Little fishing game

Actually i got the idea for the game like yesterday. I’ve found this game by PolyMarsYT while I was checking what the man is up to https://polymars.itch.io/sea-sweeper

And it remined me of a prototype I’ve made many years ago

checking

Omg it was summer 2016. How the time flies…

Just had a great talk with StatT and he gave me so many good ideas on the game. Super excited to make a small arcade game
Let’s go

working on the new mockup

The new prototype with the trash in the game. The goal is to get the trash out but keep fish alive

I ditched the area-catching for now when you could loop the rope line and catch the fish inside the enclosed area. Now if you cross your own line - it starts retracting. And I like it more so far

I’ve worked on core gameplay features in spare time from the day job.

• made it so that when a fish crosses the line - it starts retracting
• same when you release the hook
• when the hook rolls back - the things attach now to it and follow till the end instead of being removed

when you collect the loot like this - you get $
but i’m not sure whether you should get money for fish or not
because you’re not supposed to catch fish
the punishment will happen later in the game. so i might as well give the money to the player

something to think about design while cooking. will send a video later

here’s the game so far
as i said, you gotta catch trash while avoiding fish
you move the hook through trash and then it rolls back collecting everything
a fish can trigger the roll back when it touches your line so you gotta be quick and nimble

added a combo system which is the key for this mechanic
you get a loooot more points for doing combos so getting trash safely one by one is a bad strat

trying different controls for the hook. here the hook slowly gets deeper and you control it with left/right arrows
it’s much slower gameplay and feels more like you control a missile. which could be fun tbh. still has room for adjustments
maybe i should ask myself, why change?

while researching fishing games, i’ve found this one https://serpexnessie.itch.io/scale-the-depths from the resent GMTK jam
i was thinking about the same controls. but it’s kind of obvious solution for this kind of game. but the issue is that it lacks controls depth for me taste
and wrong energy vibe

not to critisize the game tho, especially gamejam. the loop is quite fun and i easily can see it as a full game

for my game since fishing is the core (and only) mechanic i want something punchy, deep and precise. needs thinking

Added boost button (limited upgrade?) and now it plays much more fun. not reverting commits yet to the previous controls scheme!

Yesterday StatT helped me with feedback for controls too. We made it so that you turn faster when hook’s velocity is opposite to the direction you press. Makes it feel much more tight and less floaty

So now it’s very close the to the vibe I was going for: you aim a bit slowly and then shoot the hook on boost. Feels pretty well so far (i hope i don’t lie to myself here), allows for upgrades and a bit of depth

You can’t aim up though as you slowly sink down

You also can’t (maybe some of player will though) make a clean run. But i’m totally fine with that

I’ll create something special to people who achieve that!

it’s been a while since i’ve drawn pixel art
decided to spend some time on the player character

the problem with the new controls is that since you can’t go up - it’s hard to get stuff from the top left-right sides since the hook starts from the middle and goes down

⭐️introducing throwing the hook mechanic⭐️

so now you can select a direction and force using same buttons

Oh and yeah, I updated the sprites a bit for a test. Looks neat, isn’t it?

Got a bunch more ideas for the game to explore with StatT
But right now I work on remaking the hook throwing mechanic. Trying to make it more classic where a pointer ping-pongs and you hit a button to select a direction and force
Some WIP sprites

here’s the new mechanic so far. feels much more intuitive than the previous one

also it would allow to add a thing: wouldn’t it be cool to make it so that if you throw the hook up high enough - it will go deeper immediatelly, because it would have higher entry velocity

experimenting with controls again and this hook starting to drift was unexpected 😄

balanced this all out and it plays pretty well right now! gonna keep it.

I’ve already removed that a fish could trigger a rollback. because it kind of cuts the flow off. and given that you can go in any direction now - a lot of fish could trigger that

but it means that when you rollback now - the might be a lot of fish on your path. which Statt has correctly pointed out that it doesn’t feel fair. bc you were so cool dodging the fishes and now for some reason you collect it, which you can’t control much

so i just removed it

Here’s a progress so far. Improved the controls, added the timer on the top. But it doesn’t do anything yet when ends.
Now when you roll back - the path is created only between collected points because you don’t need other stuff anymore

right now, you can just slowly avoid the fish and collect the loot. to combat there are a couple of things:

• when you cross your own line - you get rollback
• timer limits you. so i’ll balance in such a way so going slowly you would make less than skilled and fast
• limited rope length
• maybe i could make controls even harder to master
• add external forces and obstacles
• make the trash move too

Updated sprites a bit while drawing other sprites for the timer ending. Using ENDESGA’s palette from lospec. Love it!
https://lospec.com/palette-list/endesga-32