Email Fishing: A Tower Defense Fishing Simulator by Johnny Turbo

[raw]
made by Johnny Turbo for LD 41 (COMPO)

For LD 41, I decided to combine the two vastly different genres of Tower Defense and Fishing Simulation. The result? A game where you play as a manager of a local Mom and Pop spam filtration center called C-SPAM. Your job is to assist your employees with catching messages and determining if they should be delivered or thrown out!

After you play, feel free to take a look at my postmortem, where I take a deep dive into my thought process for creating this game, some of the other ideas I had for this jam, what went right during development, what went wrong, and everything in between! Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/h7akfjJv3cw

Ratings

Overall 503th 3.143⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 477th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 353th 3.357⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 309th 3.667⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 629th 2.452⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 67th 3.69⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 428th 2.875⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

ludum1118
24. Apr 2018 · 15:49 UTC
Love the trump game over screen
folex70
25. Apr 2018 · 00:51 UTC
lol, good and fun game! nice job!
Jack Hipson
25. Apr 2018 · 01:34 UTC
Pretty cool game! I think if you added a few more messages it would make the game funnier and more fun. Great job!
kromeboy
25. Apr 2018 · 01:38 UTC
You really like tower defense games :-)

if I didn't miss something this one is way harder than "turbo laser arcade" expecially because you may doublecatch the same good email.

It seams that it could also be a sort of Tower Defense Paper Please.
Colin Misbach
25. Apr 2018 · 01:39 UTC
I wanna get ripped fast!

Love the idea! I don't really have any suggestions, because I think it would defeat the original purpose of your game. Obviously if you were to expand on it you would have better graphics, but other than that, I don't know.

Nice work!
25. Apr 2018 · 01:40 UTC
I like the concept, would be nice if the possible emails branched out past the initial two types. Ultimately the decision between spam and not-spam doesn't matter too much since the entire game pauses for you to decide. I wish I could've played longer but the game started to spawn mail on every frame immediately ending the game
Ripter
25. Apr 2018 · 01:54 UTC
After a while the stream is just all messages and clicking on the fisherman no longer brings up the dialog to catch or release.
LMB
29. Apr 2018 · 02:39 UTC
The idea is very nice! I enjoyed playing it for a while, but then was flooded by the torrent of emails... this was overwhelming. Made me think of the poor life of all the people who work filtering email in real life :thinking: 😛
Chaseplays
05. May 2018 · 18:25 UTC
This was fun! I thought the idea of choosing between spam and normal emails was great, and would have really loved to see more types of emails! I played for a while, but I think that the game increased in difficulty too quickly for me to catch up. Personally, I would have preferred that fisherman pick up mail by themselves, and you click on them afterwards to decide whether their mail is spam or not. They obviously couldn't pick up any more mail while they're holding one message, but I think it would make the game a bit more manageable. Otherwise, great job! I really liked your game!
LeviDSmith
12. May 2018 · 08:17 UTC
Neat take on tower defense, but I didn't rate it because it obviously used pre-existing sound clips from AOL mail and Donald Trump. Should be a "Jam" game.
![compo_rules.png](///raw/9a1/z/14c74.png)
maymakegame
13. May 2018 · 16:03 UTC
This was really fun! I don't think I have any complaints about the gameplay or anything! I died a LOT before I got the hang of it! Overall, it's a really fun game!
Bonelazy
13. May 2018 · 16:15 UTC
Really weird combination of genres, but very fitting to the theme. Good job! :)
🎤 Johnny Turbo
13. May 2018 · 16:17 UTC
@ludum1118 Thank you, I thought it fit the game very well!

@folex70 Thanks for playing!

@Jack Hipson I agree, that is the one feature I would have liked to add in the most. I think it could add a bit more complexity to the game because you would need to read through the message and decide if it is spam or not.

@kromeboy Yes for this one I wanted to make something a bit familiar to me so a tower defense game felt like the right choice at the time! Yes this one is a bit tougher because you need to make split second actions instead of just placing a tower and letting it do its thing like in Turbo Laser Arcade. A TD Papers Please could be really interesting!

@Colin Misbach Thanks for the positive feedback, glad you enjoyed playing!

@Anonymous Glad you liked the concept! The one thing I would like to add in is more variety in the email messages, because it would force the player to think about the decision of spam or not. It does get tough quickly!

@Ripter Yes, it does get really crazy towards the end! I probably didn't make it clear enough in the tutorial but you need to click on the fisherman within a very small window of time in order to catch the email. This is especially challenging when you have a few fisherman spread apart on the map.

@LMB Thanks for playing, glad you had fun! LOL I definitely know about being flooded with emails! 🙃

@Chaseplays Great, glad you liked it!! I really wish I had more variety in the email messages, would have made for a much more interesting game, I think. Yes this game ramps up in difficulty very quickly, it was sort of intentional because I wanted to force shorter play sessions because I knew there wasn't a whole lot of variety in the email messages.

@LeviDSmith Fair enough, thanks for playing!
Beebo Studios
13. May 2018 · 16:20 UTC
Haha, what a unique idea! I actually laughed out loud! It plays quite smooth. However, I wished there were some more texts to read. Also I'd like, if the game didn't pause, but you had to take decisions in real time. It was still quite hard.

Good entry!
Veilastrum
13. May 2018 · 16:56 UTC
This is quite a hilarious and unique game, haha. I like the concept behind it. It kinda quickly got impossible near the end though, but it's fun nonetheless. Good job!
tastelikecoke
13. May 2018 · 17:07 UTC
The fired sound effect from Trump is quite amusing! The concept is also cool. it's almost 3 genres
🎤 Johnny Turbo
13. May 2018 · 17:55 UTC
@maymakegame Thanks for playing, glad you had fun! Yes it is a pretty tough game to get the hang of and the difficulty ramps up very quickly.

@Bonelazy Glad you liked it! I was going for something that was really weird and off the wall :D

@Beebo-Studios Great to hear it made you laugh! I really wanted to make a funny game for this jam, I feel like the topic lent itself very well to humor. The one thing I wish I could add in is more variety in messages, I feel like that could have added a really interesting element to the game. I think the real time decision making would make the game waaayyy too difficult LOL!

@Veilastrum Thank you! I was definitely trying to make something unique and humorous, glad you saw it that way. Yes, it does ramp up very quickly in difficulty, would be interesting to see how it would play with better balancing....

@tastelikecoke Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!!