Hi everybody - With this being devblog 12, it's been exactly a year since I launched the prototype on steam here! It's been a pretty amazing journey to look back. I've learnt so much about coding and game design over the year - The game has gone from a prototype to a functioning game with a defined gameplay loop now.
The biggest benefit I've learned from the game is getting people playing it as soon as possible - It gave me a strong focus on the more important parts of the game. I can see the danger to indie devs where you could just hide in a cave and make a game without people playing it, and it could lead to a lot of design issues.
After grading has been finished, the last big goal was completed for Alpha 5. I have a few small QOL tasks left for alpha 5, then we'll be pivoting to Alpha 6 which is focused back on the core of the game - Biomes, Fishing, Exploring. We have currently 24 fish in the game, and we need way more to start seeing what mid/late game can feel like. My dream is to hit at least 100 fish for the game!
Town Level 3 wrapped up
It's in a solid place now! I'd love to add more character to it with the businesses, but I'm treating this like a 1.0 pass for now.
I'd also love to make the town look 'under construction' like they're building it up from the apocalyptic level 2 - But we'll wait for another pass to do that.
Passive spawning mobs are working really well, I haven't noticed any major bugs. It makes the town feel more lively!
I'm happy that the town now lights on/off when evening or daylight, nice little touch. This is working for all levels of the town
Customer Level 3
I'm not a very good character artist and mostly a world-artist, so this is new for me finally figure out characters that aren't wearing masks or hoodies. I am getting into the groove of it lately and I can see myself looking forward to level 4 customers!
First time we finally have some variety! I want to go back to level 2 and 1 and get more variety as well, but that's a polish thing to do later
Added in some janky little cars driving around town - They aren't super smart, but for a first pass I was surprised how well they run
Grading Mechanic
This was a huge win to get done this month - This is big for later/mid gameplay
This will be huge for collector-players because you can now also stack graded fish to be way more space efficient, and wall-mount them. Getting these mechanics to work properly was a huge win!
I consider this a solid first pass on the overall mechanic, now I want to watch as people use it, play with it, and see how it goes
I'm very flexible with the grading balance - if it feels too punishing, or too rewarding, we can play around with the rewards/penalties
Move Tool FINALLY!
This was such a important quality-of-life tool to finally get working for the game! This was a huge side-goal I had but finally got it working!
Especially later on when you have a lot of stuff in your shop - Having to take things apart and rebuild it was a big pain.
Polish on Foil alerts
Not major, but still was really happy to add a nice little special sound for foils and some FX so you get a bit more hyped when you pull one
Warnings about taxes coming
Thanks to people playing the beta and joining the discord - Stuff like this would be hard for me to think of doing
Weighed fish now have a icon
This was a pretty big win - Having a little weight icon it's now a lot easier for you to remember which Fish have been weighed.
Big thanks to the community for this idea, I'd never have thought about doing this and it's a simple but effective solution
Booster opening shows how many packs are left
Great idea from the community again! The bait system in general needs better presentation but this helps make it more functional
Cinematics to start a new game!
Absolutely not needed, but I've wanted to have a little cinematic to start off the game to get you a bit immersed
Hopefully people enjoy this - If people really like it, I could look into doing other small cinematics for some of the biomes
Its totally skippable, and didn't take me too long since I used the game engine and assets to make the cinematic
