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Love this game, but there are a few things I would change;
1) The way fish attack you. Once you are faster then the shrimp, they pose no threat to you. Some ideas to improve this are to make the fish faster, reward the player for getting closer to the fish, or punishing the player in some other way when they get hit.
2) Some bonuses from catching fish are very weak for how long it takes to get them. Excluding koi, all the level 3 upgrades seem less powerful then the level 2 and sometimes the level 1 upgrades. It takes too long to get them, for what little reward they give.
3) The map is too small and with too many docks for cargo size to matter that much after the first few upgrades. Moving and reeling fish in faster are a lot better they a bigger cargo.
Besides that, I really liked this game. If it was longer, I definitely would love to play more of it.
Thanks for the reply, that's very useful and constructive criticism! All of those are really valid points, although I will say for point #1, hopefully in a full game that becomes a non-issue because you'd be fed more difficult mobs over time like any real RPG. Tbh when I laid out the collection perks, I was actually afraid no one would play very long so I made the lvl 2 ones strong to kind of entice them to get over that initial hump. So you're very observant that I actually did that! I see through everyone's feedback that I may not have to do that anymore though, and a full version can have a more smoothed out curve.
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Played until I maxed everything out, hoping to unlock more content, only to remember this was a new game and cry silently. Seriously though, this is great! I can't wait until you can add more. It satisfies my inner farmer.
Thanks for letting me know there's demand for all this! I have to be forward about my current path though. I'm currently in a rapid prototyping phase where I kick out a new game idea every 5 wks. Only after a few games will I look at community feedback/demand and see which one I want to flesh out into a full game. So the bad news is that I'm not doing any major updates on this game for a while. The good news is I have another game coming out ~3 wks from now which I hope people like just as much.
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Really cool concept, it's pretty fun to play!
I enjoyed chasing Koi and Bass very much!
It's really satisfying to reel in entire schools at once, too <3
I got into the endgame preety quickly xD
The game is pleasing to look at and controls are precise and responsive.
Great job!
It would be so cool to see some more economics, like different prices in each dock.
Also some missions for specific kind of fish caught in limited time.
I feel like for the same amount of fish, the map could be much bigger - it would make catching big fish way more intense and rewarding.
I'd advice to focus on it if possible: to create huge schools of small fish and spread big fish apart to make it more exciting.
Also, I feel it could be fun to hide some of the fish on the overworld and force players to use the radar more. Especially the biggest fish.
It feels kinda weird when all the fishermen focus on one fish, though.
And it's frustrating to loose fish under the obstacles.
Thanks for the thorough feedback! Oooo the timed missions is actually a FANTASTIC idea. I initially thought a quest system might be redundant because there's already a collection system that covers "get x amount of fish" but I think timed challenges would set it apart and give a different experience to the player. Your concepts to use the map more are also great, you're really thinking differently here! Good points about the focus fire and such, that was more my fault on the coding-side as I couldn't get the multi-fishing to work and look correct.
Yea, unfortunately that is indeed the end :(. This is the first of a series of prototypes I am kicking out so I have to limit the amount of time I spend on each one. It's very possible this will be the one I choose to flesh out as it's been getting a pretty good reception.
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Good concept and can easily be improved. Maybe introduce different fishing maps, larger fish that are much more difficult, take up more room but pay more. Have fish move into different areas to create problems. Maybe different docks could 'ask' for a type of fish, and you get penalised if you bring in the wrong type. Good work!
I think the mobile fish idea would shake things up a lot. As someone else pointed out, you'd actually have to use the map to track it down so there'd be a bit more thought into that, like making sure you're in position to intercept them or something. Cool ideas!
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Still I can't load the game, I'm stuck with the Kongregate logo keeping loading. Too bad, this game seems really nice.
Thanks for the feedback! The wall stuff is intentional to provide more challenge, but next time around I will make it more clear that you can steer the Koi around, and the Bass is basically a DPS race.
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It´s not often that I wish a game was longer and had more content, this is definite one of them.
Hoping to see some expansion soon - keep it up :)
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I don't actually FEEL like my fishing range was extended with the "catch 10 shrimp" upgrade, might help if there was a general fishing range indicator. And the "increased damage when the line's red" feels too finicky, seems like the line goes from white to broken more often than from white to red.
It's possible the range is visually off. There's a bug where if you approach fish from the top, the line seems longer than if you approach them from the bottom. And yea I found the same thing as you in playtesting, where max range fishing line was too hard to maintain. I kept it as such because it's more like a "oh no it's getting away" safety net thing, but I do agree it can feel very weak against something like the bass which can snap the line very quickly. I think bumping the % up could help that but I'd have to be careful it's not too strong. Thanks for the feedback!
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i love the game, and i have some ideas if your willing to hear me out, lol
my email is jcan1332@csd99.org. so we can talk there and not blow up the comments! thanks;D
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Nice concept. I liked the lines mechanics. Needs some music and SFX (although many people will mute) and maybe a little more definition of what each upgrade does. E.g. I didn't know what would happen if I had more fishermen the first time I got them.
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I like it. Maybe add some stuff on the shores, like fishermen competing with the player... could add weapons to shoot them or run them off... heheh. And they could retaliate too, perhaps... also could find treasures rarely, or garbage that takes up space without giving reward... lots of things could be added.
Totally, those are all great ideas! I do wonder how I could include other fishermen into the mix other than a tournament. That'd be pretty funny if you did have to shoo them away from your favorite hunting grounds though. I had some level design tricks up my sleeve like having to wade through a bunch of trash fish like you said, before you could get to some valuable ones. So you're actually dodging fish at the point. Glad to hear you share some of my thoughts, it validates them a lot more!
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Really like the concept. Some aggressive fish, i like it! Know it's a concept for now, looking forward to the bigger product. Out of curiosity are you planning to keep this more realistic or morph it into something goofier?
Thanks for playing, I am definitely taking this in a fantasy direction. The main reason is if someone wants a realistic fishing game, there's.........100 products out there for you. If you're more interesting in RPG mechanics and fantasy ideas, I hope this'll be the game for you.
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its cool how kongregate shows new games that are actually worth a shot. i just finished it 100% hope you will make more.
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Great concept. I don't know what you have planned obviously, but maybe some boss fish would break up the game a bit, and give a player something to work towards.
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Fun game, I extended my play time by trying to see how many collections I could get without buying any upgrades. I got all of them except I was never able to catch a bass, they're too fast and I couldn't work out a trick to catch them!
lol that's really interesting. I used to do stuff like that as a kid like see how high I could level in Secret of Mana only killing rabites... I love the idea of just killing swordfish w/o any upgrades, that's stuff that pro Monster Hunter players will do. Yea there's no way to catch a bass that way OTHER than pure grinding, because in theory the randomness of the movement could keep them in one area the whole time.
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Heh, I found that the aggressive fish were much easier to deal with than the fleeing ones. Once I got Bass Lv.2 I just sat in a swarm of swordfish and they basically caught themselves. They were actually harder to deal with solo.
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it works, then the screen goes black and the kongregate loading symbol appears again and a message appears behind the loading symbol and i cant read it because the lodins symbol is in the way
The technical answer is that the walls actually sit above the water, so they block the boat but not the fish. The real answer is that I didn't have time to put in real logic for the walls :)
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Excited to see a boss battle in those mechanics! White whale, anyone? Maybe have to drag an harpoon to damage the boss? :) Great concept, looking forward to new versions!
You spurred some ideas in my, like having multiple areas to attack to take it down, kinda like a shmup. For sure, I'd like to have some more complex mechanics like you mentioned if possible :)
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Seems promising! One little thing I noticed was that, since your fishermen can only attach to the middle of fish, it can sometimes seem like you have to get overly close to medium fish in order to reel them in.
Bingo! That's pretty observant because I didn't notice that for the longest time. The camera angle is what plays the trick and I need to find a way to handle this for the fishing lines eventually. I had this same issue with collision detection but that was an easier issue to fix.
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Actually very nice game, nothing too complicated or anything but enough content to keep you playing! definitely needs more to do after swordfish but still thank you for the 20 minute gameplay :D
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great game! add some music and much bigger fish and i'd play this for a long time. i got everything maxed out in about 45 minutes or so. more fish!
Great to hear :) For sure I've been paying attention to feedback and it's helping me figure out what direction I should take this. Thanks for the comment!
Yea I actually really like the idea of shiny fish as a rare catch. I'm not too sure what the bonus would be for catching them so I'd love to come up with a satisfying reward.
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Very awesome mechanics at play here. I love the collection aspect, which gives incentive to return to earlier pools. A fantastic game, but there's not much content here. My gripes are: hitbox for the boat is buggy, there's no incentive for catching more than one fish at a time, and when expanded on; needs a more intuitive radar/map so the player doesn't get lost.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you made me aware of the boat hitbox. I put work into that fixing that but it sounds like there are still issues. Yea I do wonder how I can make the radar more useful. I originally put that in there cuz I thought players would get lost in open waters. Only later on did I throw in the rock formations which help orient players. If you have suggestions on the radar I'd love to hear them, but yea atm it just shows you where home is, and generally where the fish species are.
I do have news but it may not be what you're looking for. I'm currently in a rapid prototyping phase where I kick out a new game idea every 5 wks. Only after a few games will I look at community feedback/demand and see which one I want to flesh out into a full game. So the bad news is that I'm not doing any major updates on this game for a while. The good news is I have another game coming out ~3 wks from now which I hope people like just as much.
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Love the concept!! I do love games like these!
I had a few thoughts:-
± What if the Kraken was the last boss? :P
± Also, maybe a pirate or something to randomly reduce the cargo being held.
± And an automatic reduction of fish due to consumption by the crew. Money used by default.
± unlock an alliance with another boat to catch harder fishes
± random dangerous fish that you can't catch and scares other fish away. Like a great white shark or orcas
± get shipwrecked and need to build/buy a boat from scratch :P
ok, I might be getting ahead of myself lol.
Thank you for the game!! And thank you for putting it up here :D
Thanks, one of the inspirations for this game was Forager. I love the pacing, progression, and simplicity of the controls in that. If you have other recommendations please hit me up with them. I really like your ideas! The pirate ship idea is fantastic and would create a lot of tension when they're on the screen, especially if other pirate ships appear and maybe they throw hooks onto your ship to slow you down. The alliance idea is interesting, but I'm not sure I totally follow. Would it be like an AI ship that hangs out with you? The last boss idea is definitely a fun one to play with. I definitely have Kraken on the list but I think I can go even further than that. Thanks for taking the time to share your ideas!
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Right now there's not much difficulty catching fish with maxed stats, so you can fish any of them as soon as they spawn. With that in mind, and as much as I like the extra money, I think that 60 is too much, if it was made for balance reasons, since you can get almost 3.6 times as much money spending the same time with swordfishes than with shrimps, for example. I would understand a high reward if we had to work for it, and without changing much, this could be to really have to dodge swordfish or hunt for bass, instead of being able to idle for a bit. However.. if the plan is to allow for some chill fishing, that's perfectly legit too. And as a foot note, the best reward comes from fishing multiple kinds of fish in a loop route.
Thanks for the feedback on that one! I made the change after a suggestion regarding the effort to reward ratio of the medium fish vs the small fish. It's definitely a tricky thing to balance because like you said, at max level, all fish are rather trivial to catch and the only thing that matters is the fight duration. Ultimately I decided to go with that idea because I figure I should try to balance for the weaker player progression. Also, I thought about actual RPGs, and usually the best things to farm are the harder mobs rather than ones you find earlier in the game. 60g IS a big change from the 20g that it used to give, but I've always liked Sid Meier's rule of balancing, which is to just double or half numbers so you can see appreciable differences. I REALLY love that you brought this up! You've been giving great feedback all week.
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Problem i ran into with the bigger fish is that the range tends to be a bit weird. Specially when fishing sword fish. Sometimes it stretches really far, other times you lose the lines while the fish is next to you.
Yea someone pointed this out recently to me. The issue is because the camera is angled, so even though it looks closer or further, the line is actually the same distance. When you approach from the top it looks longer, from the bottom it looks shorter. This is a little embarrassing but............I actually couldn't figure out a good way to fix this. I have to treat the 3d angle as a 2d game, and I DID pull this off with the fish collision detection but this issue is a little different. But yea, thanks for pointing it out again, it means it's definitely noticeable and I'll have to tackle this again some time.
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Today I learned:
never mind sharks: beware the SHRIMP!
a full boat is faster than an empty one
fish can evade a boat by swimming through concrete
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Great game, more quests, tons of fish, boss fights, story line would be fantastic. I played this version non stop till i maxed everything. Keep up the good work.
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ya know i realize why your answering almost all comments and so quickly...your just fishing for compliments.....yea i liked this game. i am looking forward to seeing it expanded greatly or several more of these in the series i hope you get some help with it and expand it to where it takes many days to play and not get boring with bog down of trying to earn money. the ratio is pretty decent in my opinion and i will be givin this 5 stars in hopes it continues to grow.
Haha yes, you figured out it's a meta-fishing game! Thanks I appreciate the encouragement about the long term growth. In other comments I've talked about plans to do prototypes and such, but you're right, I do need to figure out how to build a team around this idea to execute on a full version. I can probably pull off a solo game but it certainly wouldn't look pretty and might take a while to create. I think if I go for a full version I can match your expectations though :)
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Oh, and unless I just didn't see it, it would be nice to know when your boat damaged is near zero so you can run away and possibly recharge at the dock.
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Wow, enjoyed this way more than I thought I would - not much of a fisherman in real life. Awesome how each type of fish has different characteristics that you have to learn and adapt too. Too easy to max out to level 10. Need more bonus AND more fish because I want to build up to great white, megaladon, and leuiroplurodon !
Haha I had to look up that last one. I had stuff like kraken and whales on the list but I didn't think of prehistoric ones! Those are great and a lot of inspo to draw from.
There's a high poly cthulu lurking in the waters at all times! Yea I wasn't super optimal when I made this so I could kick it out on time. I'll be improving on this stuff over my next games.