jk5000 2021-04-26 10:52
Overall a weird and a fun little game. The fishing part is perhaps a bit too fast, but else a pretty good jam game.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Pescuit Pe Plajă
By trexxak
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 689 | 3.11 | 42 | |
| Fun | 668 | 2.96 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 717 | 2.72 | 42 | |
| Theme | 822 | 2.70 | 42 | |
| Graphics | 565 | 3.22 | 42 | |
| Audio | 557 | 2.88 | 41 | |
| Humor | 122 | 3.48 | 39 | |
| Mood | 432 | 3.28 | 41 |
Overall a weird and a fun little game. The fishing part is perhaps a bit too fast, but else a pretty good jam game.
Legendary instructions lol. I also thought the art was really goofy, but in a good way! One issue I had though was the music only played through my left speaker.
I'm not sure I understand why it's an ant but at least it's different. The fish bar part got way too fast for me in the second half. I like all the weird stuff to fish up.
One button games are perfect for LD and I liked this one. It's good to be an ant
I love the art style! The objects and environments all look so lovely
@jk5000 Thank you! I'm relieved you say it's weird! While creating it, I found it to be "way too cliché" :D
@alec Huh, I'll look into it as soon as I get time for it. Could totally be that I messed up something while making the music stuff... Thank you for the heads-up!
@taft-punk Well, the ant lives underground, so when coming up with a character I thought it to be fitting with the theme :D Glad you liked the weird stuff to fish out, as I spent waaaaay too much time on that!
@cheesepencil Very glad you liked it! It's funny, while creating it I kept thinking that there was way too little going on, but after releasing it I have to say it's the only game I entered with I personally actually enjoyed playing immediately :D
@tad-i-guess Thank you so much! The style was actually accidental at first, but I stuck with it as it was easily replicable and fast!
I like the idea of playing a thoughtful ant. I would have liked more varying gameplay instead of more variety in fishes to catch. Although I liked the changing backgrounds/levels. Music appears only on my left speaker. The physics give the fishing mechanic a nice touch.
Unique as always! :smile: It is an interesting bit of mediation. I think I achieved a higher consciousness level after I fished out my "Previous Jam Game". I would love for the ant to comment on his finds! Imagine how nice it would be to get inside his head! Instead of just being in my own :wink:
I only noticed one issue, that has already been mentioned by others: music only plays on the left channel.
Also, an interesting thing. All the things I fish out disappear after a while. EXCEPT for the snake-fish guys. They stay forever and accompany me even between locations. Is it... a snake-fish invasion?! Should I panic now?!
Screenshot_5.jpg
What a fun minigame! The main gameplay is simple but finally very addictive. It seems to me that your nephew drawn everything in your project, but it is just hilarious. I had fun playing. Well done ++
Hello again man! How nice to see you participating in LD48! By the way, your game is very relaxing. The graphics are simple, just like the gameplay. I found his interpretation of the topic interesting. Good work!
I really liked the music and the overall feel of the game. Is the score just random from items you catch or you get more if you are faster?
Great stuff , getting the fish on target was a challenge, I ended up trying to hit the red zone and hitting the green by failing to time it for the red. It'd be great to have a tally of all the things pulled from the deep at the end. :scream_cat:
Loving the art and the music's oddly meditative.
A lot of people participate in game jams because they want to get experience to work in the games industry and that's perfectly fine... but they often try to make a game that fits a popular genre, and unfortunately often end up making a soulless watered-down version of a popular game, which is instantly forgotten right after playing it.
This however... this is the kind of game that game jams are for. It's so unique that it can't be compared to anything else.
I won't forget about your game and neither will other people who have played it! :smile:
clear, simple submission. some of the fish slider things got pretty quick after a while, but not bad.
Nice little game! I did not expect a fishing game to pop up, but there it is. A simple gameplay that works well, it was fun to see what kind of stuff I would be able to fish down there. The music was good as well.
Congrats!
@bytinggames Thank you so much for your feedback! I do have some ideas for a post-LD release to break the loop up just a little bit, or rather make it a bit more interesting :D
@fabula-rasa Aww thanks! :3 I felt like working on my very first game without any novel or at least a bit interesting ideas, but it turns out people still find it weird, which makes me happy honestly :D
I really like the idea of letting the ant comment on its finds! The items all have a "flavour-text" property, but I couldn't implement it in time. My plan was to put it on the item itself as hoverable tooltip of some kind, but your idea is MUCH better o: Thanks for the suggestion!
And yeah... the eels. I panicked a bit and did a stupid thing - instead of using object-inheritance, I had 30 mildly different versions of a fish, and one of them wasn't noticed it should despawn after 20 seconds... This will be refactored for the post-LD! At the same time, I guess I could honor the bug with the eels still being a bit more persistent than the other fish :D
Thank you so much for your awesome feedback!
@geckoo1337 I'm happy you liked it :D Yeah, some drawings look kind of too childlike, I guess, but rest assured that was all me u_u
@vphyre Hey, how are you? Can only mirror that notion, great to see you back! Glad you found it simple, as that was just what I was going for after overscoping too much in my previous attempts. Not to say I'll never do something very ambitious again, but this time at least I wanted to play it as safe as possible. Thank you for your praise :3
@esosek Aw, thanks for the compliments! The points one 'fish' gives is determined by its difficulty rank (translated into the speed at which the indicator moves) and to a lesser (but still noticeable extent) by its size. Which... is not really the optimal way of doing things, but I figured fishing up a big one should still feel rewarding. As the difficulty-curve is too steep at the moment though, I may change that up a bit.
@johnnysix Thank you so much! Your idea of the tally is such a great suggestion O: I'll implement that for a Post-LD for sure!
@willjardine Aw thanks :3 I find the music kind of annoying honestly, but maybe that's just because I heard it too much :D
@secret-magic-404 Wow, this may just be the loveliest comment I ever received (which means a lot, because almost everyone seems to be very nice around here)! Thank you so, so much for your nice words! You hit the nail on the head for the type of games I try to make - unique experiments and tests of my imagination and skills. My skills aren't as plenty at this point, but I can only get better, right? :D As much as you won't forget my silly fishing minigame, I won't forget your words - they are now physically laminated and stare at me everytime I look over to my motivation board!
@miej Thank you so much! I was going for clear and simple this time around, so this means a lot to me!
@linky439 Thank you, really glad you enjoyed the game!
Exciting game, really kept me intrigued about those 30 hand-drawn fishable treasures. I was surprised when I finally found my last LD game on the bottom of some of the weird lakes.
Seriously, I was also thinking to make a fishing game, but then switched to a different idea. What would be great to add is some progression with fishing rod upgrades, different baits and ability to sell caught fish. But that would be a way bigger scope.
Overall, very nice simple game. I liked the drawings and fish jumping out of the lake. Good job! screenshot.png
What a lovely game! Love the instructions! Artstyle is fun, and the music is good (it _didn't_ actually get to an annoying level of repetitive)! Fully enjoyed!
That was an amusing experience! Loved the art-style! Would love music more, if it didn't try to go through one ear *laughs*. I chose convenience btw, since you didn't make a Linux build ;)
I stayed for quite a while to see what I can fish out and was rewarded with some interesting finds. Here is my greatest discovery:
giant_poop3.png
One can wonder about composition. Was it coincidence, or some kind of prophetic message from the author... xD
I think I saw everything there is to see. It was cool getting to new environments and seeing all the random things you can fish.
Fun game!
had a laugh just seeing what would come out next. also the first time the level changed it felt like thats what i hooked and reeled in, like i caught the entire ocean.
Typical from you! A calming experience that gets you thinking. Lot's of games demand your attention and lots of people play for that reason, but with this I was able to zone out and really think about things with the slow music and artwork that I can only describe as also.. calming, not sure if this is intentional but judging by your past entries, it is. The feedback loop is addictive and the game feels very polished. Truly deserves the word 'experience'
Charming and simple, as always. We didn't realize that the game ended on the cloud level, so Zhohan got up to 3167 points before ragequitting!
[Thanks for submitting your game to the stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007626304?t=01h51m58s)
This was a nice little relaxing entry. Sorry we ended up going on a lot of random tangents as we played. :stuck_out_tongue: The art is super relaxing though, and the premise is simple enough where you kind of lose track of time while you're playing...nice job!
The music and the drawings gave it a nice smooth mood, which was reflected well in the gameplay. Although the fish went quite fast for me at some point making it hard to catch them. I wanted to finish the game to see all the items and level drawings and I enjoyed the game while I played it but I think the gameplay gets boring pretty fast. Overall very nice moody game with simple fun gameplay, but this gameplay is hard to extend to make it interesting in the long-term.
Not a bad little entry. Good job
Hello buddy, how are you! I'll give my opinion but without giving "spooiler", what a wonderful entry to be honest, one of the best I've found here so far, everything is very well thought out, the art, the elements that are caught, the music, everything has a meaning so important, that only those who have enough sensitivity will understand, this is very emotional congratulations, in a jam I believe it is good to make a game that becomes fun, but better than that it can always be a great opportunity to express, ideas, feelings and do experiments and you managed to do it all with praise, a big hug.
Awww what a cute little game, I love it! The idea is really unique and all the treasure is fascinating (Your last jam game XDD got me). Cool entry!
What I find very interesting about this game is the contrast between the framing of it and the actual depth of the mechanics. In particular, the art style is somewhat disjointed, and moreover, not animated or "juicy", or any of the other things one would expect from a video game. The art creates an expectation of non-game-ness, to some degree.
Then, the initial fishing mechanic reinforces this idea. The bobber disappears and the fish meter shows up, and it doesn't seem like a particularly deep fishing game.
But then the game throws a curveball and makes the fishing game completely different from what was expected. The fish speeds up a little bit and this doesn't seem out-of-place, but then it speeds up so much and the game changes entirely.
I really thought this was great. I was not even able to time the fish meter with my eyes once it reached the fast fish. The best I could do was either close my eyes and hit the spacebar at a random time, and hope I caught the fish, or I could try to really intuit when I should hit the spacebar. I did manage to pull off the second strategy a couple times, and it feels really interesting. I essentially had to look away from the screen and just sort of feel the internal pulse of the fish meter, and that was a super interesting kind of interaction.
And then, at the very end, the fish meter becomes even more unusual. The fish starts jumping around without a constant velocity, and so it is now impossible to time the fish based on pure rhythm. At this point I have a really hard time actually catching any fish, although I managed to get a few.
This contrast between the uneventful framing and the actual difficulty squeezed into this fish meter is really fun. This might be a weird comparison, but this reminds me a lot of the game Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby--a game that was developed, almost certainly, to be a kid's game, but ended up being ridiculously difficult to the point that it spawned memes about Christopher Robin being an eldritch god.
I don't think I have much to say about the rest of the game--I'm sure there are interesting things to say about the variety of items or the music, etc... but to me the fishing meter mechanic just really stood out, and really made this game something quite neat.
Impressive that you managed to make this by yourself. Just so you know, other members of my team gathered around the computer and laughed as I continually yelled at the PC after messing up again and again on the final level. 10/10 would yell at video game again
@mykola Oh nice idea with the progression system and I definitely agree! It would be cool to sell fish in order to buy some upgrades for examples O: Thanks for your suggestions!
@saintchristopher777 Very glad you liked the music u_u Thank you so much for the praise!
@civmaniac Ohhh, Linux build. That's definitely something I'll offer in the future. See, I wouldn't feel comfortable with releasing for an OS I'm not familiar with, that being said, I do own a few devices that run on a few linux distros since a few months now, so yeah, definitely something for next LD! Concerning your screenshot: Here's to 36 more Game Jams! :D
@radmccool Yeeeah, if I had more time the level change would be initiated with an animation of the ant being sucked into the water, but I find your impression even funnier (and deeper?)! :D
@sharks awww thanks for the high praise! Yeah, my past two games were lacking clear direction and user-friendliness so my main directive this time was to just bring a more pleasant experience for the player. Judging by the response it got, It certainly managed to do that :D
@eckkert @zhohan Ahahaha :D Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Yeah, it gets pretty ridiculous at one point - especially if someone looks over your shoulder! :D Thank you for your guys' praise u_u
@ColeSlaughter oooh, but all the random topics you guys come up with makes the stream entertaining in the first place :D Thanks for playing, streaming and for your praise u_u Looking forward to soon be able to catch one of your regular streams again :D
@Shakedimus Oh, I managed to snatch a few inspiring ideas how to make it more interesting if I were to revisit it, still thank you for your praise! n_n I'll check out your game very soon, sorry for the delay :D
@etrealjunior thank you so much for your praise! I'm very glad you enjoyed it so much! To be honest though... there wasn't all that much emotion I wanted to express this time around, just a simple fishing minigame :P
@honey-pony I laughed out loud while reading your feedback, not because you don't bring up super interesting points (which you truly do), but because almost everything you liked was accidental at best :D
The difficulty-curve is so steep (and unmanagable at a certain point) because I haven't had time to playtest it properly, the lack of animations and sound effects - you guessed it, not enough time.
I was honestly just trying to do a cute little fishing minigame, but your interpretation is sooo much cooler and deeper, I just love it! I'm totally into those kind of deceptive "meta"-games, so who knows, maybe I'll do something like that in the future :D