Fish Merger by Lakea

[raw]
made by Lakea for Ludum Dare 56 (COMPO)

Join Lakea in the magic aquarium where you can merge fish to make bigger fish, furfil customer orders to earn gold that will allow you to buy more fish spawners to increase your range available to customers. Beware this aquarium gets expensive to run as the rent goes up daily, be sure to have enough rent before the day ends. My score is in a screenshot on itch for you to try and beat.

Ratings

Overall 287th 2.905⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 265th 2.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 281th 2.714⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 196th 3.452⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 251th 3⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 200th 2.971⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Humor 209th 2.706⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 290th 2.583⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 18🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

Krabban
07. Oct 2024 · 11:26 UTC
Im not sure if Im stupid. But i just sat around waiting for more fish to spawn. I only got 3 fish the first day, couldnt complete any contracts and lost :/
hotaloca
07. Oct 2024 · 15:54 UTC
The combine/merge idea would have bene good, but it was simply way to many combines to earn a fish. Maybe combination should be only a way to create new type of fishes, and growing would not require combination of fishes? They would simply grow?
🎤 Lakea
07. Oct 2024 · 17:30 UTC
@krabban you need to click the fish eggs that are on the bottom row to spawn more fish, you then merge them to grow them.
@hotaloca Thanks for the feedback, it can be tricky and I do agree I maybe added to many levels, a common fish can merge to level 10, whereas a rare is only to level 5, maybe in some future version I will change it to only 5 levels for both.
diabolical-sloth
08. Oct 2024 · 10:03 UTC
interesting take on the 2048 type gameplay loop.

I think it'd be really useful if there was an upgrade that let your fish spawn at higher levels as it can take a very long time to get to the higher level fish.

cool stuff and a nice take on a tried and tested mechanic
TentacleDream
08. Oct 2024 · 10:18 UTC
Interesting idea, but in the end all I did was combine fish. I lacked some variety, but at first I was very stuck in trying to optimize the combination)
Mithka
08. Oct 2024 · 12:14 UTC
Very relax gameplay, merging fish together and nicely polished!
wisstopher
08. Oct 2024 · 12:17 UTC
An interesting take on the theme, I wish we could combine the fish quicker and see more of the content. Other than that it was a solid entry, well done!
LDJam user 357656
09. Oct 2024 · 00:50 UTC
I didn't realize that I needed to click the eggs until I read through the comments here, but maybe I just missed that in the instructions? Straightforward merger.
kiv
09. Oct 2024 · 14:05 UTC
Speed merging simulator! It was not obvious for me that I need to click on the food cell to produce small fishes, but when I realized that, the game bacame pretty fun! Nice entry.
stmate03
09. Oct 2024 · 15:50 UTC
a simple merging game, fun and addicting as merger games tend to be!
Turquoise Moon
09. Oct 2024 · 21:46 UTC
I had more fun with this than I expected! I only wish the fish were larger or more different from each other. It was hard to tell them apart at times.
ChrisBeck
13. Oct 2024 · 09:47 UTC
Like a few of the other comments have said, it took me a while to figure out I had to click the eggs to spawn the fish, but once I got that I spent quite a bit of time on this one!
Adrien Tremblay
13. Oct 2024 · 16:22 UTC
Simple but good game. I also sat there like an idiot for a while. Didn't realize you needed to click the spwners to spawn fish. Otherwise the game is a bit grindy. I feel like the reason 2048 works so well is that you can combine multiple things at once. If you could do this in this game somehow? it would be a lot funner
unpronounceable
13. Oct 2024 · 16:42 UTC
Interesting idea. The sounds were good. Immediately understood what I needed to do, having the tutorial as an overlay was a good idea but it would have been better if there was more attention drawn to the tutorial text guessing by how many other people didn't understand right away. The merging of the fishes was tedious and quickly lost my interest. Probably just not my type of game.
Lussard Studio
14. Oct 2024 · 13:16 UTC
The concept was fun. I enjoyed to try to combine as much fish as I could to the the different types avaible in the game and make as musch money as possible !