itch.io

Oh I don't blame you. It's a very bare bones alpha right now. I'm cooking up some new stuff right now hoping to put out a new demo. It will have more challenge and itemization and I HOPE show the promise of the game better. I appreciate the candid feedback! I agree, I have a long way to go...

Oh and good on you for keeping the faith. It's not so easy these days. If there's anything missing in the world today it's faith and dedication.

I'm not religious myself, but sometimes I wish I had been raised that way. I think life is often better when we have something to believe in.

I know a lot of developers and studios look down on religion and old school values, but not atound here. In fact there will be almost a spiritual element to the story telling.

My goal is a story that resonates with everyone and I want sympathetic characters that represents people of all creeds. But more than anything with SeaCrit I want to try to teach kids the value of hard work, discipline, and positive morality.

A great deal of our world has declined in the wake up gluttony, sloth, and falling standards in both work and in spirit.

It is hard to make it out there. Wish I had advice for making it out there, but I've always struggled to find decent work myself, which is a big part of why I started this project!

Oh that video! That video is depressing because it's like 3 years old and in many ways the visuals and aimations are better haha! But I had so much less content in the game then it was easier to have things highly polished, and at some point once you start getting burned out and adding more things and you're a solo dev the polish drops a litte.

But I will make a not to add these fish! They seem to have some nice combat setups I'll try to mimic again.

I really don't know how long it's going to take, I thought I would be done with bonus code today but I ended up spending like 6 hours and didn't quit get it done. But I want to be sure things are as good and polished as possible, because once you start making the content, it's WAY harder to fix stuff up without risk of breaking existing setups.

But once I get these systems all wrapped up I think I can create content really fast. I won't have a finished game soon, but what I think I will have is a fun little sandbox sorta like in diablo. You don't need a lot of content, just a small section, but if those enemies scale in diffiuclty and they drop random items, you can REALLY show off the potential.

It might sound crazy, but my goal is to make the game so much fun that people find it, share it and it just goes viral. That's my dream. But if it doesn't work, i'll have more energy for making videos and getting the game out there once I've tied this all up. For the time being I just can't spread myself too thin i'm in a mad dash to try to get this demo out and once i get several hours of painful code done i'm really spent and can't really do other work.

Yeah, I don't know how the world works any more with AAA studios. At the risk of sounding crazy, I don't think anyone knows how the world works any more. Sometimes I think we're in a twilight zone computer simulation and with all this AI you start to wonder what's real and what's not real, and as it gets more and more advanced there's this increasingly unnerving feeling that maybe the line is blurrier than ever.

Anyway! I don't have anything better to do but try to finish the project as the world goes totally bonkers so that's what i'm gonna do.

Thanks again for all the intrest and question! I can talk about this game all day long :D

Thank you! I'll be honest, I am pretty damned proud of this project and I am confident about it being good in the near future, but sometimes I worry that this world doesn't want to see developers who are confident, they love the story of the indie dev down on their luck and filled with self doubt, and there are certainly many days I feel that way too. 

Financially, socially, it's been really hard working on this project. But through it all i've been pretty stubborn and headstrong. So it's been a cycle of extremes. You have to be at least somewhat confident to push through all this craziness!

Where the most doubt comes from, is I jut don't feel as though I fit into this crazy world any more, I'm sure many other indie devs feel this way, that indie game community and want to elevate solitary developers seems to have been stifled. I don't think this world wants games like SeaCrit, or individuals like me to be successful. 

Everything is stiff armed to make sure the mega corporation game that needs to make 500 billion dollars is all anyone sees or purchases or talks about on all these gatekept social media platforms.

But I'm getting a bit in the weeds here with some heavy sh*t!

None of those concerns matter anyhow. All that matters is that we put our head down and get excited for the future of our game and keep on workin'.

Thanks so much taking the time to create these videos! 

I fixed those teleports, but I'm seeing I keep spacing that I need to fix that partial black area in the rant cave, that's going on the todo list now!

I was playing with the idea of the first enemies not doing any damage, but I think i'll go ahead and make sure they do in fact do a tiny bit just so it doesn't feel weird.

Not sure about those pink sharks, but i'm open to suggestions for adding more enemies! If you have any thoughts on what I should add i'd love to hear 'em. I'm not going to  be adding TONS of fish just yet, still getting key systems online, but if you have a request for a certain color fish of a certain size with specific attacks i'll see what I can do!

And yeah, this indie dev is a total slog, and it often feels like we're fighting an impossible battle and it's gotten nothing but WORSE for developers over the years. Hopefully things get better so we all have a fighting chance again and this doesn't all feel so futile and pointless.

Fun little game, I liked the visual animations for the hints!

Heck yeah! It's rare to get anyone playing the game and it really lifts my spirits so thank you. 

I'm super glad you like the movement, I've spent YEARS on it. It's a complex setup with various input methods and it's really taken a lot of polish to get it totally up and running. 

It's a small and buggy game for now, but i'm working every day building out the key systems, and soon i'm hoping I will have a much more well rounded demo that will expose the core play full of items and interesting bonuses! (Think talents from diablo)

It's taking longer than I ever anticipated, but I've been going strong and making solid progress every day, just finished a dev session when I saw your comment. You can just give me a brief description here of the issue or post a screenshot link, there's a good chance i already solved the bugs though that tutorial area tends to break all the time as i'm not really gearing my builds right now for new players i'm trying to get the core systems set up and sometimes other things break in the process. 

I'm in a very loose dev mode as i'm not quite at the point where i'm ready to polish the early game and I'm spread  thin as I make big changes.

I'm taking the following notes from this post: I'm reducing the music volume by 20%, double checking portals, and zone transitions. Stop being a moron and link my game on YouTube!

I'm always so damned grateful to get feedback like this, because it makes me think that maybe I'm not totally crazy and that all this hard work is starting to pay off! Thanks a ton! I know the game is a little "shallow" right now, but the next update should really show a LOT more potential. I think i'm cooking up some pretty special stuff over here! But I don't wanna build expectations too high, I'm just one dude in a cave so it's hard to make big progress fast.

I'd say i'm hoping to have the next demo out in the next couple weeks, but i've been thinking that for a solid 2 months now, ha! But stick around I'll be having new demo's in the future and I'll be more than happy to have more of your feedback!

Thx again, Antonio. It means a lot that there are people like you out there will to check out and help us little fish in this huge sea.

Thanks so much for this! I don't get much feedback around here so it's very much appreciated. So glad you found the controls tight and responsive, I've been spending TONS of time getting this game feeling right on different devices and it's good to hear you enjoyed playing with just the mouse, you can also try WASD and mouse buttons, that's my personal favorite setup. I'll check out that waveswim cave and see if there's anything goin' wrong there and fix it up. 

I plan on having a new build in the next couple weeks that will kinda give more form to the game, and i'll also make sure to create a clear "end" to the demo so people don't go wondering if they've completed it or not, even if its very close to the start.

Oh and as for the audio crash bug I THINK it's resolved but didn't do much testing.

Thanks again for playing and leaving some feedback!

Great! Looking forward to future builds

Really enjoyed this. You might want to put a cap on how long you can charge your range attack, cuz i found I could charge for about 30 seconds and insta kill pretty much any level. The game felt too easy and then BOOM, dead in one hit. Played a few runs. A litte more enemy variety would go a long way.

Pretty fun, brought back memories of insaniquearium, but the progression loop needs some work. The game doesn't really know what to do with resource management and certain items and fish are very overpowered early if the player is finally able to get their economy going. Seems like fish require too much food to keep alive.

As it stands there seems to be just the one hurdle: Getting a steady flow of income early on, and you can play many games just trying to get this up and running, then the game becomes too easy. Needs more reliable means of economy and more nuance to play from there.

There is no social crisis that can't be solved with chimpanzees and mental retardation. SeaCrit is testament to that.

Sure, don't feel the need to appologize, too many people are worried about hurting each others feelings these days! Solid points, i'll try this game again some day and get to the dirt guys.

Absolutely loved this. This is one of those games you play as a developer yoruself and think, "Oh damn, the competition out there is fierce!"

Loved the inventive item upgrades. The way upgrades that increase fire rate for every bullet fired encourages different build paths than just the standard damage and crit rate. Very fun itemization.

The extra features of the base didn't make me enjoy the game more, I think you guys could make this something you unlock further along, and once unlocked gate its features more. I was kinda just overwhelmed by it all and didn't want to play the game as much. A simpler system that unlocked more mechanics over time would have kept me around longer.

Maybe more obvious permanent upgrades akin to vampire survivor that increases drop rates of powerful things, increase exp gain, gives innate passive regen would all be things that would add lots of replayability in the short term.

Really great game!

Oh, almost forgot! I REALLY disliked that there was no damage cooldown, and you could die so insanely rapidly. It felt like the game relied too much on enemies running up to you super fast and just outright killing you. I would have preferred more bullet hell elements to ramp up the difficulty before these more "cheese" mechanics ended me. Seemed like the only ranged attacks enemies tried to hit me with were really slow beams that were easily dodged as opposed to true bullet hell.

I got pretty far one run and some super hard enemy just flew to me very fast and killed me instantly. Felt really cheap, like I feel like I should have barely survived lots of intense bullet hell type stuff before some uber creature just runs up and kills me instantly.

Hey Chris! Thanks for checking in. Feeling way better today. Hit me up any time, dude. Hope things are well on your side of things.

Hey Leon was really nice meeting you at the event the other day! I'm getting to work on a new build very soon so this feedback is very valuable. Hoping it will fix a lot of these issues you ran into.

The main things I will be adding to address the above problems:

1. Lots of level building. I want to really build up the world to be a nice big place with lots of cool places and secrets to explore. I want to get zone 1 and 2 done with a couple secret areas. I agree there is too much complexity in area one, so i'm going to take out item drops from there, and also remove the ranged fish, and make it so you don't find pistols which allows you to swap until you reach area 2.

2. I'm going to experiment by moving the text box to the top of the screen, rather than bottom right, hopefully this will allow for more, larger, and easier to read text that doesn't get in the way of the gameplay. I also plan on totally revamping where I place NPC's. Less NPC's in combat areas or more out of the way. Hopefully this helps.

3 & 4. I'll take a look at the UI, I agree it can be a bit overwhelming, but not sure what UI isn't necessary to be on the screen (Feel free to reply and clarify what specific UI is bugging you). I do realize the constant display of the current exp gained is really annoying. Things like regen and wounds are always showing up on screen. I'll see what I can do!

5. I'm hoping as I build up the world and make new areas with unique music, and art it will become more obvious when you reach a new zone.

6 & 7. Yeah this needs work, I am planning on revamping a great deal of NPC's so there is less talk about the game being in a beta, and more talk about story!

Really appreciate the feedback, Leon. I've been thinking of having a special fish in the game that gives a thank you to everyone that gives valuable feedback during this early phase of the game. Let me know if you want your name added to the list!

Expect a new demo in the coming weeks that addresses all of the above and then some. Big dev push coming soon. Always happy to have engagement here, feel free to add me on discord if you ever feel like chatting about the game: illtemperedtuna#4015

Love the game, bought this on steam and I have a few suggestions, using links since I seem to be unable to link images directly

1. I think the bottom left icon should bring you to the loadouts tab. I almost never click it and it's one of the most accessable buttons, kind of frustrating. Conversly, loadouts is super convenient, but hard to find. I'm not a fan of using the keyboard when playing an idle game, even if it's a great, active one like orb of creation so even though if i were hardcore i could easily access it with z, that doesn't help my lazy ass out.

2. The naming is super confusing

https://i.imgur.com/rZkMzPY.png

I never know what i'm getting because all of these panels sound like they do the same thing. Casting you can delete and it would be better, It's much easier to just use the icons in the bottom Left and it would reduce the real estate of the game and let you find things easier. "Loadout" is fine, "Skillbar" might be better. You could delete the "learn" section of spellbook and just auto give players the abilities, doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than the player clicking arbitrary buttons, or maybe make it a sub page at the bottom of "manage" this would greatly simplify the excess buttons of the magic section of teh game. So "spellbook" could be renamed "Manage" using the sub button within spellbook instead as it's much more identifiable. "Wizardry" is fine and is the one panel name that doesn't often make be click the wrong panel.

3. I would love if right clicking a spell brought up a list of spells vertically that would allow you to replace a spell if it's not on cooldown.

https://i.imgur.com/mBLFWTq.png

(Imagine if that wood spell were all the other different spells you owned, glyphs could be set per spell in the loadout panel so whatever you have them set there, would affect this assignment)

4. Also if the spells were larger and had a slightly larger area in the UI it would be much easier to use them and justify getting rid of the "casting" Panel as now you would just have one nice area to cast spells with decently sized icons.

https://i.imgur.com/pwtADBq.png

I feel as if this is the most important UI element and it's also the smallest. If they were stacked on top of each other and made larger it would be nice, you could save some room by allowing the user to collapse the orb/ make it smaller for the resources to display more.

Just some random feedback! I know some of these might be impossible to add for whatever reason, or they may be niche ideas or whatever, take 'em or leave 'em.

Definitely not every day I get people trying the game these days! The encouragement is very welcome, Cain. 

Thank you for taking the time to try the demo and for posting here.

I enjoyed the multiple elements, but they felt a bit uneven. Like the first world was just so dense and all the upgrades interconnected and led to all this great layered experience, and then boom you start doing alchemy, and you start doing carpentry and not only did they not really connect, but the first area just became completly forgotten. Which to me felt like a step back because the first area was IMO head and shoulder the most fun. If the first area with its mixing and matching of magic somehow played more a roll in the other areas throug hte game it would have been a better experience in my opinion.

It's kind of a pet peeve of mine in idle games when you have all these buttons and UI real estate for thigns that are no longer relevant and the game slowly turns into cat and mouse trying to find what was relevant.

This game really has the potential to be the best idle game BAR NONE. Hoping for longer loops andprestiges in the future that invite you to start over from scratch to get strogner and stronger. Also just when i was starting to get the hang of the early game, it forced me out. Dev if you read this, the first 25% of the game is far superior to the rest, please try to expand on the core casting elements rather than building up the  other areas too much. All the cool spell combos and bonues just combine to be FAR better than the rest of the game, and it seems crazy you're expanding outwards rather than layering on the what your game does so well. If you gutted all the alchemy and crafting, and combat and focused on improving the UI and hotkeys for the magic elements of the game and simply build prestige's around this core experience this game could be something amazing. Don't make 2 or 3 games in parrelel that are kinda ok, make ONE fantastic game. I feel like you're spreading yourself thin and missing what the core of teh game could be, getting lost in several elements of progression that don't really build each other up, they just draw potential polis and UI real estate from other areas,

Absolutely papptimus, thank you for reading.

Thank you so much for this comment. It's been a  long road getting this far, but hopefully getting close to a decent demo.

P.S. Phone  build has fully functional controls and combat now. It's 100% good to go.

Future builds of the game will be launched on all platforms as the pipelines are now locked in place.

I updated my games icon a couple days ago, but when I link the game, the embedded image is still the old one. Curious if i'm missing a link somewhere or if this just takes a long while to update.

Thanks in advance for any information from anyone!

https://illtemperedtuna.itch.io/the-seacrit-fish-game

Oh and foundatoins of upgrade system.

True Roguelike gameplay is on the horizon.

Ok new build added, music loops for reals now I THINK

New upload, fixing a crash

This is my first time adding a mac version of the game and I'm not 100% sure I uploaded the zip properly, please let me know if you run into any issues!

https://illtemperedtuna.itch.io/the-seacrit-fish-game

Fixed the Dialogue bug, and implemented proper virtue joystick so AB controls work

https://illtemperedtuna.itch.io/the-seacrit-fish-game

Couple key  issues with the mobile version, dialogue isn't working and the second button "B" isn't active so you can't shoot, but i'm really happy with how it's going so far!

I enjoyed what time I had with teh game but here's some feedback.

Why am I not starting by my home? Then when  I do go by my home I can't go inside? Why even have a home?

U see water, the scarecrow needs water. It feels really odd the first thing you do isn't to grab a pale of water to water him. Maybe this could be the first thing you do? He then gets enough energy to tell you that the old later and man on the road were friends and that's what you need to do. As it stands just wandering around talking to people feels a little dull when there are all these things in the world that seem to need your atention.

Another thing... when near the endge of the world it would be nice if you saw the trail going upwards to the other directoin a bit like when going down stairs. Right now it's disorienting to "use" near the edge of the screen and then be expected to go the other direction.

I encountered a pretty major bug when in the first major puzzle with the key, i was able to go across the chasm at the door and I pushed the box to the right and then it was no longer able to fall and I got stuck. At least I think this was a bug.

I really like the style and overall setup, you can feel a lot of care went into the game.

New Build released!

Fixed! Thank you for the suggestion, D'gal

Thanks! My artists did a fantastic job.

Game be here!

And here's a video discussing some of the unique gameplay mechanics: