Interesting game, a lot of content for just a jam !
I love the retro art style  and the effort putted in the environment.

For a finished product, I would have loved to have an introduction / tutorial helping me to understand what I'm supposed to do right away. Maybe starting in an enclosed area with pnjs explaining how to play.

Good job.

What a fun game! I love the pokemon/stardew character vibe, just like what I was going for in my game. I also understand the MASSIVE amount of work that had to go into this game.

For starters, the textures. Each character had their own unique sprites, so did each fish, each tile, etc. Holy crap!

Secondly, the bridges and hill-climing ramps. That's not easy to code, I actually excluded them in my game because they would have taken too long to make and I just didn't have the time.

Thirdly, the character interactions. I don't know how, but you managed to have characters with adaptable responses and events. Nice job! I have something similar in my game where a character's architecture allows them to to either talk, question, push back, finish conversation, or update status while talking. I felt that your game did theis excelently.

Now, there was one thing that troubled me. For whatever reason, after unlocking the second bridge (Roach man) I could no longer collect fish, they went right through me and I had to stop my run there (probably a collision system error). Other than that, not much critique except that the controlsjust  needed to be explained to the player (like LMB to use fishing rod). This is not meant to be a polished game anyways, just a prototype.

I really hope you make it into the top three. Good Luck!

Very chill game to tune off to. There were some bugs, the fish bar sometimes spawns outside the fish slider thing, you could walk outside of bounds and cross the rivers this way and eventually I clipped inside the river and got stuck in it, which was the point in which I had to stop. I also found some things to be a bit unintuitive, like how the fish started to slide into infinity instead of going inside the backpack, eventually I assumed it was because my backpack was full (even though it was only half filled visually), and quitting the menus was a bit weird, some menus and fish prompts would stack up on top of each other. It was also a bit unintuitive how the supposedly best bait wasn't at all the best (the first bait slows the green bar to a crawl, it's the best bait) even though its stats say so, and there is no indication to how do we get to spawn the kind carp (I'm supposing it exists, since I didn't see it). I assumed it was just a very low chance of spawning him, which meant I had to keep grinding for it while emptying my backpack, which isn't a great gameplay loop for my taste at least. I remember I was thinking that maybe I had to have one fish of each kind on my inventory in order to spawn it, so I started looking for each different type of fish but I never managed to find pike again after I gave it all to the bridge guy until I got stuck in the river.

But yeah, other than those hiccups, you have a very chill game. I really like the nature of this game, Harvest Moon was one of my favorite memories growing up. The music is cool, graphics are nice and it feels good to play. Great job, thanks for making this game!

Very nice game, love the atmosphere.

It's a bit buggy on the technical side. Menus don't behave like you would expect them (I pressed esc way to much, only to show the pause menu over the menu I was in. Got stuck on the water after a while while trying to walk over a bridge.

Still a lovely game overall.

+In my opinion, it's just the right length to get the most out of the fishing mechanic.

+The top down Genre of this game really works with what they were going for

+Fishing minigame adds a nice contrast to the rest of the game's relaxing moments.

+Amazing Sound design.

-While I understand why you wouldn't want someone speeding through a game like this, I think an improvement may be to give a sprint button at least half way through given the size of the world (unless there is a sprint button and i'm just an imbecile).

-A small one, but the inventory has no borders, meaning there's an illusion of extra space, thus it's hard to tell when it's full. (I almost assumed it was a bug when my fish slid across the screen to the side of the map instead of going into my inventory (XD))

Such a cosy game! The music, the atmosphere, the art and the seasons and day/night cycles you've implemented along with the story and the fish/bait mechanics are amazing!

Well done! I only encountered one issue after using the dead fish bait and fishing a pike, the pike sprite/object kept sliding past me towards oblivion, through cliffs and rocks. Same thing happened with the next fish I pulled out of the spring lake.
Still! I enjoyed your game so much! Well done!

PS: Loved the L- cameo XD

PS2: I went straight north and was able to walk off the screen hehe