I think the fish moving through the water looks great! Both top down and side view! Also I love the concept of a spooky fishing game!
I found the controls to be clunky on the boat.. At first I thought it was like GTA 1+2, but instead you simply press the direction you want to go. This makes sense for an analog stick but felt a little strange with only 8 directions. Casting also didn't feel good. There is no indication of how far you are casting and its not easy to get a feel for. I also noticed that the shore colliders are not accurate.. They were solid though! I couldn't push through no matter how much I tried.
While the animations look great on a technical level (particles, pixel interpolation, etc.), the graphics don't really feel like a Game Boy game to me. The static sprites like the lures and items felt the most Game Boy.. but even they had jittering pixels and minor interpolation issues. Sometimes pixels just vanish and pop back, or otherwise smooth edges would have a single outlying pixel ruining the shape of the fish or boat.
In my first attempt I managed to soft lock it within the first minute by catching a fish.. It went to the fish catch scene and I couldn't reel in and it was stuck there. On my second try I realized what I did wrong and made a gif of another connected bug, in hopes that it might help you fix the bug. Please don't take offense QA is a passion of mine.
So after casting if I hit the gallery button it allowed me to move/cast again. but hooking a fish wont let you reel it in. I didn't get that far in the gif though, because too many lures crashed the game I'm thinking. since it got choppy and just stopped. I didn't make it far enough into the game to need the gallery, but it seems a shame that it caused the bug, so I hope that the feature brings value to the game the more you play, which I'm assuming is the case. Perhaps all it needs is a flag so it doesn't let you open the menu during a cast? I'll admit though, I had fun breaking the feature, because I'm weird like that. 😅
On my third play through I avoided hitting the gallery button and managed to catch a fish! Seeing the side view of the fish battle was my favorite part, but I didn't get the feeling of line tension. It was an easy fish so maybe the harder fish feel more playful.
I felt the music could use improvements, and the sfx didn't particularly stand out. The music doesn't do a very good job of hiding that fact that its a rather short loop. While its a little bit creepy, to me it conveys more of a feeling of loneliness, sadness, or grief.. Like I'm attending a funeral. It is kinda pretty in that sense, but perhaps better suited for a scene with sulky dialog and compelling story.
I tried to catch larger fish but ultimately had trouble getting my casts to go where I wanted, using a game pad with analog sticks may have helped this.
All that said I think this is a promising start! I know that making a game under any circumstances is a TRUE challenge and throwing in rules and a deadline never makes it easier. Clearly a great deal of time and effort was spent on this and it shows. Thank you for sharing your work and participating! I would love to see more of your work in the future, and there is clearly very much potential here!
Also thank you so much for testing my game and helping me to find bugs! 🙏
I sincerely hope my feedback can "propel" the game to reach new heights! 🙂
Viewing post in Fishpooky! jam comments
Thank you so much for your comprehensive feedback! I practically agree with all the points you raised, specially about adding indicators for how far the lure go and the line tension. I also never got around to tweak some variables to make casting and movement more responsive.
I had planned to add bars and such but I gave priority to other features and bug fixes. Animations looked too much jittery than I expected but redoing all of the movement would be too costly by the time I realized that.
And about the bug I am aware of it and know how to fix it now (it envolves a lot of refactoring). In theory the player should not run while in the gallery but for some arcane mystery reason the code just wouldn't work. It was the very last thing that I tried to fix before submitting but failed. What I didn't know is that the bait don't despawned while in the gallery, that's very interesting and surprising and definitely should not happen. I appreciate very much your effort to analyse and trying to break it, really.
I also agree with the music, although it was my intention to make it more slow paced and relaxing but I didn't managed to mix in some more tension or something similar.
Again, thank you a lot for the extensive feedback! I hope to see your works on future jams too!