I added more fishes as planned expecting the puzzle game to be a bit more challenging. But it turned out to be a nightmare to play. It was harder to keep track of which fish does which. I guess I should have adjusted the art to make each one more recognizable. Maybe change the patterns on the fish's skin according to their effects (like draw an X on fishes that flips X pattern). But I'm no artist and it would take too much time to draw new ones, so I'll just keep this for now.
But aside from visuals, it become too much time consuming to solve too even after I removed a number of fishes that I recently added. So I decided to introduce a new mechanic: Skills. These shall overwrite the default fish behavior but has cooldown time to use. I made a quick mock up and used invert filter as placeholder immediately loved how it looked. Thus, Nightmare mode was born.
I now have 4 game modes:
Easy - 4x4 grid, 3 fishes
Normal - 6x6 grid, 3 fishes
Hard - 8x8 grid, 5 fishes
Nightmare - 8x8 grid, 9 fishes
I scrapped a few of my fishes and locked them away for now. But I got distracted because of the new mechanic I introduced that I spent the next few hours just coming up with more crazier mechanic. I thought about freezing skills, or maybe even random zigzag lightning patterns. I thought about adding weather mechanics, customizations, a boss fight heck even collectible fish gacha.
I fell back to my bad habit of spending most of my time just thinking of more concept rather than actually progressing on my actual project. I lost track of time, and by the time I noticed it I had written almost 3000+ lines of notes. I panic when I noticed the sunlight creeping in through my blinds. Its morning already.
Wth, I just wasted my whole night doing nothing again! I had to wrap it up now cause I still need to write this devlog. And in my rush, I accidentally closed my note app (i use sumblime btw) and with my foggy brain I actually clicked 'No' on the dialog asking me if I wanted to save. I just literally scrapped all the things I wrote the last 8 hours or so. Dang~
Anyyway, I think its for the best. I should never have started writing new ideas in the middle of the jam. I would never be able to implement them! I should just focus on finishing my current project, as is, instead of making it more complicated. Then maybe just work on updating it AFTER the jam instead. I need something to be finished before I think about expanding.
So here is my progress:
☑ Updated Core Mechanics
☑ Playable Prototype
☑ 9 Fish types
☑ 4 Game modes
and i simplified my to do list for tomorrow to just two things:
☐ fix the UI
☐ music & sfx
I'm dropping a lot of stuff cause I don't want to miss the deadline. I want to actually finish something this time. But for now, I should take a nap before my actual work. Can't wait for the weekend to come.
My submission is now on itch, now playable here:
http://homg.itch.io/fish-flipper
I haven't been able to work on this project last weekend cause I forgot it was my birthday. I usually get depressed for few days every year around this time. I also lost my phone, which made me feel even worst. So I lost motivation to do anything at all and just hid under my rock and wallow for days.
But then I remembered Fish Fest ending today!
So I forced myself to finalize something just to be able to submit. I dropped a lot of things on my todo list. Removed my plan for interactive tutorial level and just went with this wall of text that barely teaches how to play. Completely removed the unfinished fishpedia where I planned to put description for the fishes and some trivia as some kind of bestiary. Also removed game settings options cause I haven't started it yet. But I managed to add the arrow icons as optional mechanics and just unimaginatively made it a toggle button. Then just upload it to itch. I haven't had time to play test it anymore either so there might be tons of bugs there, but I'm just so exhausted right now to even care for debugging it.
Friday night was kinda tight, i had less time to work on this, including this log, so I'll keep it short. I still managed to hit some of my to do list though and game's looking better now too. Tomorrow I'll include a great idea from a comment about arrow icon. Thanks for all your suggestions!
Today's progress:
☑ Game menu
☑ Small UI changes
☑ Music & SFX
☑ Background
☑ Animations
To Do:
☐ Arrow Icons
☐ Tutorials, Credits
☐ Upload to Itch
☐ Design game page
Yesterday, I saw the fish fest game jam and decided to join. But unfortunately, I just wasted my time trying to come up with a game mechanic. Today, I have finally settled to create a puzzle mini game for my entry. Over the past few years, I have dabbled in various game jams, but I have never completed any project. I can't say I even started one actually. Instead, I have a collection of game concepts that I never pursued. Feeling discouraged, I was on the brink of giving up again. However, after seeing the devlog entries of other participants, I felt motivated to write one for myself. I quickly settled on the easiest mechanic from the list of ideas I had came up with and dedicated a few hours today to work on that idea. The goal was so I could have my own devlog entry here as well as soon as I can. This is the concept I settled for:
Fish Flipper (Working title)
In this game, the goal is to lead a school of fish in a pond by tapping on them to change their direction. However, each type of fish responds differently to their environment, making it more challenging to flip them in the desired direction. The score is based on the number of flips used, with a lower number resulting in a higher score. If all the fish are not flipped correctly within a certain number of turns, the game is over.
Anyway here are my current progress:
☑ Core Mechanics
☑ Playable Prototype
☑ 3 out of 16 fishes
To Do List
☐ the rest of fishes (i got 13 more fish concepts i wish to include)
☐ more game modes (i wish to include Easy and Hard mode too)
☐ fix the UI, more art (some background and maybe simple animations)
☐ More Screens (main menu, tutorial, options, etc)
☐ music and sfx (I'm no composer, so I'm just gonna get some open source)
☐ add story (I have a story in mind, but I'm not yet sure how to implement it)
I spent more than six hours working on this one today. I hope I get to stay motivated for the next few days that I see this one thru. But for now, I badly needed some sleep.
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@homg Then i need to say you have good taste in assets : )
I'll keep my fingers crossed for your project
@ppgertos nope, these are stock assets, i really like the art too so I was trying to jam as many of the fishes during my first attempt but settled on less when things got too complex
@Aries_Drakon great idea, I'll include this on my to do list
Your game looks complex,
fish sprites look fantastic - especially that black-white fish.
Have you drew these yourself?
If I could suggest something it would be to have an arrow pointing in the direction each fish is facing or at least color each time a different color based on what direction they are looking. It’s looking good tho