bereg 2025-10-06 17:32
An unusual concept - catching fish within tiles. It's an interesting game idea, especially with the aquarium integration.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → The Grand Aquarium
By binroot
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 159 | 3.10 | 22 | |
| Fun | 166 | 2.90 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 121 | 3.16 | 23 | |
| Theme | 165 | 3.21 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 173 | 2.85 | 23 | |
| Audio | 134 | 2.88 | 20 | |
| Humor | 99 | 2.92 | 22 | |
| Mood | 134 | 3.10 | 22 |
An unusual concept - catching fish within tiles. It's an interesting game idea, especially with the aquarium integration.
Such a cool game, and so few ratings! You should tell everyone about this game! It's pretty polished, it's generally clear what to do, plus there's a tutorial. The fish designs are amusing - reminded me of the first stage in Spore. The catching process is very engaging. The only unclear part is how to catch fish that spawn right on the edge between tiles, I think a more explicit nudge toward one tile would help. I like the little recap of my catch - you can relax and admire it. For just two days, this is a very self-contained game. Great job!
This is a very fun and very polished game. I really like the net mechanics to catch the fish. The hexagon grid is a nice touch to mix it up a bit. The music and sounds work well with the overall aesthetic. I found the capacity management a little repetitive, as it kinda worked best to just make a single large tank and throw things in there. Maybe add something where too big a tank is detrimental if it's very empty or something similar. The visuals of the "fish" were awesome. I loved finding all the different strange shapes. Nice work.
This was very bizarre but in a good way. I really liked the camera animations and there's really nice audio feedback for all the actions. I'm not really sure if there was any strategy to the fishing but it felt satisfying when I got a catch nevertheless. The game is pretty simple and the loop does get a bit stale after a while but it was fun while it lasted. Very polished, great job!
This was really funky! I enjoyed it. It felt very polished and great gameplay. The fish designs were really cool. Fantastic job! :D
You've got a fun little game here, the fish were silly looking, and the audio feedback was great! I had a fun time playing! Also, if you are interested, I managed to break the game and get stuck unable to buy a new tank by selling the tank while it was adding/counting up my storage capacity lol
This was such a relaxing and creative take on the Collector theme! I really liked the mix of strategy and calm aquarium-building. the visuals and sound design fit perfectly. Catching the weird mutant fish was super satisfying, and I enjoyed experimenting with different tank sizes. It’s surprisingly polished for a jam game, and the tutorial made everything clear. Great work — I could honestly see this expanded into a full cozy game!
I love the art. Not sure what the goal of the game is. Is it to fill the board with tanks?
The fish made me laugh. I like the sillyness of their design. As far as gameplay goes, it actually pulled me in. When I had a tank *die* from exceeding capacity, it had me changing what I was doing. I eventually made the full tank, but I had only three fish in it. Maybe add a dollar goal as well? It would be neat if there was some way to tell if some fish were more valuable than others or if there was some fish that were more aggressive than others. That would require some sort of stocking strategy. I see possibilities in this one.
This is a nice entry, love the design of the fish. It's pretty addicting collecting the fishing and watching them grow in your tanks. I feel like some more variation would have been nice, but for a 2 days compo game this is pretty well polished gameplay-wise. Grats!
Nice and relaxing game, the music was pretty chill too, nice job!
I think the gameplay loop is solid and quite unique! All of the mechanics that exist work well and they were quite quick to understand. Including basic strategy as an instruction was a good idea. While the graphics are basic the camera animations (highlighting your actions) are great!
This was an interesting experiment at collecting and maintaining growing fishes in a limited tank size. The fail state being the fish growing too large for a tank did help with the risk-reward elements of the game. I did figure out how to play the game pretty quickly as well: I felt informed enough to make careful decisions on whether to expand the tank, risk adding more fish to a tank, etc.
I think a factor I found annoying was the camera animations. For example, if I catch a fish, I have to wait for a short bit before I'm forced to add it to a specific tank. This action blocks me from, say, catching more fish or selling them. Also pausing for each fish to grow did grate on me as well, for the same reason that it blocks me from doing anything else. If the waiting time on these elements were reduced or even eliminated, I think the experience would have been better for me.
It was also strange that I had to widen the game window to see the entire fishing grid. By default, only a small sliver is shown on the screen, which makes the fishing minigame sort of longer waiting game than I think was intended. I also found dragging a fish-tank to sell at the center of the screen to be rather unintuitive. Maybe a button would have helped?
I do think the core gameplay loop is fine; fun, even. The risk of fish out-growing their tank is a good call, in my opinion. While the prices of each fish isn't readily available, I think I found the optimal strategy to be to sell more and larger fishes as much as possible. Having that be the core strategy does add excitement to the game. I think if actions were more streamlined a bit, I would have had more fun with the game. As it is, now, I'm annoyed with the many pauses the game insists on.
Edit: I also ran into a bug where I caught a fish, then the game was unable to place it into a fish tank. This lead to a softlock where I couldn't fish for any new fish.
so nice, i like it!