A Fishermans Friendly Island Builder by Lombax
Hello, Hello.
As for everyone, my game is full of buggs, "content" had to be cut. so what you see is the bare bone, from what i imagined my game to be.
the game was made with start with nothing in mind. start on a tiny piece of an island. then catch drifting wood and leaves, and smash them together to increase the size of the island. this was going to be the first stage, where when the island was fully Explored/Build, then the second stage will begin. plants trees minerals and other objects of those kinds will start popping up on the island. and the player were supposed to build a comunity, to eventualy sail out to the seas.
buuuuuuuut only barely managed to get stage one completed, but there are no polish at all, i made the gui and character with fishing in the last 3 hours so myeah, some polish is definitly needed.
there is no sound aswell.
How To Play: use the arrow keys to move the character. to expand the island click on the shovel and pickaxe symbol. to expand the island you need 2 wood and 2 leafs each expansion. to fish you need to stand at the shore of the beach. (the collision is abit bugged on the hook, a simple change but time)
when you feel satisfied with the game, press alt + f4 to exit the game. didnt make a exit button :dog:
feel free to completely destoy me in the comment section, feedback is always welcome either good or bad.
Ratings
| Overall | 477th | 2.7⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 469th | 2.478⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 392th | 2.804⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 229th | 3.456⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 373th | 2.902⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 306th | 2.262⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 439th | 2.523⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 56🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
I can definitely see a lot of potential in a game where the player builds them self up from fishing / gathering, expanding your civ and gear as you go along. I hope you keep this idea in the back of your mind and expand on it some day.
As for the game in its current state, you already know what the problem is based on the desc so no point in repeating it, but i didn't get any bugs in my play through(Not anything i noticed at least).
The visuals where fitting (top down pixel art), if you do continue with this idea keep the art style.
As for your take on the Theme, it was a pretty cool twist(build a civilization from nothing). I wish you had more time to create the full picture.
You have a solid idea for a game here, and with art style that really compliments that idea. But the idea is to big for a LD. I think you learned a lot of valuable lessons in this LD and i hope to see you use them in the next LD.
Good work on your LD enter my friend :clap::frog:
I liked how you could hook the flotsam with other captured flotsam. That made a nice little mechanic of trying to hook at an angle to capture more than one piece at the time.
It would have been nice if there was more of the floating stuff! I know the game isn't complete yet but it feels like this part of the game could have been sped up a lot if the initial rate of grass and wood was higher.
A good base for a game, I think.
Honestly I would not change anything with the fishing system and how the collisions are working as they currently feel great once you get used to them. The two things I really wish this had were, being able to reel in quicker as a missed shot really took a temporal toll. Also the last thing which really wasn't within in the scope of the jam would just be more flotsam variations. Overall though, loved this idea! Solid art, solid gameplay loop, and solid progression fitting perfectly into the theme.
ye the fishing part of the game, needs abit more love. cuz its kind of the main mechanic/feature of the game in stage 1 of the island builder. so ill keep the feedback in mind when i come back to this project.
tyvm. :clap: :frog: :clap: :dog:
ye, the fishing part needs some improvements. it was literaly made in the last hour. ty for the feedback thought, ill have to do something to make it less of a torture, like other ppl mentioned xD.
tyty.
and ye the only goal for this little game, was to fully create your entire island. towards the end i wanted to add some dialogue telling the player what to do, but other elements of the game were needed quite badly, so i had to just forget making it. and just add it later, when i start to work on this again.
tyty.
yes, i noticed that when i tested it myself right before i had to stop. time just flew by at the end so didnt have time to fix it.
but tyty.
Saves us all some clicks!
- change directional keys for WASD
- the game gets repetitive VERY fast. I'd increase the speed of debris generation, their movement, and speed of the fishing hook for this volume of gameplay mechanics. The fact it takes an hour to finish it doesn't mean your game has an hour of gameplay.
- add some "you won" at the end...?
I did a fork on your GitHub so I could play around a bit, and actually built the whole island - it would take an hour otherwise, a time I would not be willing to spend. I suspect the charm of builder/survival games lies in the size of their loop, and this one is not big enough.
Despite the criticism, I like your work - your game is the first one I ever downloaded the source for, since I really wanted to finish playing it. The graphics is cute, and this idea could maybe go somewhere - I think this type of game is still trending.
I think it would've been cool if the rod's range was determined by how long the player held down LMB before releasing to cast. The current fishing mechanic seems to be a great foundation for something quite engaging.
@pincushion ye true. its currently missing something major that enhances the plyers experience, so back to the drawingboard. :mag: :mag:
@jimbly tyvm for telling me about that link. i havent used git that much so wasnt aware that i could link to it directly. and yes that fishing lure have a special spell that tricks the mind into thinking it hit the floating stuff.
@kuro tyvm for the pointers. and the way i made this was not realy thought about that well and the code got realy realy messy towards the end, im currently working on cleaning it up abit and find some easier ways of making the island. but tyty. :dog: :dog:
@corrade ahh nice idea, ill write that down right away :D :dog: :dog: tyty.
@hcursino tyty, well the tedious part need some work. i dont want it to feel tedious but at the same time needed to take a step back and fish for resources. maybe only fish for mainly food, and wood and leafs less and less as they get stuck on your island as it get bigger. but im not sure yet on how i will tackle this problem.
tyvm for all the constructive feedback. i learned some new stuff and got some new ideas so tyvm everyone that have commented.
I know you didn't have time, but maybe it would be nice to have different types of wood/leafs, that are worth more but are harder to catch (or something like that).
I love how the character Naruto-runs :smile:
Well done!
@dominas overscoping is sadly a problem im working on, I WANT IT ALL MUAHAHAHA... so when i look around on other games from ludumdare i see how simple i can make games which are just as good as games that have abit more meat on them.
and ye, the fishing is a problem that alot have mentioned, and ty for the ideas for improving it.
My game also turned out half-finished this LD, so I decided to dig into this one a bit and set my own goal: Combos.
It was pretty easy to get a wood-wood combo, but my real goal was to get a wood-leaf combo catch.
And after a while, I was able to do it, here it is:
It was a pretty long cast, almost to the corner of the screen, but I've shown it here reeled in on land so you can clearly see it was a combo.
So I had fun with this! Can't rip out a ton of stars on a not-so-finished entry, but knowing what it was going in, I found some fun.
The casting mechanic was a cool idea, and the tempo of the action made it just barely hard enough. It was the right level of difficulty to create a chill fishing mood. Nice start!
(Edit: I want to second the suggestion about that the controls should be on WASD and not on arrows. Arrows are fine alone, but arrows+mouse is not the right way to go imo)
@pkenney hehe gj. next is triple combo :O (not sure if its possible). but ye... im not quite sure why i used arrows instead of wasd. when i play other games that use arrows i just yell to myself whhhyyyyyy. and i just did it in my own game...... oh well.....