recursor 2023-01-09 01:55
The game looks great and is quite relaxing. I was enticed me to keep casting the line out for more fish and enjoyed looking for big bunches to reel in.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Catchy
By danmerey
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 88 | 3.72 | 122 | |
| Fun | 158 | 3.40 | 122 | |
| Innovation | 68 | 3.73 | 123 | |
| Theme | 177 | 3.64 | 123 | |
| Graphics | 31 | 4.22 | 122 | |
| Humor | 199 | 2.49 | 98 | |
| Mood | 101 | 3.62 | 118 |
The game looks great and is quite relaxing. I was enticed me to keep casting the line out for more fish and enjoyed looking for big bunches to reel in.
@recursor > The game looks great and is quite relaxing. I was enticed me to keep casting the line out for more fish and enjoyed looking for big bunches to reel in.
Thanks! Yeah, it's kinda addicting, except the time when your hook is far away behind your ship, and you are running at full speed and don't want to reel in :D
Lovely game! Recreating the feel of an old map must have been a challenge but it definitely works, the wind looks good, and fish species are just different enough to be noticeable. Honestly, this reminds me of playing mid-late 00s Armor Games flash games (and I meant that in the best way possible). Great work!
By the way, I noticed that ship hiding in the far east, behind the island!
Love the art style of this game and it's very relaxing. Controls felt very intuitive. The schools of fish blazing past you as you soar past looks incredible. The wind changing directions when you reach the end of the map is also a nice QoL touch, although I think the game could've benefited from an infinite or looping world. A nice calming sound track and some splashing noises would've also been a nice touch.
Nice Theme. Nice game play especially the wind flow in different direction very difficult to find _sage salmon cagey catfish giant goldfish Fish.PNG
Quite fun to float around, adjust the sail, see what odd sail angle I could still move forward at. trying to line up my cast as the ship was moving to catch a row of fish was quite a fun challenge as well. The art is very nice and creates a feeling of looking at an old captain's map. All in all quite fun!
Incredible! This is absolutely gorgeous and I seriously enjoyed the controls. What a lovely and unique submission. Seriously impressed with this, great work!
Really nice game. The sailing mechanic is really well done. I played until I caught all of the special fish. Maybe give us a "you win" screen, at least.
Excellent work, the game is nice and relaxing and just moving around is inherently fun thanks to the clever movement mechanics
@feor > Lovely game! Recreating the feel of an old map must have been a challenge but it definitely works, the wind looks good, and fish species are just different enough to be noticeable. Honestly, this reminds me of playing mid-late 00s Armor Games flash games (and I meant that in the best way possible). Great work!
Thanks! Yeah, I felt as a flash developer from 00s as well – I'm not used to make games in 2 days: my [last one](https://www.potioncraft.com/) released in 1.0 after 4 years from the first prototype with the team of 4-6 people :D This 48-hour compo was pretty fun challenge though.
> By the way, I noticed that ship hiding in the far east, behind the island!
There are some other ships on the map as well. At first I thought that there will be combat and pirates (I feature-сut pretty fast), then I thought that there will be some peaceful NPC ships, that floats around (feature-cut as well), then I thought there will be idle ships, that sais something funny or usefull when you are near them (also feature-cut), so after all feature-cuts I left with useless empty ships. I diceded to leave them in the world, because you can bump in them, it looked fun :)
@tigpan > Love the art style of this game and it’s very relaxing. Controls felt very intuitive. The schools of fish blazing past you as you soar past looks incredible.
Thanks! I liked how fish turned out to look as well, although I had to change their appearance a few times during the development since I wanted them to be visible enough, but still "under water" cosidering the "old map" style.
> The wind changing directions when you reach the end of the map is also a nice QoL touch, although I think the game could’ve benefited from an infinite or looping world.
Nice, you noticed :D Actually at first I made it to justify why player can't move any farther, but then it turned out to be a really cool feature that helps to return to the center of a map. Infinity world seemed as overkill for 48 hours due to a lot of problems (both in design and programming), looping world was one of the ideas, but it had 2 problems: If the world is looping, you will just ignore the wind mechanics and go with the wind all the time. Teleporting ship itself seamlessly is not that hard, but teleporting some other stuff (like fish nearby) could be a problem.
> A nice calming sound track and some splashing noises would’ve also been a nice touch.
True! I planned to add sounds and even spent like an hour on adding sound system just to understand that I don't have enough time to record and implement sounds. I wanted to make a complete game in terms of objectives and game mechanics, so prioritized them (and I think it was the right decision). I will probably work on some sounds after the contest. I'm not very good at creating music since I lack experience in that field, although if it was a retro-game, I would be able to create some simple chiptune with the [Beepbox](https://www.beepbox.co/) (tried this service to be more ready for the Ludum Dare in case I need to make some music)
@vigneshwar > Nice Theme. Nice game play especially the wind flow in different direction
Thanks! I wanted to make realistic naval experience (even though I'm don't have real experience in sailing), but I still had to make some "rawing" system that allows you to move slowly even against the wind or backwards and turn the ship while not moving.
> very difficult to find _sage salmon cagey catfish giant goldfish
I wanted to add some monologues that will help you find those fishies, but I didn't have enough time, so here's some hints for you:
- All of those fishies are Rare. They are spawned randomly, and you'll have to look for them. - Zooming our with the mouse whell can help with searching. - Sage salmon is pretty smart and always move against the wind, so it's hard to chase him. The color is pink, so you will easily notice the fish, if it spawns near you. - Cagey Catfish is very slow and stealthy fish. It's hardly noticable, so take a closer look to find it (it has almost the same color as the map background). Also rare, so you may have to search for some time. I spent about 15 minutes to find it in my youtube playthrough (although in my next try I just found it on the starting location in the first 3 seconds, lol) - Giant Goldfish is just very rare (rarest of all). If you are lucky, you'll find it. Keep moving around the map with zoomed out camera. Goldfish is yellow and pretty slow, so you won't miss it.
Thanks for playing our game, and yes we do have similar concepts! I really like the way the whole game looks like an old map, and the realistic sailing mechanics. I did feel the controls got a bit overwhelming, particularly the boat rotation vs sail rotation. Also I wish there was a quick reel in button for when I miss aiming at a fish. Overall incredible work for a compo!
@justin-c > Really nice game. The sailing mechanic is really well done. I played until I caught all of the special fish. Maybe give us a “you win” screen, at least.
Yeah, the text on top-left conrner changes to "You made it!", but I understand that it's not enough to notice. Also it's kind of a sandbox, so I didn't want to stop player from playing after that (since there are some addition side "quests" like scout all the map or get more upgrades)
This is a such a fun game! Navigating is super satisfying and fun, I enjoyed looking for the different fish, too. I didn't find any of the rare fish, but I honestly didn't mind just relaxing and catching whatever was near my boat.
Great mechanics of wind and beautiful ascetic graphics.
@orhu >This is a such a fun game! Navigating is super satisfying and fun, I enjoyed looking for the different fish, too. I didn’t find any of the rare fish, but I honestly didn’t mind just relaxing and catching whatever was near my boat.
Thanks! Yeah, I probably should have made rare fish a little less rare, but with current rates rare fish is way more valuable than common ones, and I like the feeling of finding rare fish :)
Absolutely gorgeous art - was this all done within 48hrs? Amazing if so!
Also the practice of controlling the sail with the mouse and steering with the keys was a fun mechanic to experience, nice one!
Very impressive Compo.
The feel of fog all around, wouldn't be surprised to spot a whale in the fogs on the far outs of the map. Really like it!
@procrasteroid > Absolutely gorgeous art - was this all done within 48hrs? Amazing if so!
Thank you! Yes, it was done in 48 hours. I actually spend a lot of time on art and on making it whole, but I felt obligated to do so:) I found [this nice reference](https://www.desi.lbl.gov/2021/08/19/cosmic-cartography/) which helped me a lot to find the right visuals:
cosmic_cartogtaphy.jpg
Experience of making [one of my previous games](https://www.potioncraft.com/) also helped a lot, I guess.
> Also the practice of controlling the sail with the mouse and steering with the keys was a fun mechanic to experience, nice one!
Yeah, I like how it turned out as well: I had to tweak it during the development a lot to make it less annoying when you have to move against the wind.
@lewl > Very impressive Compo.
> The feel of fog all around, wouldn’t be surprised to spot a whale in the fogs on the far outs of the map. Really like it!
Thanks! Nice idea about the Whale, more as a decorative thing probably or as an obstacle instead of being a collectable resource. Imagine a whale that is 2-3 larger than your boat that is being pulled by a hook to just plop into 500 points :D
Fun fact about the fog – sprite used for "fog" on the edge of a map is just re-used sprite of a visibility range around the player (when you zoomed out).
cool game. Art is really cool. I could not find that many rare fish though, and it was hard trying to fight the wind to try to explore the map.
@ghostbomb > cool game. Art is really cool. I could not find that many rare fish though, and it was hard trying to fight the wind to try to explore the map.
Thanks! Yeah, that's fair – I think that maybe rare fish is too rare. I would probably make some balance adjustments after the voting, but I finished the game 30 minutes before the deadline, so I didn't have that much time to test the balance :) Still completable in about 3-6 minutes, you just need to be lucky on fish!
Lovely game! Map aesthetic is really nicely done. Wasn't sure how I felt about controls at first, but then I caught a few hundred fish and I was hooked. Only thing that I would want different is a way to view the fish to give a better idea of what shapes to look out for.
I saw you suggest you didn't like at full speed you couldn't reel in fast enough in a different comment. I did think that was a pretty fun (if unintended) feature. Zooming around looking for the goldfish with a bunch of fish on the line was really entertaining for me :D Maybe limit it to a certain range from the ship if you do decide to change it?
@xfinktion > Lovely game! Map aesthetic is really nicely done. Wasn’t sure how I felt about controls at first, but then I caught a few hundred fish and I was hooked. Only thing that I would want different is a way to view the fish to give a better idea of what shapes to look out for.
Thanks, glad you liked it! About the "idea of what shapes to look out for" – I didn't have to implement hints in the game during The Compo, but you just gave me an idea to create The Fishy Guide for it. So I made it and added to the description page (I didn't want to spoil it to everyone, so I put it in the bottom of the page. If you are still in mood, you can try to find all the fishies :)
> I saw you suggest you didn’t like at full speed you couldn’t reel in fast enough in a different comment. I did think that was a pretty fun (if unintended) feature. Zooming around looking for the goldfish with a bunch of fish on the line was really entertaining for me :D Maybe limit it to a certain range from the ship if you do decide to change it?
Actually it's already limited (your hook will always follow the boat even if you don't reel it in). Although I think that some way of fast returning hook would be nice anyway, so if I continue making the game after voting, I'll probably try to come up with something balanced enough :)
Anyway I'm glad you got "hooked" by the game and had fun!
Fishy Guide.png
Looks very, very good. Relaxing game. It is so frustrating to go up against the wind! :laughing:
@kodingnights > Looks very, very good. Relaxing game. It is so frustrating to go up against the wind! :laughing:
Thanks! Haha, true! It was even more frustrating during the development, since in real life you can't go against the wind at all, and in Catchy you couldn't do it as well at first, but then I added some "rowing" power. So you can move slowly in any direction (even backwards if you are stuck). This rowing power also increases with upgrades – after getting 3-4 upgrades going against the wind is pretty not-so-bad :)
Also here's the hint how to sail against the wind:
against the wind.jpg
A bit hard but really cool idea !
Cute little game, finding a catfish was the hardest for me! Great mix up of theme with my favorite from the lot, cartography!
@pauljs > Cute little game, finding a catfish was the hardest for me! Great mix up of theme with my favorite from the lot, cartography!
Thanks! Yeah, that catfish is pretty hidey and sneaky :) Cartography theme was one of my favs as well btw, since it looked really interesting for creating something unique ;)
I love the movement, having to take into account wind direction, boat orientation and sail orientation! Very intuitive, but also tricky to get the hang of
This was really fun! Awesome art! I wasn't able to catch many different kinds of fish (I couldn't find them), but the sailing was really fun!
The art design definitely set the tone of the game. It felt very relaxing floating and fishing in the ocean. It reminds me of a simple cute app game called "a girl adrift". Good job on making it in 48 hours!
Very impressive compo entry. Cartography style and the wind look nice together. The sails and wind mechanic is interesting but sometimes it made me struggle while I only wanted to cruise through the map to find the rare fish :smile:
Thanks for the game! Incredibly nice to see the implementation of the theme through the sailboat, it would be interesting to see the development of the sail control mechanics. Interesting to see how the boat will work with the jib and how the roll effect will affect the overall filing from the gameplay
Really like the old paper/cartograph style, the sailing is polished and I would definitely love to try more action based game with same sailing system. Well done!
I absolutely love it, would love to see more! I especially like the wind mechanic - it's fun and addictive. The style complements the gameplay well, and it's overall beautiful. 10/10!
Okay, what is this and why is it so ridiculously adorable. Like, I think I felt compelled to keep playing it long after I should've supposedly moved on to rate other games? But I don't know, it's just so... relaxing. Made me remember those nights I spend browsing stuff on Newgrounds and just chilling after a long and hard day.
Navigating along the bursts of wind was unexpectedly exciting. At some point I thought that it would be fun to make the ship drift a little even if it has its sales down in the strong wind, but then I reconsidered. That would add challenge, yes, but also lots of annoyance.
Amazing game, doubly so for having been made in 48 hours by just one person!
The game was fun, I really enjoyed the sailing mechanic - racing(multiplayer or single-player) like this would be interesting. The "fishy guide" you gave in the comments should probably be in the game - without it, it wasn't easy to know what to look for. I wasn't able to catch a catfish - they might be difficult to distinguish from Cod that are fading out.
This is really cute, great mechanic which is so intuitive, I love the special fish to hunt for and the bonuses for catching lots of the regular fish too. Graphics are fantastic, really enjoyed this great job :)
fish.png
Really nice entry, I loved the graphics and after some time I managed to get all the species! ~~help me I can't find the catfish it's been hours, how can I find a transparent fish when they are all vanishing :crying_cat_face:~~
@yopox > Really nice entry, I loved the graphics and after some time I managed to get all the species! help me I can’t find the catfish it’s been hours, how can I find a transparent fish when they are all vanishing :crying_cat_face:
Haha, I can see you completed all the objectives \*wink\*! But in case you need to find more Catfish (for science ofc), you may want to zoom in using mouse wheel (it will be easier to notice fishies). Also Catfish is longer than Cool Cods and have moustache, but also it's slower then the Cod. Also Catfish has s stable color while appearing/disappearing Cods are always changing color.
Also playing [in full screen mode](https://niceplay-games.com/demos/catchy-ludum-dare-52/) or [on Windows](https://niceplay-games.com/downloads/Catchy_LudumDare52.zip) could be a better experience (although you will have to start over, but you may be more lucky next time – the fish can spawn even in the beginning).
@danmerey Thank you, you brought me luck :love_letter: at last :cry:
fish.png
@yopox congratz!
cool little game, I managed to catch everything except the above catfish, it's hard to think of much constructive criticism since I think you nailed the look and feel, perhaps a bit more fanfare around the speed level ups would be nice since it wasn't to obvious to me something had changed, some kind of little dash / speed boost mechanic might have been nice too to help chase down the more annoying fish
@copito > cool little game, I managed to catch everything except the above catfish, it’s hard to think of much constructive criticism since I think you nailed the look and feel, perhaps a bit more fanfare around the speed level ups would be nice since it wasn’t to obvious to me something had changed, some kind of little dash / speed boost mechanic might have been nice too to help chase down the more annoying fish
Thanks for feedback! Fair enough, some popups or fanfares on level ups and objective completing would be a nice touch, though I completely ran out of time for those things :( I totally agree that it would fit nicely (as well as some ambient and sounds).
P.S. Catfish is so hard to catch, so when I catch it, I'm so happy :D
The style for the game is crazy good, fits so well into the type of game you've made! Great job, brilliant entry :)
Interesting little game, definitely stands out in terms of style amongst many of the others I've seen so far this LD, and the old-style map feel to it all is pretty cool, though it was intensely difficult to (even with the guide to what the fish looked like!) pick out the types of fish you hadn't caught yet, but I suppose that's like real fishing, fruitless most of the time so it didn't really bother me :)
It would definitely have elevated the experience to have had some gentle sea breeze type ambience when sailing around, but I understand that was probably difficult to cram into a compo deadline like this :D
A little more drifting of the ship would have definitely added a little to the feeling of sailing, but then it would also have made it a little harder to control initially, so alas I guess it's not a clear tradeoff.
Either way, nice work!
Thanks everyone for the feedback! I read everything, just don't want to spam replies too much! :)
woooow!!! great entry! controls are great and original, art is coherent and very nice. it just lacked music to me, to fully immerge in playing but i understand you did all alone, so for a jam game, it's really a good game, and one i liked to play! i wish the spawn rate of rare fish was higher tho haha
the art is so well done, definitely a triumph in that category, great work!
really like your game, the art style is very nice!
What a lovely game :) It was very relaxing to fish once I figured out what to do. Lovely art style as well. Neat entry, fun and chill!
This is a very pretty entry. It's chill, nothing complicated, just go there, fish your fish. But I love the little details that add to the fun. Like moving the sail and playing with the wind mechanic, it seems like a small thing, but it really adds much more fun to the gameplay. The graphics are definitely one of the best I've seen so far. Again, simple, but well made in its own way. I love the "old map" aesthetic. Good job!
Ooooh, I almost envy you making this game, I've wanted to try making realistic sailing mechanic for a very long time :) And fish catching fits the theme nicely. The art style is very cool, although the sea looks a bit empty, maybe it could use some more decoration.
I've only found three fish types, guess I should've sailed a bit longer! It's nice that the hook can grab several fishes at a time, but it's a bit tiring to keep the mouse button pressed to retrieve it back. Maybe it could be just another mouse click? I.e. first click releases the hook, another click gets it back without the player having to keep track of the hook and the sails simultaneously.
2023-01-11-200135_931x511_scrot.png
Your game is one of my favorite : * nice atmosphere * nice polished graphics (you reached what you aimed for, that old map aspect * intersting to navigate, use the wind and the sail * I was not very lucky. It could be nice if the luck "increase" with the time, or with the score in order to see rare fishes. * Nice to explore the seas and island and reach map's limits
Congrats!
It's not my bag of tea, but I really like the art you went for. I agree with others that it is a quite relaxing game.
@sdelay >Your game is one of my favorite
Thanks!
>I was not very lucky. It could be nice if the luck “increase” with the time, or with the score in order to see rare fishes.
Fish spawn rates definitely need balancing, I didn't have enough time to test it, and it seemed good enough at that point, but more rare fishes could be more fun (even though less time to complete the demo objectives).
Increasing luck with time/ship tiers could be an interesting solution though. Also creating spawnerst for rare fish types could also work, but I didn't have enough time for it :)
I managed to find all but the last two fish types! The realistic sailing is a great concept. I'm wondering whether I might have enjoyed navigating with the wind bit more if I had less control of the acceleration/deceleration? It was nice to have the option sometimes, but the impulse to fight the wind to chase a colorful fish made me more frustrated when I tried and failed.
Snipaste_2023-01-12_09-21-51.png
nice art and game mood,,,,It is a little hard to controller the ship at begin,,,but when you learn how to controller it,,it is feeling very well
Great job! reminded me of sailing as a kid... the fishing was perhaps less similar to my youth, lol, i never remember those fish coming in quite so easily!
Really great game. I love the art and the mood just the controls could need some love. I found myslef often slowing down and having to overthink my input (but that might also just be me). Good job!
The game is really nice and calming :-)
A very interesting design. It reminds me of that classic question, can a sailboat sail upwind. In fact it is possible to sail upwind, which requires turning left and right at a specific angle.
b.png
1.png
by the way I've never seen the last two kinds of fish
Caught all the fish \o/ and over the 500 fish speed milestone. I didn't realise I'd caught the last fish though, I was spam fishing for the upgrade and caught a cagey catfish without realising. I also spent a fair while with still 4 fish types remaining then suddenly caught 3 of them in less than a minute haha. Great game! ^^
I caught some fish, then couldn't find the last fishes and finally I got caught myself and couldn't move anymore.
2.png
That aside, nice game! I liked the realistic wind mechanics and nice old map style graphics. The game seemed complete and polished apart from missing music and sounds at all, but maybe the old paper map doesn't make any sounds.
Great game with a wonderful art style! Love the de-saturated colors, you really nailed that painterly map look. Love the fishing mechanic and the way you need to steer the boat. The gameplay feels a bit slow, but is very relaxing. Good job overall!
It's a somewhat innovative game mechanic. Moving by observing the wind direction and controlling the sails, but sometimes it takes a while to get stuck on the edge and break free. The difficulty of the game is mostly on moving. The fishing process is much easier.
Playing Sid Meiers Pirates music in the background with this game... My childhood is back! Also my traumas of the wind always blowing in the "wrong" direction! haahaha :heart:
Very soothing experience, I like these kind of games the most. It's visually gorgeous and plays really well, but it can feel a bit tedious when you're searching for the one last fish that you miss to complete your fish-o-dex (I'm looking at you, snappy snapper!). In the end I quit the game after having searched for it for more than 10 minutes and fishing randomly.
Besides that, I found some fish hard to differentiate (the catfish), and found some big empty spaces without any fish in it, but that really all I have to say. Great job, loved it!
The game has some gorgeous visual design and identity, excellent work! For me the biggest flaw is the power of the wind, sailing close hauled results in almost zero speed and the boat carries none of that speed when turning into the wind and attempting to tack. It's an interesting design decision I'm sure you had to make regarding the direct influence the player had on the boat and how "sailboat-ey" the boat felt to pilot and it's clear you leaned toward the former. As it is now, the boat feels more like driving a car than piloting a water craft, but that lessens the impact movement has on catching fish which is a part of the balancing act.
I'd love to play a more fluid version of the game though where the sailboat behaved more like a light water-craft and carried a lot of its momentum into turns so catching fish while on the move was more engaging. Still a great concept though!
@tpunisher33 > The game has some gorgeous visual design and identity, excellent work! For me the biggest flaw is the power of the wind, sailing close hauled results in almost zero speed and the boat carries none of that speed when turning into the wind and attempting to tack. It’s an interesting design decision I’m sure you had to make regarding the direct influence the player had on the boat and how “sailboat-ey” the boat felt to pilot and it’s clear you leaned toward the former. As it is now, the boat feels more like driving a car than piloting a water craft, but that lessens the impact movement has on catching fish which is a part of the balancing act.
> I’d love to play a more fluid version of the game though where the sailboat behaved more like a light water-craft and carried a lot of its momentum into turns so catching fish while on the move was more engaging. Still a great concept though!
I see what you mean here and I agree. It was really hard to make Unity physics do what I want for the sailing in 2 days, so I had to go with the MVP version, although it lacked a few important things. If I had more time to work on physics, I would definitely make it more "sailboaty" and less "car-ry". Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!
@danmerey for something like this I would've avoided physics simulation as much as I could and built a model for basic boat motion (just a forward, turning, and wind force that you gather each frame) so it could be really fine-tuned without all the extra nonsense the full sim adds. Keep physics monitoring on so that on a physics overlap you can zero the model's motion against the overlap normal and reposition the boat back along the normal a bit to keep it from penetrating. Though it's been a few good years since I done a proper Unity release, I'm not sure how robust their physics API is anymore, but this is definitely doable in UE so probably totally doable in Unity.
I hope it's not weird to give systems implementation suggestions in these comments :sweat_smile: I can't imagine how busy you were doing this on your own.
Nice game. I like the graphics.
The controls are a bit hard at first, but you can get away with some practice (it's easier if you know how to sail a little bit to avoid silly mistakes).
Nice entry!
It's amazing how polished and atmospheric this feels, even without audio yet! Quite an impressive feat for a weekend jam. The subtle rain and fog effects are really nice, and the quest system is a great way to encourage exploration in every direction. The sail rotation system works well and urges you to occasionally change your plan on-the-fly and explore a new area on a whim (just see where the wind takes you!). The automatic speed upgrades over time is nice too, and gives a good incentive to keep fishing just for fun, even after a given quest is completed. Very nice work on this one!
The art style is absolutely beautiful! I would have liked slightly more contrast to make the wind and fish a little easier to see, but overall very nice. The game is quite relaxing to play, although I think that aspect of the experience would be improved a lot by audio.
The wind/sailing mechanic is neat. I liked the slight puzzle element of following the wind, although it never felt that interesting because I always felt like I was sailing aimlessly. I didn't have a sense of where I should go, so I simply wandered about. I didn't catch every fish type, because after a while the gameplay started to feel quite samey. There's a strong core here, and if the game had given me a little more motivation ("There's been a goldfish sighting off the coast of Gilligan's Island"), it would have held my attention much better. Navigation and movement would be more interesting if I had specific destinations to reach / problems to solve. Perhaps tides and currents would add another interesting layer.
With audio and a little more to do this could be a very relaxing cooldown game. A very impressive effort!
@theothersamp >The art style is absolutely beautiful! I would have liked slightly more contrast to make the wind and fish a little easier to see, but overall very nice. The game is quite relaxing to play, although I think that aspect of the experience would be improved a lot by audio.
>The wind/sailing mechanic is neat. I liked the slight puzzle element of following the wind, although it never felt that interesting because I always felt like I was sailing aimlessly. I didn’t have a sense of where I should go, so I simply wandered about. I didn’t catch every fish type, because after a while the gameplay started to feel quite samey. There’s a strong core here, and if the game had given me a little more motivation (“There’s been a goldfish sighting off the coast of Gilligan’s Island”), it would have held my attention much better. Navigation and movement would be more interesting if I had specific destinations to reach / problems to solve. Perhaps tides and currents would add another interesting layer.
>With audio and a little more to do this could be a very relaxing cooldown game. A very impressive effort!
Fair points! All of what you mentioned is something that is needed to be addressed in case where this demo becomes something bigger, thanks for detailed feedback!
@tpunisher33 Yes everything you said is 100% doable in Unity. I would almost never use physics for a player character, you will always get better results by handcoding it because you have superior control, and a decent controller can often come in comfortably below 100 lines, maybe below 50 - they're often surprisingly simple. Ray/collider casts can easily handle the collisions, although I have a bad habit of writing my own collision code from scratch for these things.
@theothersamp I know quite a few people (myself included) who enjoy writing their own SDF implementations and collider code for each project. Unless I need it to work within the scope of something very small and be ultra light-weight like an implementation within UE Mass, I do my best to exert self-control and just let the physics system I'm already paying for pull its weight :smile:
A pleasant experience. The gameplay is smooth and the boat is just enough hard to control to make it interesting. The art is really nice. I love the game's mood. It definitely deserves a cool soundtrack and some audio effects.
Really enjoyed playing this gem. I could not find all the fish, but will try. Great artstyle and smooth gameplay mechanics. Pretty good entry!
Art style is very cool, great idea to go for it and nicely done ! Controls are interesting, somewhere between arade and realistic. Winds looks cool too and change direction often enough, but not too much.
I loved the cartography aesthetic! Very relaxing and enjoyable game! I wish there was a little more clarity on the fish differences.
The art and mood of the game is really amazing. Everything fits together so well with the theme and mechanics. It was fun to play too when I got the hang of the controls. Great work on this, it feels really polished.
Nice art - caught everything apart from the catfish - sneaky one that one. liked the movement, would like to have had more agency in the fishing part, but I get you were going for a chill vibe.
wind and the movement mechanics were really nice - felt like a sailor. Good entry and well done!
It was a good game. I liked the atmosphere of this game. Gameplay also supports the atmosphere well. However, one thing that's disappointing is that if you're looking for fish that you haven't found yet after collecting most of the fish, The gameplay gets a little boring. Considering that it was made within two days, I think it's a minor disadvantage. Thank you!
Relaxing game! I liked the minimalist graphics. The gameplay is very easy to learn. In general it's a fun game, it's possible to spend hours fishing! Good work!
Fun little fishing game. The old map cartography style worked really well and the fishing was nice and relaxing. My strategy tended to be to throw a line behind the boat and move around collecting the fish on the hook as I traveled
Yaaaah!! I got em! I absolutely love parchment! The aesthetic is just *chef's kiss*
Also I just noticed this is Compo! It looks so polished! ^~^ fishie on me.PNG
Great game idea. I think with some polishing and addition of some features this could be a full fledged game. I tried to find all fishes but gave up after 1500+ cought fishes. I've seen only one goldfish and none catfishes :( I think for a LD entry it could help to make it a little bit less rare or up the spawn rate after 500 cought fishes. fishing.png
So happy you put up a video showing the full run. I was missing two and couldn't figure out if I needed to catch a certain amount of fish before they could start spawning. To my surprise, you caught a salmon right off the bat!
Very fun game though. I got the feeling of really being an explorer-hunter where I was hunting for rare species all along the map. Probably like many others, I actually spent a long time just farming fish until I realized I could just leave and start finding the rest of the fish to finish the game. I suppose that's due to how the upgrades were spaced, and once it got too far spaced I realized what I needed to do.
Really cool that this is your first LD game, and even cooler that you're very active in reviews too. Great to have you here!
Nice game! I love the wind and sail dynamics. I only found 3 different kinds of fish and gave up after wandering around aimlessly for a while. I would have liked some hints or a guide towards the other fish. But other than that, it was nice sailing around.
Fishing games are not generally my jam but this one was pretty simple and relaxing. I had a bit of difficult navigating because of the wind (but i'm also terrible at realistic sailing games - LOL)
It would have been nice to have some sort of guide to finding the fish - it seemed/felt a bit random to me but maybe i'm just used to quests directing you for these kinds of things.
The artistic style of the game is great too!
Looks real good and the mechanics are so well done (the wind, sail, etc) I just dunno if I'm kinda bad and taking too long to score points and finding new kinds of fish!
@rocktavious) > It would have been nice to have some sort of guide to finding the fish - it seemed/felt a bit random to me but maybe i’m just used to quests directing you for these kinds of things.
Yeah, I didn't have enough time to implement hints in the game, that's why I added Fishy Guide in the description just in case people want to know more about the fish. It may help a little bit – I didn't want to spoiled the game to majority of players, so I positioned it on the bottom of a description.
Fishy Guide.png
@holysparks > Looks real good and the mechanics are so well done (the wind, sail, etc) I just dunno if I’m kinda bad and taking too long to score points and finding new kinds of fish!
Spawn rate is pretty low and the gameplay is calm and slow, so you have to be lucky and stubborn enough to find all the fish :) I would fix some rates after the jam though, since higher rates seem to be more fun.
@danmerey on a longer project I could see it having different play modes: a more slow zen mode; a time attack; maybe a global daily random seed to compete on leaderboards too
Here you can read some additional info about the game a it's development – https://ldjam.com/users/danmerey/feed
Nice game, but for the life of mine, couldnt find the golden one :P I also miss some audio, even basic ones for the full experience.
Hello, thank you for the game! I really liked the overall art direction. Moving on the map made me feel calm. I wish there were some soothing sea sounds to go with it. I found it interesting to pass by islands with other boats in them.
I felt a bit of difficulty telling different fish apart, unless fishes other than the first two are really rare. I saw a blue fish once, but it fled to under an island :cry:
My only complaint with such a neat game could be that there wasn't sound and mini details on the map to be discovered, spicing the gameplay slightly. (There had to be a letter bottle! :p) But there was a huge time limit so... :smile: I enjoyed the antique map atmosphere. The illusion of depth for the fish is achieved well. Playing with the sail and using the wind force was quite fun to play with.
A great game with compelling art and design!
I love what you did with the borders, with the clouds and the wind which change direction!
Great entry!
This was super relaxing, I was able to catch all of them except for Shy Shark and Giant Goldfish :( Workable with touchpad controls too, played on Mac so I didn't use right click much. I wasn't sure how often the wind changes, maybe I was lucky, but initially it changed on itself first time when I bumped the edge of the map, but wasn't able to recreate it after. Really dig the artstyle!
Really nailed the art style on this one! Also love how you implemented wind and movement in general.
At some point I noticed that the hook follows you a short distance behind and still catches fish if you don't retract it, so I just left it hanging there and played it like it was a racing game, collecting the accumulated fish every once in a while. Was fun for sure!
I liked the art style and the mechanics of the boat. It would be nice to upgrade the fishing pole.