Tidebell 潮钟

Dive from a sunlit coral reef through kelp forests and a broken freighter, over the edge of a wall and into the abyss, waking seven sleeping tide bells along the way. Wake them and the sea sings again.

How it works

Assets. All 48 models are generated by Python inside Blender: lofted fish, sharks, anglerfish, whales, mantas, turtles and jellyfish; corals grown as branching skeletons through the Skin modifier; kelp, sponges, anemones, rocks, a wreck, a moon gate, the bells and a whale skeleton. Each vertex carries painted colour, baked ray-cast ambient occlusion and an emission mask. There are no textures or downloaded assets.

World. The seabed is one analytic height function, used for the mesh, for collision and for placing about 18,000 instances of plants and rocks by zone.

Rendering. Every surface uses one hand-written underwater shading model. Sunlight is absorbed per colour channel with depth, red first, so the deep turns blue until your lamps bring colour back. There are animated caustics, headlamp cones and distance fog matched to the open-water backdrop, rendered to an HDR target with a ray-marched light-shaft pass, bloom and a filmic tonemap. Fish schools and jellyfish animate entirely in vertex shaders.

Audio. A water bed, a drone that sinks with depth, the bells, sonar and whale song are all synthesized with the Web Audio API.

Everything is bundled into one self-contained HTML file that makes no network requests.

Controls & tips

• WASD swim, mouse look, Space / C rise and sink, Shift boost
• Hold E to wake a bell, Q sonar ping marks the two nearest sleeping bells, F toggles lamps
• Tab opens the logbook, H hides the HUD, M mutes
• The hull is rated to 45 m at first; two bells raise that to 95 m and four remove the limit

The prompt

Made from the first of three sentences: "I want to make an underwater exploration game, and it should be as stunning as possible."

Credits

By hahaliu1029, released under the Apache License 2.0.

Objective

"Seven bells sleep beneath the bay. Wake them, and the sea will sing again." Swim to each bell and hold E to wake it. When all seven ring, the finale plays ("The sea remembers its song"), the Singer returns, and you can keep exploring as long as you like.

The seven bells, in order of depth

Bell	Zone
Shallows Bell	Sunlit Shallows: where the light still reaches the sand
Cathedral Bell	Kelp Cathedral: a forest that sways without wind
Wreck Bell	The Rusted Shelf: something came to rest here
Lip Bell	Twilight Wall: the edge of the daylight
Gorge Bell	Lantern Gorge: they drift, and they glow
Vent Bell	The Hadal Plain: no sun has ever touched this
Choir Bell	The Drowned Choir: the stones are listening

Depth: the hull limit

Your hull starts rated to 45 m. If you push past it, you'll see "Hull at its limit — wake more bells to go deeper".

• Wake 2 bells and the limit rises to 95 m.
• Wake 4 bells and the limit is gone, so you can reach the gorge, the vents and the choir.

So wake the shallow bells first (Shallows, Cathedral), then the Wreck and Lip bells, before heading for the deep three.

Finding the bells

• Q sends a sonar ping that marks the two nearest sleeping bells on screen.
• F toggles your lamps. Sunlight loses red first and the deep turns blue, so the lamps bring the colour back.
• The bell indicators on the HUD show how many you've woken.

The logbook (Tab)

New creatures go into your logbook as you find them. There are 15 entries: Sunstripe Darter · Blush Chromlet · Mosaic Parrotfish · Greenback Elder (turtle) · Cathedral Kelp · Silver Runner · Veil Ray · Reef Warden (shark) · Moon Lantern (jellyfish) · Star Minnow · Deep Lure (anglerfish: "Do not follow it.") · Lantern Stalk · Vent Plume · The Fallen Singer (a whale fall) · The Singer.

Controls

Key	Action
W A S D	Swim
Mouse	Look
Space / C	Rise / sink
Shift	Boost
Hold E	Wake a bell
Q	Sonar ping
F	Lamps on / off
Tab	Logbook
H / M	Hide HUD / mute