liammasters 2021-04-25 21:59
Really clean and polished, it made it fun to play. I liked the system for progression. The movement felt a little clunky at times when I was trying to cast but otherwise very fun!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Just Fishin'
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 102 | 3.96 | 28 | |
| Fun | 151 | 3.82 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 471 | 3.18 | 27 | |
| Theme | 885 | 2.12 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 229 | 3.78 | 28 | |
| Audio | 155 | 3.70 | 26 | |
| Humor | 179 | 3.28 | 27 | |
| Mood | 111 | 3.87 | 26 |
Really clean and polished, it made it fun to play. I liked the system for progression. The movement felt a little clunky at times when I was trying to cast but otherwise very fun!
Very cool. I love the chill vibes. Great job
Good game! I love the art style. You could easily transform this into a full game.
Very nice concept ! As said above you could really transform this into a full fledged game with tons of upgrades ! I'd make the fishing gameplay bit more dynamic somehow though.
The graphics are amazing too !! Congrats
Nice game, fun to play, with a good progression system.
Nice, relaxing game with a lot of upgrades that keep you playing. Well done :D
The game mechanics are well executed, and the artstyle and music makes the game really charming :)
Well done!
Nice, was relaxing. I liked the dog automation with traps
I really enjoyed playing this, nice graphics, and sounds! Good job!
This game was way too fun and addictive. I ended up as the puppy king, just watching them all bring food to me and I didn't expect that :grin:
I liked: the music, the progression system, the fluid animations, the useless bonus like clothes and the crown
Minor drawbacks: the movements were a bit laggy after some time. Also, I'm not sure how it fits the theme.
But great game overall!
Soooo, this is a a cool entry with a lot of features for the time. I was surprised that you had even included cosmetics! In my opinion the game could be a bit more responsive. I never really know when I am in range for the shop or for fishing and when my click will only just open the inventory or will send my player running across the lake. Running around with WASD would probably work better, after all I got two hands ;) Also the UI buttons could use some responsiveness like hover or click effects. In the beginning the game is kind of slow, and you feel like you are not progressing, but later it gets very fast. Once you get some fishing traps, the fishing kind of becomes redundant and you end up running between traps and the shop. Minor bug, that you're probably aware of: when picking up a trap while holding one, you just end up loosing one trap. Maybe you could just empty the trap with clicking instead of picking them up, because then you don't always have to click twice. But this had been less of an issue if I had discovered earlier what dogs are for :) Overall a solid entry, good job on all the features!
One of the best games I played this jam. At first I almost gave up because I didn't understand how to open the shop menu. Finally I figured it out. Then I had "just one more fish" syndrome :) Graphics are minimalistic but cute - especially the dogs :D . Now I'm watchin my slave dogs doing all the hard work for me. The game has potential for further developement. The bug with traps also occurs when you try to buy multiple traps at once. Anyway, congratulations. Great job!.
This was a cool game and way more exciting than what I thought it would be when I read it was about fishing :D. Out of all the games I tested for LD, I invested the most time with this, probably due to the nature of the genre.
Overall it is a very complete and polished product. The gameplay was addictive, the graphics were nice, the music was very chill, even the UI was working surprisingly without any bugs. A truly astonishing achievement for something developed from scratch in 48h. But I do not see the connection with the "deeper and deeper" theme, which makes it a little bit suspicious given the completeness of the overall package, if you know what I mean (the timelapse video is enough proof though).
Now getting into the actual criticism: - The movement felt a little bit laggy, sometimes I was clicking on almost the same spot to fish again but the player was moving place, making the delay a little frustrating. - The game needs a little bit more balancing. It is too slow for an LD jam, where you don't want to spend to much time testing one game. I also felt that some of the upgrades I bought didn't do anything really. - The main loop is go to the lake, fish, go back to the shop to sell / buy and then go back to the lake. So ideally you need to fish as close to the lake as possible to save time. But you are allowed to go anywhere in the lake, even to the other end, which doesn't make sense if you have nothing to gain out of it. And to the best of my knowledge, no matter where you fish, you would get the same rewards. So what I would suggest is to spice it up and make the furthest part of the lake to offer more expensive fish that are harder to add some progression in the game. You would start by fishing close to the shop with your cheap rod and as you get better you would go to the other end little by little. Maybe the lake gets deeper and deeper the further you go, which would also fit the theme of this LD jam.
Great game overall, very professional, but the theme was kinda ignored.
@quetzakol Yes the puppy king method is indeed the intended way to play. I think this is the optimal route: - fish & sell - get rod & hook upgrades (also the discount one) - save for a dog - fish and the dog will keep emptying your bag - get a trap - get advanced traps & they will get your rod & hook upgrades ie. better fish - get more dogs & traps, your income explodes and you can buy everything :sweat_smile:
@devemil Well adding cosmetics is actually way faster route to flesh out the store contents than doing actual functional upgrades. Just drawing one sprite and slapping it on the character head takes no time at all. Or even faster to just change the color of the existing sprite.
Completely agree on the responsiviness things from the UI. It has been on my todo list since the end of day one of the jam but always had more important/interesting things to do. And actually still have but I will add this too for the possible post jam version for sure.
You might have to hands but everyone doesn't. There is a reason why "mouse only" is a category/tag and I've actually noticed quite a big portion of the incoming traffic on my games that have it come through it so I guess there is a demand for such. Also kinda ironic that you're suggesting this while your own game is kinda forcing players to play one handed too and with non dominant hand too (for the vast majority of people).
The traps only do not make fishing redundant before you get the advanced traps since fishing yields higher tier fish. Of course this isn't really explained in game though. But it does have same major balancing issues with the upgrades and their prices. Like the dogs are way too OP. The traps needing to clicks actually serves two purposes. It kinda hinders using them to still keep fishing more relevant. And it also offers a way to change the placement of em.
Yup I knew about the trap bug. Of course it was like the first thing that happened to me when I tried the game a bit on Monday. It's actually fixed already but not big enough of a bug to warrant a mid jam patch. I don't think @owca that is the same issue. If you buy multiple traps, you'll end up having just one of them in your hand but the rest are still in your inventory and can be equipped from there. Sure it's kinda clunky way and might need to improve it so that it automatically gets the next trap after placing the first one.
@exofrenon Haha yeah it's not my first rodeo! I actually did kinda over scope and didn't get to add in everything I wanted and more importantly couldn't do the amount of polish I would have wanted. Been attending few week long jams so that might be messing with my brain.
I don't think the theme take is that much of a stretch really. You keep going to "deeper" more valuable fish and also drilling deeper to the shop upgrades. I mean is your going deeper to a cave that much different?
Yeah the movement issue is something I plan on doing something to too. The key word in your phrasing is indeed the "almost". Computers don't lie, you weren't clicking on the same spot. If the distance between the fisher and clicked spot is greater than three units, it will move instead of casting. Lots of easy ways to fix this though and currently I'm thinking of alleviating it with different custom cursors.
Yes the game does have balancing issues but I'm never gonna balance my game(s) for the typical jam reviewer who barely turns the game on. Rating jam games based on that is a completely ass backwards way. You'd go with the completely opposite mindset on a AAA game review.
The different spots giving different fish was also something I thought of but couldn't squeeze in. That would have been accompanied with stuff like "fish of the day" that would be bought for double the price and so on. And of course adding like a range stat and better fish living more near the center of the lake on the deeper waters. But yeah, loads of ways to expand on this game that I had thought of but sadly the time just flew.
Thanks all for playing and leaving feedback! :heart:
Super cute little fishing game - maybe not very theme-appropriate, but otherwise addictive and fairly bug-free? Everyone else has already said their peace, the one thing I would've appreciated (for the jam game anyway) would've been some kind of end-game. Maybe bagging some mythical super-fish or somesuch!
@wolfrug Thanks! Yeah the end game is kinda just buying the expensive and completely useless crown from the shop. Of course it would have been possible to do some "end" here but I didn't want to stop further playing since it was actually quite fun to completely break the game with for example "world conquering bag size upgrades" as my work colleague discovered...
IMG_0049.JPG
I was kinda dumb and had 1.1^level for the bag size modifier which is just exponential growth instead of other spots where I had diminishing exponential curve like 0.9^level.
cool game. i've actually played some of your other games like Chainitaire. best sound i've heard in the jam, although imo the music was mixed too loudly compared to the sound effects. the small details really made this game, stuff like the screen shake and chromatic aberration. i was going to say selling was way too slow, but that ended up being an upgrade, so it made sense. while i was playing i got called into a 2 hour zoom meeting and this is the result Screen Shot 2021-04-28 at 7.43.20 PM.png
@seanarooni Haha, that's a lot! Only few more hundred million and it would have gone around to negatives :open_mouth:, I didn't really account for anyone going for that long. Cool to see that pretty much everyone who has posted a pic of their final setup are wearing the useless 10k crown. So I guess it is noticeable as the "end game" target.
Relaxing and very funny looking game. I liked all the little animations that make the world feel alive. It felt a bit slow early on, but it picked up once I unlocked the dog.
Overall a pretty enjoyable experience, congrats!
I had to stop myself from spending my entire allotted play-and-vote time fishing and figuring out how to min-max upgrades. You hit all the right buttons for this clicker-game addict. A couple of minor quibbles - the music was too loud relative to the SFX and the click distance between fish again and move the character was a little annoying. I loved the useless cosmetic upgrades and all the clean animation. Wow. Great job.
I very much loved the graphics. There was something about the blinking of the character, that was really cute. In my opinion the prizes were a bit high for a game jam, but besides that, it was great.
Came because of the nice looking graphics, stayed for the fish. There seemed to be a bit of an issue initiating the fishing, as the player kind of moved around all jittery around the lake. I think it might be a mismatch of the click hitbox. It was on web build, but sort of went away after the second or third time it happened, so I guess it's not a huge issue. The balance between the sound effects and music were a bit tilted to the music side, but a volume slider would fix that easily. It kind of reminded me of Animal Crossing as I fished around. Overall great game to play while chilling. Also, nice polish for a game made in such a short time!
@not-as-artistic The moving issue you were facing is most likely due to trying to click too far. The maximum range for fishing (distance between the character and the spot clicked) must be less than three Unity units (I think the character is around two units tall). If you're trying to click too far, the character will just move (as close to the position as possible). I guess this all just boils down to not explaining the range limitations at all. I'm currently thinking of maybe adding a different cursor for walking and fishing for the post jam version and I guess that would solve the issue.
Thanks for playing! :heart:
Man, at first I thought: "oh no! another fishing game!" as I'm not really into that kind of game, not even when it's a mini-game in bigger games. But I had to think twice about it as I discovered it quite fun instead. In the beginning it's a bit slow but then you start buying upgrades and everything get a way quicker pace. Loved the music and the art fits well. I think there is some issue with the UI when you are selling the fishes because you can quickly sell all but the first item. You have to wait until the +XX goes away before you can click it. Anyway very good job and I would definitely see this as something that could be played on a phone
@tanis Yeah noticed that too, it's indeed the money addition UI element blocking the topmost button. Guess this managed to pass through my fingers because the button isn't blocked that much on a wider screen. Anyways, already have fixed that but thanks for pointing it out!
Fun game that seems to have a lot of content. Could see myself spending a long time playing this if I didn't need to proceed to rate more entries. I like the expressions of the character, also nice walk cycle. Jeps.
Good game! Got my crown, so I guess I liked it :slight_smile:
Random comments (Edit: nothing new here, these points have been brought by others already):
* Game is sort of simple, but super well-polished. You clearly put a lot of effort on things like visual and aural feedback, nice animations, and some juicy things like the effect when a fish bites. * The music itself wasn't bad at all, but I think it didn't fit the game well. I don't know, I think I was expecting something ore relaxing on a fishing game. * Speaking of music: I think it was too loud in comparison with the sound effects. It was a bit hard to hear the effects. Also, my fishing memories are all more silent, hearing more the environment than anything else. The loud music broke the atmosphere to me. * I felt that the game progressed too slowly, especially in the beginning. I probably should have invested in dogs before :smile: * I think there's a bug with traps: I had a couple of them disappearing. I forgot to test properly, but I think the problem is: if I am already carrying a trap and I try to take one from the ground, one of them is gone.
All in all a very nice game! Kudos!