So we recently finally did a little intro cinematic for the game, I thought last minute - "Oh maybe post it on youtube, that could get a few views and maybe a new wishlist" the video ended up exploding WAY beyond anything I imagined and we now have gained 1K wishlists in ONE DAY!!!
From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everybody for wishlisting or trying out the demo! It means a lot coming from somebody who's been doing this on my free time while juggling my full time job. I've worked in games for 10 years as a artist and never thought I could make my own game until I finally tried a prototype over a year ago and got so excited. I won't ever promise it'll be perfect; But I'll give it my best shot and put my heart into just wanting to make a fun game.
This game is being made on mostly free or opensource software and a 0$ budget, so you guys are awesome for discovering it and giving me the energy to work on it! The more wishlists the game gets, the more steam ends up giving it some spotlight, so you guys are the marketing department and I can't stress how awesome you've been!
Roadmap - Alpha 6
For anybody new, I call phases of working on the game in Alphas, so its easier to understand! We are wrapping up Alpha 5, which was focused on 'The Town'. I have a few tiny things to wrap up, and we'll begin Alpha 6, which is 'Biomes/Fishing' focused!
Here is some of the ideas I want to attempt for Alpha 6 (Biomes/Fishing):
Time Based Fishing - Make fish have the option to be caught only on certain times of the day - This could help people focus in on aiming for more specific fish
Develop and finish the third biome - Parliament - Adding lots of fish and more fishing spots there
Begin the 4th Biome - Won't spoil it yet!
Achievements/Records 2.0 - its still from the prototype days and I want to make it more organized like page tabs, biomes, and making cards look nicer for uncommon/rare fish. I also want it to help you see if you haven't caught all types of fish in a area yet but not showing you what it is (They'll be blacked out maybe, and say 4/5 fish caught here)
Fisher Mechanic 2.0 - Its a prototype currently and I'd love to polish it more, and let you build a fisher station in the ocean biome
Wild Life Simulation - Make the world feel more alive with some wildlife, I want to attempt this and see how it goes (Deer, Frogs, Ducks, Goose!)
Old World Relics - Long time coming, I want us to finally attempt a early try at you finding old-world relics to sell or decorate with
Bait Digging - To help prevent softlocking early game, and to give you more passive things to do at the start when your waiting for customers
Bubbles Mechanic - Try prototyping a bubbles mechanic where you see bubbles, if you land your lure in it, it could do something better (Faster bite rate? Bigger fish? Specific Fish?)
Dialogue/Reading System - Get a prototype of being able to read things for some fun world-lore you could come across
Fishing Rod UI - Improve some of the UI effects to look/feel nicer
Fish Rotting/Cleanup - Fish disappear/rot at night if you leave them on the ground, this will also help keep the game optimized not having random fish permanently lying around in the world you forgot about
Alternative/Rare bait - Look into trying out rare bait you could get from opening packs, maybe has higher chances of foils being caught
Fish Count/Overfishing Mechanic - Play around with the idea if you overfish a area, its more likely to only catch garbage, but if you let it get to a healthy state it'll be less garbage
Rare QTE Event - Gonna be cautious on this one, I'm not the best at coding - But I want to try and see if we want to make a rare QTE event popup once in a while, which if you do, could net you a bigger-than-normal catch
Scrap Mechanic - Maybe prototype gathering scrap, which you could then process at your shop to turn into nick-nacks to sell as another passive thing to do in the biomes
Fish Traps Mechanic - I had a super old prototype of this working but had to focus on other priorities, I'd love to give this a shot again
Here is the video on youtube that went nuts, it's our opening 'New Game' silly cinematic I did to open the game up to!