Continental Shelf by cassowary
In the depths of the ocean, an ancient way of life reigns: the everlasting conflict between FISH and SHARKS.
The fish want to school together by being in one big connected area of water, with nothing separating them. However, they don't want to share a space with the sharks, as the sharks have a problematic habit of eating them.
Rearrange the stone blocks and move the fish and sharks around to create a continuous area containing all the fish without ever placing a fish and a shark in the same area.
You can play this game on your smartphone.
Due to personal schedule reasons I had to submit this about 7 hours early (a little after 11 am PDT). I hope you will enjoy regardless!
How to play
- Click and drag to move the grey stone blocks.
- To move a fish, click on it and then click where you want it to move.
- Do not connect an area containing a fish to an area containing a shark, or you will fail the level.
- To complete the level, connect together all the areas containing fish, so they are not blocked by grey blocks.
- There are 10 levels in total.
- Press Z to undo, R to reset, and M to toggle mute. There are also buttons for this in the lower right corner.
Tools used
- Programming: zucchinibread.js , my JS game engine
- Art: Aseprite
- Level design: Tiled + ulvl
- Sound effects: Audacity, pxtone, my sink, and my mouth
- Music: Ableton Live + acoustic guitar + Keyzone Classic
| Link | https://github.com/cassowarii/ld57 |
| Link | https://cassowary.itch.io/continental-shelf |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/continental-shelf |
Ratings
| Overall | 10th | 4.16⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 16th | 4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 124th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 203th | 3.28⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 63th | 3.96⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 35th | 3.917⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 110th | 2.979⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 75th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
I accidentally refresh the page and it even had a continue game button, simply amazing!
Great work! Impressive how finished the game can get in just one weekend.
I would have liked some feedback upon clicking a fish, I often found I had clicked on one before the previous animation finished, but due to the rollover it looked like it was selected, and then I went and clicked somewhere else and it didn't move. Difficultly seemed fairly flat - only the last level took me more than a minute it seemed like, but it was fun all the way through!
Very nice overall, music and graphics both felt good.
I saw a bug, if a fish is on the spot where all fishes are gathering, the success screen don't appear ! I just had to cancel the move and move the fish somewhere else.
Congratulations !
The music is very relaxing and made me feel calm so I could solve the puzzles.
Why isn't this game on LD57's most played list?
Congratulations!
The graphics were simple but very cute and consistent. The block selection highlights, as well as the rock blocks themselves actually, really reminded me of fun freeware games circa 2000-2010. The music was alright, was fun to hear a kind of jazz-standard chord structure somewhere in there, and *mostly* didn't get too old, at least not for this many levels.
The levels themselves were all very nice. For me personally, 9 was a peak in difficulty, with 10 taking less time again. I guess including a turn counter would have been nice, but it would also make the game feel a lot less relaxing. The concept of little fish in danger and blocks moving etc also reminded me a lot of [Fish Fillets](https://fillets.sourceforge.net/) :)
In terms of controls, it was all good and the block sliding felt fine: I wondered though why make the distinction between controlling fish/sharks (click to select, click to move) and controlling blocks (drag to move)?
Overall a great job, thanks for the experience!
Great job as always with the art and music and consistent polish with your game! 
You've done it again! Your collection of games is a testament to the fact there's still a rich design space in block-pushing puzzles in 2025.
As others have said, the tutorialization for moving fish probably should have been in the first level, since I spent 5 minutes making a fool of myself before I realized I could move them.
I really liked the game of "keep these groups separate" while solving the block puzzle - it added a really fun extra layer of problem solving beyond just getting the blocks to the right places, since the in-between states were all important too. I know you mentioned there were fewer levels because of time constraints, but I actually think this was a perfect length for the existing mechanics - but maybe if you managed to squeeze in some kind of extra twist you could get a few more levels out of it.
Visuals and audio are nice as always, and the acoustic guitar was a nice touch!
Looking forward to the next zucchinibread sokoban for LD58!
I actually did have a few other mechanics in mind as possible additions -- I thought it would be cool to have some "neutral" animals that blocked certain pathways but were restricted in how they could move (like, a crab that could only walk back and forth, or something.) But, alas, time constraints! Maybe I'll expand this later!
Well done and much fun!