Dead Water (Playdate)

FOR PLAYDATE · MADE FOR THE UNCRANK'D COZY AUTUMN GAME JAM

Dive for treasure by day. Survive the dark water by night. You pilot a small submarine with a harpoon on a rope. During the day the water is clear and quiet. You can see the rocks, the crates on the bottom and the fish, and the fish leave you alone. Find something worth money, harpoon it and tow it back to the base. The more you drag behind you, the slower you go.

At night the water goes black. You can still make out the outline of the rocks, but everything else is only visible in your lamp's beam. The minnows are gone, and something made of metal plates is swimming toward your light.

Cargo you bring back at night pays double. That's also when the machines come out.

DAY AND NIGHT

The jam themes were Light and Dark and Nightmare, so the whole game is built around both. Every place looks and plays differently depending on the time of day.

• By day the sea is drawn in black ink on white. Minnows scatter when you get close, the one-eyed shooter fish won't bother you unless you shoot it first, and the cargo holds of the sunken ships are locked.
• By night the picture flips, and deeper down everything goes black. Machines come out: fish made of armor plates, a mechanical eye on cables, walkers that mine ore on the sea floor and carry it into the ships, and turrets that unfold from under their armor. The cargo holds open. Take out a base's guards and its vault opens too.
• Losing isn't the end. If your boat gets wrecked, it's towed back and repaired. You lose whatever was on the rope and pay for the repairs, but your upgrades stay. And you can always wait out the night at the base.

WHAT YOU DO

• 16 missions from Mavka, who runs the base. She shows you how the boat works, sends you out for cargo, and eventually down to the Idol at the bottom of Dead Water.
• 4 places to dive, from a shallow harbor right under the base to a station 180 meters down. New places open up as your boat gets better.
• Cargo on a real rope. Crates, amphoras, chests, and strongboxes buried under the sand that you dig out with the gun. You can tow several at once, but if the load is too heavy the rope snaps, so you'll want the thicker one from the shop.
• Upgrades. Five armor levels, each with its own look and a deeper depth limit. Better gun, harpoon, engine and lamp. A torpedo that hangs under the hull, a swivel to fire it backward at whatever's chasing you, a second lamp, and speed control.
• Sonar that points you to what you're looking for: your mission target, the nearest enemy, loot, or buried loot.
• Visible damage. The hull dents, cracks and starts leaking as it takes hits. Dead fish flip belly up and sink. Machines spark and go dark.

CONTROLS

You start with just a few controls and get the rest as you buy new gear. Every control you have shows up on screen as an icon, new ones blink until you've used them, and Mavka's first missions walk you through the basics. By the end the boat can do a lot, but you never have to learn it all at once.

From the first dive:

• Crank: steer. It's the only way to turn the boat, so your right hand stays on the crank and your left on the D-pad
• Up: engine on / off. No need to hold it
• Left: fire the gun straight ahead. Hold for continuous fire
• B: harpoon. Hold to aim, release to fire
• A: sonar. Hold A to pick what it searches for

As you buy the gear:

• Down: fire a torpedo. Slow, one at a time, but it hits hard
• Right: turn the torpedo to face backward or forward. If you've bought the torpedo lamp, it turns along with it
• Hold Up and turn the crank: set your top speed (after you buy speed control)

The gun and the torpedo aim a little on their own. When an enemy is in range, a dotted line shows where your shot will go. You can check all the controls anytime on the Controls page in the game.

TIPS

• Until you have a lamp, get back to the dock before dark. While you're docked, the base repairs your hull and recharges the battery.
• Each armor level has a max depth. Go deeper and the hull starts creaking, then leaking.
• You can shoot mines from a distance. Same with turrets, but only at night. During the day they're folded up under their armor.
• In black water, rely on the sonar. It shows everything you can harpoon and everything that bites.
• Walkers only move along the sea floor, so it pays to stay above it.

RUBDUBDUB

Dead Water has a RUBDUBDUB code. Where to enter it, what you get and what it's for, you'll have to figure out yourself. The game won't tell you, and neither will this page. One code gets you one prize, and once the prize is gone, the code works again.

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK

This is a jam game. If you play it, please leave a rating and a comment here. That's the one thing I'm asking for, and it'll help me decide whether to keep working on it. Bug reports are welcome too. Just tell me what happened and which Playdate model and OS version you have.

ALSO FROM ME

MonoTanks is my 1-bit take on Battle City for Playdate, with 100 missions, ten bosses and an endless BATTLE mode. There's a free demo you can play right in your browser.

CREDITS

Music: "Library Of Babel" and "Modern Plague" (Retro Gaming Versions) by LonePeakMusic.