Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Virtual Fish Tank
By jay-berlin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 934 | 2.91 | 47 | |
| Fun | 1016 | 2.46 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 647 | 3.14 | 47 | |
| Theme | 319 | 3.87 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 709 | 3.14 | 47 | |
| Audio | 656 | 2.75 | 45 | |
| Humor | 768 | 2.18 | 43 | |
| Mood | 573 | 3.14 | 46 |
While stress level is important to manage, it doesn't actually kill the fish like hunger and sickness, so watch those two meters more carefully as they're the only two things that can kill your fish. Welcome to the balancing act of virtual fish-keeping!
This is an interesting experiment. It is a bit slow for a gamejam where people often try to check out a lot of games, but I really like the concept. Also nice visuals and audio!
Nice game! =D I would consider adding names above the fish and maybe make them all a different color, so you can better see what fish needs what. Also after some time you are out of food and medicine? Any way to regain those?
"Total poop" is a tracker I wasn't expecting to see today.
It's a neat little simulator. I love games where there are a lot of little visual interactions happening in the background.
Is there a way to recoup resources, or is it just trying to optimize how long you can survive with the resources?
Could be neat as a tycoon type game, keep fish alive long enough till you can sell them and use the resources to buy more food and fish.
There isn't a ton of decision making or strategy as is. Still neat to watch the fish swim around and interact with the environment.
To answer some questions, I was planning to let you buy more food and medicine with an allowance that increments every so often. Had to cut it for time, but I'll try to include it after the jam.
As for pacing, I was planning to speed things up a bit for the jam but I couldn't get the balancing right.
I'm loving the ideas you guys have. Keep them coming and thanks for the feedback everyone!
Actually quite a soothing game to play, especially with the background noise. I like the simple system mechanics, and I can see how this could be iterated upon. Something like a survival timer might have been nice just to be able to see how long your fish have survived so far. Good entry, had fun checking it out :)
Slow and soothing, fun to play, but just a bit too slow for my taste. Very innovative though.
It would be nice for the the game to be little faster, but I otherwise enjoyed playing. It would also be fun if we there was names above the fish. Otherwise, had fun checking this out.
Good stuff! I liked the AI on the fish when you feed them. I lost interest pretty quick (probably a common problem among jam games.. I know mine is kind of boring), so I didn't see if fish eventually have babies, or how you restock food. Would be interested to expand upon!
Loved the fish poop, found it funny when it landed on top of another fish. Good contrast with a lot of the other super frantic games in the jam.
This realy is innovative! :) And calming for sure. I think game could use a little less informative ui (maybe status icons directly on fishes, this could come along with some more feedback to player like hearths poping out when fish eats and it would be great place to add some sounds to the game) Some interactions with individual fishes would make sens to have more than one fish in the tank. At this point it realy doesn't matter if there is 1 or 100 fishes
This was a really lovely and peaceful game. The graphics were simple but basic and the fish AI was really relaxing to watch them swim around. The idea was very unique as well and worked well.
good game man
Very soothing. I almost feel as if I would've liked it even slower. Like a thing you can have up on an extra screen and looking at from time to time to see how the fishes are doing.
Nice concepts. Quite tricky to find the right balance of the parameters, but enjoyable. I like how the fish float.
Nice concept, as mentioned above, could have done with the ability to speed up time a little bit, but a nice calming game!
I like the concept and how peaceful it is. I had fishes off my own years back, so I can tell is accurate. The sound is great. I know it sounds crazy, but what if you grow into the concept and build somekind of relationship mini game among the fish, like coffee talk.
Very cute. Now I want a fish tank! :)
That's like my game just in 3d! I think it would be great if the resourced like food and medicine would replenish, but otherwise really like it! The information on your individual fishes is also really cool!
There's something zen like to keeping care of virtual pets even when the theme does want to introduce the threat of death, and I really enjoyed keeping care of these little fish!
Now that's a pretty annoying sound.... I would get the generator of that tank fixed :rofl:
Good entry :thumbsup_tone1:
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
Nice game, i would say that something is missing in the game play but thanks for it!
I liked the idea here, and this looks like it was probably a lot of fun to create! I felt like it mainly suffered from pacing; there just wasn't enough for me to do. It did not necessarily need more gameplay: If you added some chill background music and more scenery, that would have been enough to make it a meditative style of game. As is, I felt more interaction was necessary to keep the gameplay interesting. There was no score or timer listed, so I wasn't sure if I was working toward some ultimate goal, or if I was just supposed to keep feeding the fish until they all died, which would have taken probably 30 mins or so at the rate my food was holding out.
Despite those criticisms, I think this was a very cool little tank simulator, and was impressively polished for such a short jam. Great job!
What a relaxing and enjoyable simulator! The foley sounds were done excellently: they were calming without ever feeling too repetitive or loud. I agree with other that the game could be a little faster _or_ slower, to keep the player constantly engaged, or able to check out for a while. Well done!
Umm, I kind of love this. I want a full game of this that is in real time that I can just have on my computer. The bubbles and the pump hum is just such a soothing sound. It legitimately felt calming to just watch the fish and take care of them. I wish there was more content, like different fish to get or decorations to put in the tank, but that's a good problem for you to have. What a wonderful entry, you should be proud.
Nice concept, I don't think I have seen anything comparable. Kind of the fish version of Tamagotchi from the 90s. The noise from the water pump is bit annoying after a while, it's nice to have but you should tune it down a bit. I recon you run out of time to implement more fun gameplay or other mechanics, but I would definitely play more if you add more :) it's fun anyway and well done for completing a game in the 48h that's already a winning in its own regardless.
@purpledartfrog @sydream You'll be happy to know that I've toned down the air pump sound, and made an option to turn it off. Once voting is over, I'll push an update that includes the change as well as lots of other things I've been working on.
I never understood the fascination with fish in a tank... and the game didn't really teach me otherwise. Game play wise, there wasn't really much variation and I got bored pretty quickly. Watching the fish go from one side to the other trying to eat the pellets didn't really resonate with me. But I guess there is a target audience for this. I'm pretty sure, that I'm not one of them :) The fish animations looked cute though... how they floated about, crashing into the walls of the tank. The tank itself could use some more interesting stuff in it. Most aquariums have cute little pirate stuff and plants all about. I think that would add a lot to this simulation.
All in all, A good entry, I think. Just not for me
This is a great start on a lovely, meditative game. The see the atmosphere of the sound as a key element of the piece, so consider refining that to make it as warming and calming as possible (I would take out the buzzing sound and focus on variations in bubble sounds). Consider adding visual cues on the fish as to their state... and maybe focus the game quality-of-life levels instead of life and death. Consider an option for adding scenery to the tanks... mountains, castles, etc, with openings for the fish to swim through... all adding to their overall quality of life score, and the visual quality of the piece. You did lots of great work here within the short window of the game jam.
The idea is fun, but the game feels unfinished.
@studiocurtis @jk5000 It's definitely in a semi-finished state and I've been working on some improvements since submitting. I'm planning to upload a new and improved version after voting is over though, so check back on my itch page in a week or so (https://capitoljay.itch.io/virtual-fish-tank) if you wanna see what I've been up to these past few weeks.
Thanks Jay. Good luck with the updates :-)
If anyone was looking to play the updated version, I put it out on itch.io this morning. I also put together a devlog on the updates here: https://capitoljay.itch.io/virtual-fish-tank/devlog/145882/big-updates-for-little-fish