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Deep Trouble: 1st-person submarine commander
Deep Trouble casts you as the commander of a submarine under attack. She’s taken some damage already and now the lights are out and your commanding officers are unconscious. You must navigate between the control stations on the bridge and fend off your enemy while making sure the ship doesn’t implode under the pressure!
- Sonar controls. This is the main station where the majority of the gameplay happens. Here you can aim the submarine and fire off torpedoes into the void. The rate at which the sonar pings tells you how close you are to having an enemy sub lined up in your sights.
- Torpedo reload. You can only have one torpedo loaded in the tube at a time and must manually reload each time you fire one.
- Pressure release. The automatic pressure control system has been damaged in the blast and now you must manually release the pressure whenever it gets to a dangerous level.
Battle stations
11A11 10001 0 = Space you can walk 10001 1 = Wall B000C A = Sonar and firing controls 10001 B = Steam/pressure release controls 10001 C = Torpedo reload controls 10X01 X = Spawn point 11111
The locator sound for the sonar station is of course a classic sonar ping. The locator for the reload station is an alarm which only plays when the torpedo tube is empty, since that's the only time you need to interact with that station. The pressure station has two locator sounds; there is a constant steam hiss emanating from the station which gets louder as the pressure increases, which not only gives the player feedback as to the pressure level but also can be used to find the station and release the pressure if you've won yourself a few free seconds; and there's also a different, more urgent-sounding alarm than the reload station's one, for when the pressure has reached a dangerously high level and you need to find the station and release the pressure as soon as possible.
Interacting with either the reload or pressure release stations simply triggers them and the player can then continue moving around the bridge. Interacting with the sonar station causes the player to sit down at the controls so that they can now maneuver the submarine instead of themselves (interacting again will stand back up and return to the bridge).
Ramping the gameplay
- Walking around the bridge.
- Finding and interacting with the sonar controls.
- Using the sonar to aim the ship at an enemy.
- Firing a torpedo.
- Hearing the reload alarm, leaving the sonar controls and finding the reload controls.
- Reloading the torpedo tube. If the very first enemy is still alive, go back to 2.
- Enemies now spawn periodically; the klaxon alerts the player each time a new enemy is added to the sonar.
- The pressure system is now active and can be released at any time. If the pressure builds to dangerous levels an alarm will sound. The player already understands this means they need to interact with something, as the reload controls used the same alarm mechanic (but different alarm) when they were introduced.
Game over
Improvements, new features
- Option to play as a female commander, as described above.
- Multiple difficulty settings. The area around the sub is split into a number of sectors and you'll hit an enemy with a torpedo if you're aiming anywhere in their sector. Fewer sectors would therefore make it much easier to aim; for example if there were only 4 sectors then the player would only need to aim within 45° of their target in order to hit them. Each sector houses exactly 0 or 1 enemy so limiting the number of sectors would also limit the maximum number of concurrent enemies the player has to deal with. Difficulty could also be changed by altering the amount of time before enemies on the sonar or dangerous pressure levels kills the player, as well as the rate at which enemies spawn and that pressure increases.
- Indication of impending doom. Currently there's no aural feedback as to how close you are to dying from either the enemies on the sonar or the mounting pressure. This could be anything from a simple timer to more subtle volume manipulation and additional feedback sounds.
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References
- Creative Commons Zero License,
- Attribution License,
- Attribution Non-Commercial License,
- Sampling+ License