FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → A Fish Based Game

A Fish Based Game

By rodney-fan and beadyeyes

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4823.6129
Fun7753.1329
Innovation1773.7729
Theme4813.7529
Graphics3593.9430
Humor3833.3427
Mood5403.5130

Comments

gaalsien 2024-10-07 21:17

"Bruh..." :)

xacce 2024-10-07 21:17

“Bruh…” :) X2

rizedovah 2024-10-08 12:56

Starting off the fish movement animations and designs initially forced me to download this game, I love how they look and for a game jam entry are atleast in my opinion extremely impressive.

The gameplay feels super unique and I love the ability to battle with them.

I was a little confused that they would always die after breeding at first but I guess it makes sense in case you would spam use the same OP fish.

Only slight critique is that the fish in the tank with the claw seemed to get stuck in corners and never move, would like to see them hide then rush out again and swap sides giving you a chance to actually grab them.

Overall loved the mechanics and the amount you managed to add in the time ranging from the Claw, breeding for stats and battling the game felt like there was alot to play with and experience. Really enjoyed playing !!

david-soriano 2024-10-08 15:08

I loved the post its as a tutorial and then the fishes turn out quite cute

tenai 2024-10-08 22:50

The fish be tweaking! Interesting game, not sure what was really going on in a lot of the fights but I kept sending fish until my enemy was defeated.

rodney-fan 2024-10-08 23:04

@rizeDovah thank you so much for playing our game and for the critique, all the animations and little fishes are procedurally animated! and they all have random blend shapes along with textures and gradient mapping to make for a large variety of fishes! it didn't come through all that well but it was a cool experiment and im glad it enticed you!

this is my first jam as an artist and designer as well as the first time I've used unreal so most of the heavy lifting was done by my partner @beadyeyes !

we really appreciate the longer feedback thank you so much for playing!

rodney-fan 2024-10-08 23:08

@gaalsien @xacce Thank you for the bruhs!

@david-soriano I am glad you liked the little guys I spent a lot of time on them :fish:

rodney-fan 2024-10-08 23:10

@tenai lol the fish do indeed be tweaking, I am happy that you defeated those bullies and I hope you were able to get to the ending!

budaniel 2024-10-09 03:35

A breeding pet battle game for a game jam? Really impressive! I was caught off-guard when I realized I could breed fish to home in on specific traits I wanted, which - again - seems really hard to nail in a game made in a weekend. I won all the matches, but I gotta be honest, I'm not really sure how. 😅 The other fish seemed to be doing just fine, swimming around merrily on the other side of the tank, and then I won. Win's a win, I guess! 😊

wesel 2024-10-09 04:32

Really cool game with. Seems like a lot to have done in the timeframe. Really loved how the post its were explaining how the game is played, a really nice touch. Really cool game!

daredevinbegins 2024-10-09 04:35

Amazing 3d game! Its always surprising to see 3d games this developed considering the time limit, you guys really out-performed many of the games in this jam!

arenavgust 2024-10-09 05:03

Cool game. Models are stunning

loveschach 2024-10-09 05:21

I love the post-it note art.

rodney-fan 2024-10-09 08:38

@budaniel, I'm glad you enjoyed our game! We actually had a few issues early on with adding actions that were basically always negatives, and we ended up removing a few of those! Unfortunately, we didn't end up having too much time to tune things, which is a learning lesson for next time, for sure! I think its always funny when the opponent ko's themselves the fishes are quite silly!

@daredevinbegins Hey thanks for the kind words! this was my first time doing art and in unreal so im really glad you liked it!

@arenavgust Im super happy to hear that :blush: I worked hard on that darn fish!

@loveschach Hey im super glad you enjoyed my silly little scribbles! thanks for playing our game!

quasilyte 2024-10-09 09:07

It's sad to see this ratings given to ratings received ratio. I would assume the game's size have something to do with it. HTML/web games usually get the best ratio, then it's small native games (<40mb?), and larger ones require much more efforts (unless you're an influencer that can force their game through the media).

So let me try to fix it. This is the least I could do for you in return as you played my own game.

First off, I would also recomment using zip format instead of 7z, as it's far more cross-platform; but at least it's not rar. xD I had to use wine as there is only Windows executable available for the download (this is another benefit of web version - no struggles for Mac/Linux users). My first attempt:

Untitled.png

(it hang for a minute, no progress, so I killed the process)

This could be the case that I have a potato computer.

Steam Proton Experimental also couldn't handle this game. I played a couple of Unreal Engine games this jam, many Windows executables made with Unity, some Godot games bundled for Windows, but this game doesn't want to run.

This is probably where I give up. If you'll upload a Linux binary, I may try running it again. There is also another way: upload a full walkthrough of your game so people can rate it based on the footage if they don't have an ability to run the game (as it's big and may not run on the target PC).

Please consider everything above as a friendly piece of advice.

vindicta 2024-10-09 13:32

Interesting idea

alxje 2024-10-09 13:33

The "Bruh" audio effect really caught me off guard for a moment—it was absolutely hilarious and added a nice touch of humor. The BGM perfectly fits the atmosphere of your game: calm and relaxing (besides the sound effect the fish make when they die, which was also quite funny).

The visuals work well, and I appreciate that this is a simple simulation game with some background story notes. The notes are concise and clean, which I really loved. However, the only issue is that once I accidentally tap on them, I'm not able to see them again unless I close and reopen the game. It would be great if there was a way to revisit those notes.

I also like how you encourage players to breed fish as many times as possible to increase the complexity of their characteristics—really smart game design! The fact that the fish die shortly after breeding, forcing me to catch new fish from another pond, adds an interesting challenge. Great job with both the game design and the audio choices!

calcopod 2024-10-09 13:50

Amazing game, best one I have played so far. Very humorous, very cool interpretation of the theme, and absolutely banger idea.

Sure, some minor nit-picks here and there, but I genuinely don't have anything to say aside from very well done, absolutely amazing!

keat-heat 2024-10-09 14:03

Great game! Big fan of the tutorial being shown through the silly post-it notes!

bacalear 2024-10-09 19:33

Cute graphics and pleasant atmosphere

iwant-pizza 2024-10-09 23:19

So let's start from afar, the fish physics are very cool, as the owner of little experience in engines I can't figure out how to do it like that, then the style and art are also cool but somehow less, the gameplay is interesting, but after that everything goes downhill, well, as it happens with games) good luck in future developments

rodney-fan 2024-10-10 01:39

@quasilyte Thank you for going through all that effort to try out our game! I'll be sure to add a zip option to the itch page as well as a youtube video going through the game! this was my first time going through a real game jam like Ludum Dare and we will be sure to try and making something more web-friendly in the future. i really liked your game and im super happy you decided to try ours out!

@vindicta Thank you for playing!

@alxje Lol the bruh sound effect was pretty funny I think @beadyeyes did it as a joke placeholder but it was just so funny when we were testing and the fish kept suiciding off the sides of the tank. I am super glad you enjoyed it and maybe putting these notes in a pause screen would have been good but we really ran out of time, i really wanted an exit button so you dont have to alt f4 every time to exit the game. there are also quite a few softlocks we are aware of we initially wanted to make the claw machine alot harder too cus we thought the dynamic of a hard-to-catch fish probably being better than easy-to-catch fish was good.

overall we definitely overscoped for our first jam and there were alot of learnings to be made!

@calcopod Thanks for playing im glad you thought it was fun! when we made this we did wonder would we be the only ones to find this funny and im glad that isnt the case! the game is pretty buggy especially cus my partner quinton had to keep explaining how to even use unreal engine at all so didnt have extra time to focus on code.

@keat-heat thanks for playing! we really appreciate it

@bacalear im glad you enjoyed the mood of our game!

@iwant-pizza thank you for playing we really appreciate the feedback, we definitely didn't get the time to properly bug test or polish the game. if you have any design opinions please feel free not to hold back and tell us about them we would really appreciate it as graduates of a design school!

stormburpee 2024-10-10 05:12

“Bruh…” again!

You guys killed this. Loved th enotes on the fish tank - very reminiscient of finding nemo and the girl banging.

Good work!

Keep building it for sure!

tuism 2024-10-10 05:14

I appreciate a good experimental weird game, and what a weird experimental game this was :) - The idea is really interesting. Not directly being able to control anything, relying on breeding to get to what you need, I guess like pokemon (but you bypassed their patent so kudos lol), is rad :) - The gameplay though suffered from a couple of issues: - Half the fish in the new fish tank were like uncatchable because the claw couldn't get to them on the edges. - The way you basically need to go back and forth between home tank and catch tank to refresh for new fish felt like there should just be a button on the catch tank to give you new fish to catch. - The traits were pretty cryptic - "Swim in direction" really doesn't mean much? I assume there's a hidden direction that the trait picks? Seemed like there was never a trait that had to do with attacking, only with swimming away/towards. Is towards the equivalent of attacking? I think these need to be clearer since it's hard enough to try and get what you do want via breeding (which I assume results in a mix of random traits picked from parents), it shouldn't be hard to understand what they are in the first place. - The fish move very well, they have a nice character to them. Definitely enough for a jam title. - Selecting a fish to move on to the fighting stage was not very clear, I think a better, clearer instruction is needed, perhaps not something that can be removed from the UI. - The post-it note instructions were fun and cute, but not having access to them after you removed them is less great. People tend not to remember things and they should be able to access instructions during the game. - During a fight, is there literally nothing you can do? My fish eventually jumped out by themselves and just died, I assume that's some kind of timer that says hey if you don't win by whenever you just lose. That felt quite unsatisfying, perhaps a more explicit fight timer or something. But yeah if the fish don't attack each other there's nothing the player can do and that kinda sucks.

rodney-fan 2024-10-10 05:41

@stormburpee thanks for playing our game im glad you enjoyed it!

@tuism Hiya thanks for the feedback! there were absolutely many many issues the tank one being one that is honestly one that should have been fixed before release.

as for the refresh button we actually never thought of adding something like that and that's absolutely fair!

as for the swim-in direction, you are absolutely correct the direction in question should have been actually stated, especially because it is always the same direction every time.

as for attacking you are right there is actually no real attacks in the game originally I wanted us to have like skills for the fish to use as attacks ones with Aoe and VFX but that was unfortunately out of scope for sure. the attacks are just sort of collision checks with a cooldown and so swim towards fish becomes basically an attack.

yep the stickies were definitely a repeated feedback point! i think in the future for a system like that a pause menu should show you the notes again.

as for during the fight, the only thing you can really do is to tap on the glass to trigger the effects on the On top glass thingy. as for the fish jumping out thats actually quite surprising there isnt any fight timer and you can actually get soft locked there pretty easily so I think you just had a batches of suicidal fish you are absolutely right tho its super high variance with little to no control really from the player.

we really appreciate the detailed feedback like this BTW thank you so much for your time!

sviborg 2024-10-10 06:46

This game blew me away with its originality and depth! For a game jam entry, the procedurally animated fish and variety of blend shapes and textures were nothing short of impressive. 🐟 The animations are super charming! The visuals and post-it notes as tutorials were a delightful touch. 📝 I loved the quirky humor throughout, especially the “Bruh” sound effect—it had me laughing out loud! 😂 Despite some minor bugs and polish that could be added, this game is bursting with charm and creativity. Keep up the great work! 🌟

wdnmdld 2024-10-10 08:58

Amazing game! I wonder how you made it in 72 Hours! The machanic was so attractive.Especially the machic to chet more fish,AND to drag the fish...... Maybe sometimes a Bruh......Just like the funny tuturiol with the cute picture sticked to the container just like a movie......Well, I forget the name.Overall the disgin and the art of the game is perfect! What`s more,the mating system of the fish was also very innovative machanic to control the amount of the fidh,and get new fishes,as well as the 'tapping" system! Overall it is one of the most innovative game I have ever seen in LD56.Keep up the great work!

absolute-garbage 2024-10-10 19:15

Wow the 3D physics or whatever animation technique you are using is amazing. The post it notes and sound effects are also very charming. The gameplay is also interesting (and very well made considering the timeframe). I personally don't care that much about battle. I feel I am happy with just a simple breeding and idle game, a virtual aquarium on my desktop would be lovely.

rodney-fan 2024-10-11 08:48

@sviborg heya! thanks for playing our game! im glad you enjoied the procedural animation i had no idea how to do them in unreal but its actually really simple! maybe i should make a breakdown! the art was definitely very much a test from me to see how i could use certain techniques like gradient mapping, and blend shapes to make different variants of fish i will certainly be making a post about it if you would like to see more its all pretty simple and something that anyone can do pretty easily (especially since this is my first time in unreal!)

@wdnmdld 谢谢 Thank you for playing our game! I'm glad you enjoyed the breeding system!

@absolute-garbage thanks for playing! the animation is all procedural and if your interested we could do a post on how we do it, using just a few unreal nodes really did the job and made pretty solid looking animations, i would have liked to do it a different way but unfortunately i am no so familiar with the unreal systems!

I honestly agree I kinda just like watching my fish swim around and survive actually thought about making it more of a fish farming game once we realized the combat didn't have very much depth to it. maybe in another timeline!

douuggggg 2024-10-18 10:10

I really really enjoyed this, came here after reading your posts! Managed to make it to the end by mating all the fishes together and getting one super-powered fish into each battle. Not sure if that's the way I was supposed to play, but it worked. Not much more to add after what everyone else has said - but the art on the post-it's worked super duper well, and the fish animation + behaviours were really stellar. I wish the combat was a bit more fleshed out, but I think the mating system has legs and can be really interesting! Overall - well done. :smile:

sasa-2010 2024-10-18 18:12

Great job! Nice visuals! Keep making games!

patbgames 2024-10-19 08:05

Very interesting entry, but instructions were not easy to follow. I was in need to launch the game several times and read the post-it carefully. It took me a long time to figure out how I can go to battle (tube on top right). The download size is really a problem for a game jam like this. All in all, it's a nice and interesting entry 👍