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A jam submission

Goblins vs. FishfolkView game page

A tribute to Pixeljunk's Monsters 2 and Godot 4
Submitted by Stuff René Made — 6 days, 21 hours before the deadline
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Goblins vs. Fishfolk's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#73.2503.250
User Interface (UI/UX)#82.7502.750
Overall#93.2503.250
Visuals(Graphics)#123.0003.000
Sound/Audio#232.2502.250

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

DevLog Link
https://renevanderark.itch.io/goblins-vs-fishfolk/devlog/770308/surfing-on-sea-turtles-tutorial

Developer Feedback Questions
I'm still working on a better version of an interactive tutorial which should simply explain the controls for keyboard+mouse and gamepad. How can I do this better?
Simply put, it's w a s d to run, space to jump, hold mousewheel down to zoom and look around, left click to open a menu next to a tree and build stuff, etcetera. Gamepad is L stick to run, R stick to look around, A to jump, b to open menu's, etcetera.
Esc opens pause menu ... I want it to be intuitive, but the first playtests made clear it was not (yet)

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit)

Hi! I like your Tower Defender. The low-poly is a good choice, and overall, it looks like an excellent base for further development. I played in Safari, and it worked, although not without some lags. So, I will comment on the web version.

The tutorial is a great idea. It feels so much better when a game invites you to play with a simple due course explanation.

The only problem with the keys I had is that the Shift button is also highlighted in the tutorial popover. But at the same it does nothing. I thought it was for running, but it didn’t work and left me wondering if it was a problem with the browser version or something else.

In general, there was still some “what shall I do?” feeling. But it was super minor. Maybe you can consider placing a preinstalled tower and letting the player see how it works and what the goal of the game is. Then, build the second.

I played without a gamepad, which is why, at first, I could understand the “A” and “B” buttons being shown here and there. At first, I thought they had some gameplay meaning.

For some reason, the tower menus weren’t so intuitive. But how their stats are presented and the set of choices you have to look good and really helps.

At some point, the tutorial seemed to stop. No more fishermen were coming, and I couldn’t build more towers. I could walk arround though. Maybe it was the end of the demo? Or maybe it is a bug?

Developer

Thanks! It is still very much a "where will it go?" Prototype.

I think you played a previous release of the web version, cus I finished the tutorial in it _very_ recently. Loving the feedback, putting it on my backlog:

https://github.com/Teaching-myself-Godot/fishfolk-vs-goblins?tab=readme-ov-file#...

Developer

oh, wait! You're right actually. I should add a splash screen after the 2nd wave ends saying: "Hope you enjoyed the demo, if you'd like to try the real game, you can download it here on this page for free!"
Or smth like that..

Submitted(+1)

Seems like you already have a decent foundation for a tower defense. I tried it on web and Windows. The web version definitely has some oddities (which you seem aware of), but I didn't experience any issues with the Windows version.

Tutorial:
- I think it's okay, definitely would be better if it was more reactive. My only issue with it was having me try to build a tower and then telling me I need money to do it. I think the concept is common enough that you can just have the player pick up the money and immediately build the tower.
- I don't know how much faith I'd put in playtester's claiming that Esc for pause menu isn't intuitive, that's been a staple of game design for 30+ years. Maybe for someone unfamiliar with PC gaming that would be odd, but it's the industry standard, so don't waste time worrying about that.

Feedback:
- The main menu was not clear, in my opinion, as I didn't realize there were game modes other than Tutorial on my first 2 times loading the game.
- The flying fish on the last round of story mode taking a different route felt a bit unfair. I don't think there was any indication that enemies could come from a different spawn, and I didn't have sufficient defense or money to stop all of them.
- I do think the theming is a little odd at this point, having an arrow and cannon tower next to a missile launcher feels a little odd. Nothing wrong with it this early on, but I'd like to see unique, thematic towers as the game progresses.

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Wow! That's great feedback! Really cool! Thanks for taking the effort.

I must admit, this tutorial was a struggle; it's quite hard to imagine any given individual to cater to... but with this kind of feedback I can really fix it.

I'm picking it all up on my backlog (README) as soon as possible.

I was thinking about a perch of attack pigeons before (in stead of the missiles)... Then the launcher-pads would be their perches, right? I have a lot of 3D modeling to learn.

Submitted(+1)

Attack pigeons would be awesome!

That is an impressive ReadMe file!

Developer(+1)

Hi!

Just wanted to say thanks and let you know the Gull Tower release is now a fact. :)
Devlog on the gull tower

Also I kinda wrote a thank you to you all here as well:

https://renevanderark.itch.io/goblins-vs-fishfolk/devlog/787278/thanks-so-much-f...

Developer(+1)

I uploaded a new .exe (not yet a new web demo) with most of your feedback. See the readme

Submitted(+1)

I like the changes!

A couple things I noticed this time around:
- Would love a way to speed up time. On the last round I was clearly good to go, but had the towers a  little far from the start so ended up just sitting waiting for a couple of minutes.
- Volume options would be very welcome, and are really easy to setup with Godot.
- Include a way to run. Games without sprint just feel wrong to me!
- Some way to interact with the enemies, once of the unique things about this vs a lot of TD games is that you have a player character, so use that to your advantage as much as possible. I absolutely surf the turtles the entire time they're on screen! I think you could do some really cool things with enemy interaction. I imagine something like grabbing onto a flying fish to get a speed boost glide.

Developer(+1)

How about Spear Fishing? :D

...I also saved this little reddit feedback which I tought was really funny - for the story mode:
https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1e8ugca/comment/leasis1/


I will definitely put all of these bullets on my wishlist! ...time speedup might mess with my lo-cpu physics, though (allows more fish nodes), but never hurts to try.

Submitted

The first wave (OF ENEMIES!!!) spawns before the Ballista is built, therefore they can proceed on their way and won't be defeated. Because of this, the sequence of Tutorial lesson will break and not be able to pass further. 

Developer

Good point.. 

I had not thought of that... I should reverse the order and only spawn them in after the build instruction. Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

Always a pleasure to help! Keep up the Great Work!

Developer

Ok, I (hopefully) fixed it!

https://github.com/Teaching-myself-Godot/fishfolk-vs-goblins/blob/master/README....

Submitted(+1)

The visuals are great I like it's style. Audio is not bad either but could use some more effects for certain events (maybe upgrading a tower, fish dieing, wave round starting, etc). The UI is pretty good except some thing felt a little buggy on KB/M like upgrading the towers, I think the functionality probably was more intuitive on gamepad. One suggestion is that at the start of the stage maybe show a visual path of where the enemies come from or go, or like a minimap/high level overview.

One issue I encountered was frame drops/stutters and performance issues at certain stages throughout the game, I wonder if there's some un-optimized code causing issues?

Nice work

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

thank you for these suggestions! Audio is definitely not my forté :)

did you playtest the browser version?
The browser game is very experimental and very laggy right now; I wrote it for native windows. The lag also explains the UI  not working properly (there are frame count based delays which do work on 60 fps but not on 20 or 15 ... 😅) ..

And you guessed right on the gamepad (was aiming for local coop multiplayer)

Submitted(+1)

Yeah I was playing on browser, that makes sense. Local co op would be sick

Developer

Ok, did a lot of work on the web-demo... Maybe you'd be willing to test again?