Piranha Frenzy

by mremmele

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.75

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.00

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.06

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.46

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.19

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.04

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.54

"Are we the baddies?" asked literally no piranha ever. There's no such thing as a "bad guy" in the food chain. Yeah, you got it right – you play as a piranha, and your task is to grow a school and devour everything in the ocean's DEPTHs.

Use WASD or arrows to navigate and hit the score!

Screenshots

Possible Challenges

Try to get through without dying!

Dev Notes

*Mobile version included!* You can play on your phone too. To get the best experience on the phone, use horizontal position.

I used my own game engine, Dacha and the editor for this game engine (Dacha Workbench).

I used Pixquare to draw on iPad with a pencil. Overall, the game was built on Javascript + WebGL, with the help of three.js and my own code.

Tools: Three.js

Comments39

karbirus7 Apr 2025, 23:33

fun game! I played a couple of rounds trying to go further in the game :D

cdupe8 Apr 2025, 03:23

You know it's a good game when you catch yourself strategizing how you're going to beat the first jellyfish without losing a fish next time! It was a little off-putting when my piranhas died from going off the edge of the screen, though.

mremmeleauthor8 Apr 2025, 07:59

@cdupe Yeah, sorry for the killing borders. It was just easier to implement at the beginning and later I didn't find the time to change it.

MysteriousJuice8 Apr 2025, 08:31

What a polished and fun game, loved the retro feel. I think a bit more control over the flock (like with WASD movement instead of mouse) would have been nice, but it makes sense that a flock is not so easy to maneuver. Huge respect that you did all of this with your own engine! I will look into your repo when I find some time.

Kotolazer8 Apr 2025, 10:51

I really enjoyed it. The game has a very good balance, you can't just take and beat everyone

Elian Geser8 Apr 2025, 10:53

Very cool game. I like that you made it work for touch as well! Would have been cool if i also could play with keyboard tho. But I guess the mouse did the trick anyway. Good job, cool submission!

erebrus8 Apr 2025, 10:53

It has more depth than what I was expecting at first. Congrats

Stratcat668 Apr 2025, 10:58

I managed to get to the pink second level (just to die from an armada of jelly fishes).

The has a nice core loop, but what I really like are the thoughts that went into it:
- The game has a nice difficulty curve (which is not easy to manage)
- The game introduces you with easy enemies in the beginning to its concepts
- Additional piranhas as visual life points and damage (at least I think so?)
Thank you for your game!

Tugaryn8 Apr 2025, 10:59

Like this, didn't have enough tutorials
because it took me only the second time to decide to eat the fish.
I thought they'd do damage.
Well done!

Jack Turpitt8 Apr 2025, 11:01

This is a game-ass game! The pixel art is gorgeous with very smooth animation, and the music is a bop. I love how the extra piranhas organize themselves into a school as you pick them up. How they act as both your health bar and your attack strength without requiring extra UI is very clever. The game was nice and challenging and reveals extra depth as you get deeper. Awesome that you made it in your own engine too! Great entry, thanks for making it!

Our entry is here if you want to check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/eurydive

Aurelius8 Apr 2025, 11:11

Neat game, especially the graphics. Liked the color balance a lot. Building your own engine is also commendable

On the downsides, as was previously mentioned - the kill borders do break the flow, and it's especially frustrating that this behavior isn't communicated. All 4 of my retries were due to to the borders, first - unknowingly then accidentally on jellyfishes

As for potential future improvements, aside from the borders, I'd add some basic randomizer to encounters to keep the players more engaged on subsequent playthroughs. It may be a preference thing, but having the game speed up as the time goes on might also help with the pacing

The Stewarts8 Apr 2025, 11:39

Really great - loved it. The art is cool and the sounds are nice and crunchy. I'd like a dash with invincibility (and also maybe a slow down to make it easier to dodge) and also if the hitbox on your piranha's could be a bit smaller that would be cool. Overall really great though!

dendi_life8 Apr 2025, 11:53

i like this gameplay and music

LDJam user 148878 Apr 2025, 15:38

very cozy pixel art here, i like it :heart:

levi kingma8 Apr 2025, 17:16

Very satisfying to accumulate more and more piranhas, good job!

mayrakissa8 Apr 2025, 17:31

A great spin on the genre, not shooting spaceships but chomping on tasty fishes :D Solid game!

jtap8 Apr 2025, 19:27

Great game, I really liked the mechanics and it's fun to play. Thank you!

Zaubergurke8 Apr 2025, 20:03

nice graphics and mechanics :)

Dylan Shumway9 Apr 2025, 00:37

Really fun take on a shmup/bullet-hell type game! The music is a super fun groove and the graphics are really cute, which makes it fun to play through. :smiley: I wish it was more clearly communicated that the edge of the screen will deal damage to you (maybe with a vignette?) or that there were just hard boundaries instead, but I still enjoyed my time. Well done! :confetti_ball:

Steven Garberg9 Apr 2025, 05:05

Absolutely loved the old school arcade vibes! Great entry!

Bea9 Apr 2025, 05:46

I really liked this game and played a lot of it! the relation between damage and physical size is something I think about simulating a lot, and I think this game provides a really interesting answer! I did find dying at the edge of the screen a bit frustrating, but that didn't stop me from playing it through to the end. Nice work!

Seiko9 Apr 2025, 12:00

cool game. I really liked the controls and graphics. retro style and beautiful color scheme. enjoyed playing!

Sagamore9 Apr 2025, 16:56

Thanks for the cool experience! The controls are very responsive and the game as a whole is pretty chill. Enjoyed the walkthrough!

chloew9 Apr 2025, 19:55

Audio is great! My only suggestion is maybe adding some iframes right after losing a piranha- I usually lost more than one at once XD

filgru9 Apr 2025, 20:31

Really fun game! I love the idea of collecting piranhas:) Maybe consider adding random level generation to keep things fresh and less repetitive. Great work!!

Gaspar10 Apr 2025, 06:53

Gorgeous pixel art! The gameplay is engaging, though damage sources aren't always clear.

Kamile V.10 Apr 2025, 06:54

haha fun game! I love graphics

Wyzal10 Apr 2025, 19:52

Fast time killer, nice. Like the art style. Good job!

Langotriel10 Apr 2025, 21:26

Wonderful visuals and creative enemy design, especially with the swordfish!

Scott R Howell11 Apr 2025, 00:36

Deep Shmup! Love it, good fun, love the sprite work, cool idea on a mix of Feeding Frenzy and R-Type, I like that there is added depth to enemy design than just it hits or it shoots, with stuff liek the sword fish damaging on the front but soft on the back, I do wish you didn't take damage when leaving the screen and instead couldn't leave the screen though.

zjuWindKing11 Apr 2025, 06:37

Great Game!The design of Swordfish is quite clever~

cherrybcake11 Apr 2025, 13:31

Very fun and cozy game, the art is cute and colorful, good job :)

Jacky San11 Apr 2025, 19:18

Perfect arcade game :heart: I love it ! Pixelart & musik is soooo good ! Good job !

silkworm_sweatshop11 Apr 2025, 20:00

Not sure I've seen Fish shmup :fish: :sweat_smile:. Picking up more piranhas as an upgrades was neat. Really nice presentation both visual and sound. It would be cool with a boss at the end but for a jam it's fine. Great job!

LDJam user 26153812 Apr 2025, 18:13

fun game~! I kinda wish the projectiles would hurt the swordfish and that maybe green projectiles could hurt jellyfish because it would give more to do than just dodging. You could then intentionally kite projectiles in the direction of other enemies to clear space for yourself.

Fractal12 Apr 2025, 19:59

Very nice art and very cool concept. The keyboard controls didn’t work at all for me in Chrome (on Linux), but then it worked in Firefox, you may want to fix it as I see several other comments of people who couldn’t use the keyboard either. But apart from that, very well done entry, I wish it would last longer!