Very strange core mechanic, but I gueess it is a good thing here. After getting used to controls it is weirdly engaging.

I like the mechanic but it's very easy to stay at max height to avoid everything. Playing normally though, it's fun to try weave between the sharks :)

Simple game, good start. I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/dDzogWGpxXA

Audio is way too loud. sometimes fish literally ignores the clicks and death can't be avoided.

@elmo Sorry about the volume, my computer's volume was low while I was testing it so I never bothered to check how it'd sound at full volume.

The fish is supposed to ignore some of your clicks. The premise of the game is keeping the fish alive through "indirect" control. He won't target your latest click, but the "closest pellet". Thus it's considerably easier to move the fish to the surface than it's to move him downwards.

that's unruly fishy! ) it hard to force fishy do what you mean: )


I managed to nearly off screen my fish so he was out of the way of all predators and I could farm infinite High score.

Playing this normally however is quite challenging. This also is programmer art at its best!

One thing: I would have disabled collisions on the food pallets. If they get stuck on a predator your fish will steer right into the predator, which is not much fun.

@ausstein "programmer art" indeed. I had someone congratulate me for messing up the transparency layer on the sharks instead of pasting a sprite which didn't have the white parts clipped off. I go by the "game first, assets later" approach, so I will admit to scribbling them last minute (might not have even been 5 minutes to be honest). I decided to allocate the time I could've spent on making a scrolling background or animated sprites on squeezing in that in-game tutorial, which was kind of essential since this game is a bit unconventional.

Collisions on food pellets? I like to say it's a feature rather than a bug, I also noticed it but decided to keep it, it turns the enemies not only into obstacles for the fish but the player as well. I could have made it slip off the sharks over 2-3 seconds for added realism though.

And as for the boundaries, well I did keep the very top and very bottom secure from shark's way. Originally I planned to add a cooldown on how fast you could drop the pellets, which was meant to counteract this. But I didn't ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

Thanks for the nice review, if I ever get around to reworking this or making a similar game in the future, I'll be sure to keep them in mind.

@themadprogramer After I finished in the last 1% for graphics on my first entry I went for jam entries, used assets and opted out of graphics ever since :D so good job for sticking to it :)

Flappy bird-like! Not sure the input always worked as expected for me, clicking the bottom right did not bring the fish down (maybe because I ran it in fullscreen?). However it got down by itself, so it was still possible to run just fine.

@airwaffle it's not going down by itself, fishy follows the pellets you drop. Since you're throwing pellets from the surface you have to wait for them to sink for Fishy to be able to go down. Glad you had some fun :D

fun graphycs

Fun game, cool idea and nice take on the theme. I felt fish response can be faster so that you can move up and down faster

Including an in game tutorial was really cool, and the method of indirect control is novel and interesting. The main issue is that it's really easy to live forever just by hugging the top of the screen. Also, the sound was a little harsh. Nice job finishing, though. It's impressive to have such a complete game in 48 hours.

Initially i was very confused by the controls (could maybe be explained a little better?), but after figuring them out i had fun with the game. simple but it works. The sound effects felt a little irritating at times. And one of them was playing only on one side, i'd make them a bit less intrusive. Overall a fun game

If the food landed on a sharks back the fishie would stay on the same height and basically spelled a death sentence. If you were able to move the fish to either edge of the screen (top or bottom) basically rendered it completely impossible to lose the game.

Not a bad little game, could definitely do with a bit more polish to make it more playable. Would be interesting to see what a revised version of the game would be like.

The mechanic was cool (once I figured it out properly). The initial issue I had with it was I clicked were the arrow was pointing in the tutorial and the pellet would go behind Fishy and he went down with it. Could be a feature about the movement once you understand how it works though.

Also, while the sharks have a distinct "programmer art" feel, Fishy is pretty cute :)

Ahah that's like flappy bird with a huge twist :D

But I felt that there is a huge delay between the player's action and the result, making the game frustrating at times ! Also my fish got stuck beyond the bottom of the screen, I had not lured him back up, I would probably broken every record possible by letting the game run a very long time :P

Nice experiment nontheless ! Good job :D