Hey there fellow gamedevs! ... and others who happened to stumble across this, probably because I urged them to.. hi Mom!
Thanks for checking out our entry for the 46th LD Gamejam! Normally I would try to write a super long witty text but honestly I'm super tired and since we spent so much time on the UI, let our game speak for itself ;)
Here's a little screenshot. Basically you're a little cute fish doing little cute fish things. OR AREN'T YOU?! Welp, only one way to find out!
Attention, if available *please use a controller*, this makes your gaming experience much more intuitive and therefore better :) Keyboard works as well though!
Chris - Code Penguin: Programming, UI, Level Design, Git Management, allll the awesome and stunning visual/particle effects (for example Caustics) that will amaze you <3
Sounds were taken from Freesounds and as for the amazing music which we immediately fell in love with:
In Game: 🔹 Song: Axmen - Bliss (VLOG MUSIC - No Copyright) 🔹 Video Link: https:// youtu.be/6SUEtaA_hho
Install instructions:
1- Download the zip 2- Extract the zip 3- double click on the .exe file 4- Play!
Thanks for playingggg <3
Will probably add a Webbuild this Week! (Realtime GI doesn't work in WebGL 2.0 :frowning: )
Changelog: Changed stuttering cam colliders that were off
Changelog: fixed Bug that stopped Script from Lvl 3 of working, it works now! woohooo!
Changelog 4/28: changed a lot of bugs (wrong scale in the UI, Menu music restarts, fish doesn't disappear in plant (which meant he didn't respawn), fixed colliders and controllers (fish kept getting stuck) tweaked values a bit to better fit the new controls -> *I hope that still counts a bugfix and doesn't violate the LudumDare rules, to anyone who disagrees, I left the old builds to download)*
Comment: we changed the controls and how the fishies follow you, as you can see we chose to make the player leave a path and them following that said path (as opposed to them being dragged behind you with a rope of sorts), we already like it better that way as the fishies also can't get stuck and jiggle around anymore, however it's still a WIP so this can lead to weird situations where the fish follows your path too exactly (like doing "loopings" etc) were still working on that, but right now let's just say that's on purpose, "Kids, amirite? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯" If you've got more feedback concerning that matter we would be grateful to hear it <3 We know the inbetween-levels-menu is sometimes fucked and brings you back to the main menu.. just choose level select then :)
Oh and if it's too hard - don't forget to dash, especially when you're having no followers atm that otherwise might happen to not be able to keep up with you while dashing :)
Currently working on a profound postjam version - screenshots are from that version already - so please stay tuned :)
It is a nice piece of work! I enjoyed the game a lot - graphics, audio (when the flower took the younglings). Only what was bothering me was showing me tutorial each time I failed at first level. :)
I liked the idea that you transformed a 3d underwater scene to a flat scene. It simplified control. Visually the game is pretty strong. Nice water effect and tutorial.
I really liked the art style, and the jokes about using baby as food are really funny, there was one little movement bug that happened to me but that's it, the music also really fits the game. Great work!
What an enchanting world you have created! It's a pure pleasure to look at and swim around in! I liked reading the lore as well (but hey, I loved "Torment: Tides of Numenera" and that one has more words than "War and Peace" ;)).
I did experience some bugs, like my unruly food getting stuck behind a piece of coral instead of peacefully following me to the slaughter... ekhm... to my dinner party, that's what I wanted to say ;). Some glitchy movement at times.
Also one small note. You use dark color to highlight the button that is chosen, and a light one for the one that is not (I'm talking about the "restart" "next" and exit" buttons). Maybe it's only me, but it confused me very much - kept misclicking (it's almost embarrassing how many times I restarted the first level instead of proceeding to he next one because of this :D). Should be the other way around.
First impression, character is really cute, pretty much pro quality. Music is good, very peppy. The first text box I see is VERY small. I'm playing on a 5k iMac so maybe it's a canvas scaling thing, Like you chose to have it a constant pixel size instead of scaling with the display? The replay/exit buttons didn't work for me either, I manually had to quit out. Gameplay is simplistic but nice. Once thing I learned from a game I previously made with GamePad support, is that no one here uses GamePads. It's best to design your game around mouse/keyboard and just have GamePads as a nice to have. Still, I played with my keyboard and it still played very well, definitely better than most I've played these past couple days. All in all, good job!
@fatpenguin - I was able to read it but just barely. The thing is, you can set the canvas to scale with the screen so it would be the same size on a 2K, 4K, 5K, or even 8K monitor, and I think that falls under a "minor bug fix" so you should be able to update that now without breaking jam rules.
Nice work! Really beautiful art, and I like the idea for the game. The controls WERE a little clunky on keyboard (no controller... sorry), but I managed to get the hang of it after a bit. The music did get a little too repetitive for me after a while. I'd like to hear some more variation there. Overall, nice work!
@shaolin-dave thanks for the answer! :) I think so too however I (Artist) don't know how hard it is to fix it, but you're right that should count as bugfix and not a feature :3) thanks for taking the time to answer!
@fat-cat thank youuuu :D yep, granted that was a last minute sound we needed for the event of the kids coming back to their momma - do you have a better idea for that? I still couldn't think of anythang haha
@yodoG thanks for playing our game! Yeah it still is a bit clunky but I think our setup is kind of soecific - 3D mit multiple colliders all over the place (which inevitably means a lot of "invisible edges" you can get stuck in) and an npc you drag behind you - time simply wasn't long enough, that little bastard! :D we want to rebuild the whole thing actually and also with completely new colliders and controllers, let's see how that goes :) I gotta say, your game looks amazing as well, I bookmarked it to play later :)
Well done. I like this concept. Also graphics is pretty cool. Got an error in debug when accidentally brought more fishes than required. Overall a very nice game
This is visually impressive and has a lot of asset diversity, and I enjoyed the little animations of the fish and UI art. The gameplay was fun but the little fishies would often get stuck and not get eaten by the plant. Otherwise, great work!
Overall very remarkable accomplishment. Asset design was top notch, and gameplay solid apart from a teeny bit of hitbox/collision strangeness with the feeder fish. Music was great, controls were easy.
Very very nice entry ! Pros: 3D models, Gameplay, Audio, SFX, VFX, Controls Cons: UI in game (those in menuing are good, and we there is always somethig to improve). A nice universe!
So lovely ! (and deadly :joy: ) ! We really enjoyed this game but unfortunately, we didn't have any music or sound :'( (Some errors appeared in the development console about FMOD not being initialized). The art is amazing and the game was fun :D
Im amazed of how you people manage to do in just 72 hours. The graphics were just gorgeous, the music very well done made and the controls easy to learn. As a 3d modeler myself i have some questions about the graphics. What programs did you use and how you accomplished such a great texturing.
@perfmouse-studios thanks for playing our little game :D what do you mean with "off"? too fast, or feeling a little weird like how it looked? :) thanks for you review!
@fatpenguin with off I mean that it wasn't smooth. You looks like you where just being teleported, and if you would use multiple dashes you would get out of your camera. Maybe make it so the camera would follow you faster when you dash, and make dash more like a default movement with just a lot of speed, so you have more control over the dash (since I felt like the dash didn't really go towards the direction I intended it to go to, this is just me thinking out loud). Some screen shake would be a nice indicator. And maybe let the fish follow you when you use a dash (I get you want it to stop after thousands of dashes, but I felt restricted not being able to use dash when I had fishes following me). I hope this helps :D
@perfmouse-studios thank you very much for the input, much appreciated :) I agree that the dash is too fast, and your ideas of additional indicators are definitely worth considering :D about the fish following: it's meant to be not "guaranteed" that they can follow you, but we plan to balance it better; in a nutshell as soon as you're having "followers" it's kind of a "risk" to dash: if done correctly, awesome. if it fails, it could worsen the situation for you (but based on skill, like when there's a straight line of view they can follow, if you dash when they are close to you they will be able to keep up and something like that, so that you have to estimate the situation correctly before you dash or something) Thanks again for playing our little game! :)
@gorypixels) aww, thank you so much for playing our game! We appreciate it (:
@maytch thanks, chris did the caustics together with all the cool particle and visual effects, also we added blue fog which together with the custics immediately made the whole thing look more underwater-y :)
@alkis hi there and thanks for you kind words! We really appreciate it :) The music is awesome right? We found that free music online and immediately felt like it was made for our little game :D
Concerning your questions about the 3D assets Angie made, the programs used were Maya, zBrush and Substance Painter. (+ a bit oh Photoshop here and there). All assets started off in Maya with the Lowpoly (and Uv Unwrapping), then almost every one of them was then further detailed in zBrush for a Highpoly Mesh, which was then baked into the Lowpoly mesh using Substance Painter, and also textured there. The created Normalmap already added much, and the colours for the albedo map were painted directly onto the mesh, which Substance Painter is great for :) I've also made use of the countless generators and alpha brushes for detailing the other assets and to give them a bit of a surface structure.
I decided to make a little "tutorial" on how I did the "Coralpoufs" as I called them, hope it helps! :)
@fatpenguin thanks for your answer. That was what i assumed in the first place but its a lot of work for just 3 days! Amazing work, a tutorial on yt will be very helpfull for other beginner users as well. Again overall amazing work!
@alkis Thanks! :) This asset was actually pretty quick, it took 1-2 hours I think? Maybe 3 with implementing and wating to bake while going to grab a drink etc ^^) and then I had 2 assets :D All in all I just have 3 "special" assets (double the amount because colour variation 2 is created really quick) and the rocks, and then just place the prefabs inside of the level so they fit together :) Thanks for the compliment though! The detailing of the pouf was really easy, with the symmetry and the IMM brush it really was quicker than it looked! :)
I could not beat level 3, the little fish stop spawning when they were eaten by the big ones. Otherwise a lovely game with cute graphics. Maybe the gameplay is a bit too simplistic
The best entry I have seen so far, the only improvement I think off is some kind of visual indicator to tell the player which specific plant is hungry.
Really impressive work for an LD! Love the cute style with the gory premise! ;) I dug out a steam controller- but, no go- is there a way to make that work? Either way, keys worked absolutely fine for me. I did notice a bug on the menu screen. It seems the soundtrack re-triggered- maybe from hovering over one of the buttons?! Thanks for the gorgi little underwater game!
I had an Avast exception for the game (trust you on that, guys!) and it works :) So, really cool game, warm colors, funny looking character. Simple mechanic but it does the job. The camera although is some time to slow to follow me (like when I dash) and I've been many time hit by something (mostly those bad fishes) out off my sight. A bit of a downside... Path-finding of soon-to-be-eated-fishes are some times a problem because they get stuck. Like if they had a too large turning-cirle.
Anyway I had fun playing it, may go back to it by the way... Good job ! :D
I loved the underwater feeling effect, very beautiful art style. Some of my little fishs were stuck : pathfinding could have been improved I think the warning sound effects could have been improved Nice game anyway!
Very enjoyable. The offeri... little fish tend to get stuck on pretty much everything, but thats nothing that cannot be countered by careful maneuvering. Graphics are pretty nice and the gameplay fits the theme properly. I didnt try keyboard controls, but controllers work fine. Thumbs up for providing a linux version, most participants only focus on windows which is a shame.
Haha... very cute, yet dark. Really nice you had time to get the tutorial and lore in game. UI wise I wish the feeding bars on level 3 would stick to the edges of the screen.
Was quite fun! until the small fishes stopped following me XD.
Failed on the 3rd stage by a minuscule margin T_T. Upon retrying it, worked through it quickly, but suddenly the offerings stopped following me. I would tap them, and they would shunt off in a random direction (rigidbody.AddForce -> Forcemode.Impulse style) really quickly, but never latch onto me.
Loved the designs, and the sounds -- upbeat and comfy for underwater madness :).
Everything about the game is simply amazing. Really cool environment thanks to both the art style and the music, it really set this mood throughout the game. Gameplay was fun and engaging, I wished there were more levels but it's been great so far. The only minor problem I ran into was the baby fish getting stuck occasionally on the wall, so I had to back track a bit. Beside that, this is crazy amount of work for two days, great job to the both of you! Really cute character design too.
theme-wise, graphic-wise, and gameplay-wise, this game is on the ball. everything just works on every level. the only maybe downside is that after the minion fish start following you to their untimely demises, they spaz out for a second or two. but otherwise this is top-notch! (and even that is extremely minor haha)
WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE YOUNGLINGS ANAKIN ?! Great game with it's share of laugh ! The graphics are great and the gameplay is fun nice job ! The music are really cool and made me happy. The controller support is a great addition and works perfectly. Now for the little things not so great, the camera is flickering when moving and doesn't have any smoothing and the younglings pathfinder is not so great sometimes stucking them in place. But yea, there is only these two things which bothered me and it is really nothing for a 3 days game. You did an amazing job and made me laugh ! Congrats and keep making games !
Amazing graphics and UI! Probably the best visuals I've encountered in this jam. Really impressive. Music and sounds fit really well. The story and humor are great, made me giggle quite a bit. Gamepay is fun and gets quite challenging. What adds to the challenge is a bit weird behavior of fish babies. I played both version of the game but in both they follow you with some time lag and it happens quite frequently that you lose them on the way and have to go back to pick them up. Not sure if it was intended but it felt quite frustrating. That was one of the reasons why I couldn't finish the third level. Or maybe I'm just that bad. =D I did like the original AI more though, it looked smoother and more natural.
Overall, really great game, I enjoyed it a lot. If you polish the gameplay a bit and diversify it to make more interesting it's gonna be a production-ready game. Well done!
@mykola thank you very much for your feedback! :) Yep, the follower behaviour is something we're fighting with, it is such a complex thing also concerning colliders etc, we try to make it as in Pikmin :) For a gamejam this was just too much, especially considering all the other things youve got to do, hehe, but we really appreciate your input in that matter :) We're glad our game could give you a little joy, makes us very happy :)
@hernz Thank you thank you! :D Also for reporting the issues and bugs, we're trying to work on that and improve our game :) We're glad you liked our game, thank you for playing! :id:
I liked the graphics (lighting was very good, very cohesive) and the children. The controls respond well, but when the game ends and the interface appears or is executed from the side (it happened 2 times). But it was very well done, congratulations to the team.
Hee, finally had the time to sit down and try your game! Yey, fellow fesh-eating plant game :smile: You got a nice embryo of a stealth puzzle game here - though am not entirely sure how mean the parent fishes are, never ran into a problem while playing. I liked the underwater visual trick, the colors and 3D models were really cohesive. Text is self-aware and knows, but yeah : wall of text isn't great (I know, am one to talk...) - there are certainly very fun ways you could deliver the same little story, in a later update. Additional advice : would be great to host the game on itch.io or somewhere else - easier to track!
@jmad awww thanks for checking out our entry, fellow plant enthusiast! :D Yep, you're completely right, I find it annoying too - but as you've probably guessed it was one of the last things added to our game, poetry that came to life at 2 a.m. xD I think we will add more tutorial levels and gradually split up the text while showing stuff on the map etc :) True, the parents dooooon't really do much yet - other than damage and taking the babies away - but that will become very different, hopefully :D (the levels were created on the last day, before that was pretty much just modeling and coding scripts, haha ^^) We are really eager to improve and continue to work on our little prototype and make it more fun etc - stay tuned :D Thanks abut the itch.io tip! I realized that I stumbled across a bunch of games on there, so it's certainly something to consider O: maybe after the next major update? :D
Awesome Game, Loved the graphics and Solid concept the game is also coded very well, Amazing experience would've loved that the UI was a bit smoother but I understand It's tight time so over all it's a great game, Great Job! :smile:
This is the cutest game on jam, you did a great job on the design. Also, you chose the best music for the game :) Despite the warning, i played on the keyboard and there were no problems with it. c:
The fish stopped if i used a dash: looks like a bug, but maybe it's a good mechanic so that the player doesn't spam this action. It can also help to leave the fish in a safe place.
I would also like to see an extension of the dash. This may be obstacles that break or undertow that need to jump. The enemies look quite harmless, because of this the meaning of the character's HP bar is slightly lost. Perhaps this can be corrected by a dangerous environment and more aggressive enemies. Tube-shortcut can also help diversify the level design and gameplay.
Lovely game with nice art and a pinch of humor. On the third level my plant even died once, so on the second attempt I fed it 2 fishes when only 1 food was needed and got this
@fatpenguin no, I didn't miss them and passed this level in the end. But on the first attempt I just forgot to feed left bottom one, or just was too greedy not to fed nearest plants first, lol.
this is a lot of work in such a short time. Graphics, animation and music are on top! despite the fact that there are only three levels, they are well balanced in increasing complexity. A full-fledged mini-game!!! The only thing that caught my attention is that the sounds and music don't overlap very well. But taking into account the tight deadlines - this is something incredible!!! Plump little penguin is my favorite on this jam!
@tropos@pineapple-po thanks so much you two, glad you've enjoyed it :D Yep, we we're proud how much we were able to cram into the jam so to say; we plan on continuing to work on this, thanks for the inspiration! :)) Yep, right now the amount of times you loose the fishies if you dash is too extreme, but so is the dash hehe, one of the things that needs tweaking :) The dash ideas we're also very interesting, thank you! :) I'm happy you enjoyed it
It is a nice piece of work! I enjoyed the game a lot - graphics, audio (when the flower took the younglings). Only what was bothering me was showing me tutorial each time I failed at first level. :)
Nicely done! Thanks for sharing.