of time constraint. I hope you forgive me for any feedback that you already considered indev; I have no context of game dev.

That being said, let's dig in!

Visuals & Atmosphere

The Sub

Control Panel

activating control panel locks you in place, it could lock you in awkward positions

Handling

biggest blemish in my humble opinion

with forward velocity, reverse doesn't feel like it affects momentum in a way that's intuitive.

it seems the hitbox of the sub is a circle. This is a good design choice given the backtracking sometimes needed.

The Horror. 

Completely ineffective for me. the atmosphere did not provide enough tension

I believe if you had for instance limited the player's nav information, etc building tension through game mechanics that would have made the ending more effective

Hope this helps, feel free to contact me, and thank you for this wonderful experience. god bless you and much love. You may contact me, id love to talk abt this project.