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Straight up I forgot but I think it's J or K? It's been a while.

On fishing and an incomplete GGJ game for 2021.


I sit lazily staring at my screen, dulcet greys blend in with the white foreground as the piercing orange highlights ask me to run the game. A new world is calling as the window surrounding it reminds me of the bleakness of the real one I inhabit. I click into the game with my offbrand gaming mouse that pulsates through various RGB values with a logo that is meant to give the essence of gamer but in reality came free with the PC I purchased during a black friday deal since I never really liked desktops but wanted to play Overwatch alongside my wife. While the mouse isn't the highest quality I wouldn't say it's of poor quality either, though in fact I must confess that I never really had a high quality mouse, this off brand being my best, I can still tell that there is room for improvement. I click into the game. The small world fills me with memories. Memories of childhood, of the real world, of other virtual worlds. It reminds me both of the first time I went fishing at a lake in the most north east section of the land that you can call the south west, and of the time I first caught a bass in Sega's aptly named Sega Bass Fishing. Each experience bringing with it a tension, both physical and emotional. Every single one now nostalgic. In real life I never fished with my family, that I must confess, so to I can relate to the protagonist on this incomplete GGJ game for 2021. The person that occupies the space with them seems distant, cold, and demanding. Like the love that they may of had either vanished or was never there. I must comtemplate on their relationship, are they strangers such as ships in the night passing by giving the briefest signal of humanity, or did they once have strong connections but barely hanging by a weathered fishing line?

I think again of fishing in my past. I must again confess that I have a troubled relationship with fishing. I can look back and enjoy the two times in reality with my friends on fishing trips, though I know looking forward I will not fish again. That is except in virtual worlds. I also think back to other virtual worlds and the friendships I made there. In Animal Crossing, lazily bobbing a rod waiting for a bite to slam down the round green A button of the GameCube controller after renting the game for a third time from Hollywood Video to take to my best purple cat friend Bob. I still visit Bob in the town of Varrock from time to time and take them a fish or other gift. I also think to my time in Hyrule just after meeting Princess Zelda and heading to the fishing hole and spending many in game days there trying to catch the biggest fish there. Afraid to grow up as I saw what lied ahead in the player's guide. I still haven't caught that fish over 20 years later but I did grow up, both in the game, and in real life.

I approach the watering hole in the incomplete game and activate with Z. I expected a relaxing time but often in life you are caught by surprise. The fish wrangled away from me and I fought for it for what felt like ten minutes, though when I looked at the black numbers on the pale grey slate of my windows taskbar I saw that only a few moments have passed. I decided after the excitement to explore the world beyond my cold companion. I was met with sadness. The world confining me to my place, with the one who I don't know if I ever loved yet still demanding me to fish. I followed their stern command. This time the fish was more subdued in nature, and ebbed and flowed with me as we danced our dance, and eventually towards capturing each other into our lives. I fished again. This time more tumultuous, even more so than the first. Reminding me that life is rarely predictable.

I tried to enjoy other virtual worlds as well growing up, many with the same escapist fantasy that is also an escapist reality of fishing, games like Stardew Valley and Final Fantasy 14. Both provide a narrative of conquer in some regards, one more grand than the other, yet both find kinship with fishing. I would play Final Fantasy 14 to relax though I found the act of fishing tedious. And I would try to relax with Stardew Valley and found myself wanting.

I turn my mind back to the incomplete GGJ game for 2021 wanting to fish one last time. I take aim and cast my line. The fish eventually becoming mine. I finally think back to the first fish I caught. It was at camp near a river. I remember it well as I brought it up taught on my line. I remove the hook, and return it to whence it came. I remember it well. I wonder if it remembered me.

I enjoyed my time with the incomplete GGJ game for 2021.

Enjoyed the game for its graphics and premise, it definitely reminded me of Fantasy Life.

We would love to do this again! It's up to Meow Wolf though on if/when they have another arcade world championship.

We had Score Chaser on stream but we also wanted to have Quanoid and Space Out. Unfortunately we only had time for AttacKnight and Score Chaser on stream.

I wanted to thank everyone for their submissions and participating in the Score Wars Game Jam! The entries were super awesome to check out and talk about on the stream. Unfortunately we only got to show two games during this event but we hope to do this again and show off more games in the future!

Thanks again everyone and remember... You're the BEST AROUNNNND!

I wanted to get 3 games on the stream but the last slot they had was dropped since the grand finals were happening and award ceremony.

One more game since we only have one more slot

For sure!  We have to get ready for the stream so most peoples games may not be played on the arcade machine.

Hey DyoXynE, I'll see what I can do but unfortunately I'm not in charge of the stream. Thanks for joining in the jam!

Hey Reed, if you want to submit for the Arcade Machine that is still possible. Message me when you get a chance.

Hey All! Check out the Score Wars twitch stream for the Galaga Pro Tournament and to see if your game has been picked to challenge the pros. We will be on at about 2pm MST.

http://www.twitch.tv/meowwolf

Only what's on the jam page.

It's a 27 inch screen if I remember correctly. The resolution is 1920x1080

Thanks for finding the broken links :D

Hey Zachary,

Sorry about the broken link!

Here's the direct files you need.

Arcade-Electron

Arcade-Electron For Pico 8

Also the links on the page are fixed as well! Thanks for letting me know.

It's an 8 direction joystick, so if you have unity you can pull from Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") and Input.GetAxis("Vertical") which will give you a -1 to 1 value.

Also I just tested the right stick, the vertical might need to be inverted.

I wanted to share what the Score Wars tournament looks like! It is so awesome seeing the pros play!

It is an option, not required

The theme for the Score Wars game jam is....

You're the best... AROUUNNNND!

Seeing as this is a game jam that is arcade focused we have an arcade machine that you can deploy to! To submit to use the arcade cabinet please follow this documentation (NOTE: you can ignore the How to Submit section and just submit your game through itch. No need for the XML data)

If you have any questions about the arcade cabinet please post them here.

Hey nehpe! I updated some of the info on the jam page. 

The theme will be published the day of the jam.

1. Theme will be revealed on Thursday March 27th at the start of the Jam.

2. Your game must have a way to score and have a leader board

3.  Game must be playable on Windows 7 or higher

4. All games must be in by the April 1st 12:00pm MST

5. A panel will judge games and pick which ones pros will go up against live on Twitch!

Great tips! I always have a hard time figuring out how to setup meetings beforehand and what to take. I always hope that I would do the organic bump into someone important and stuff will just happen. Hoping to change that this year though.

It's been a while since I last posted. There is good reason though....

I GOT MARRIED!!!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!!

I even made a game about it which you can check out here.

Well off to updates about the game!

We're roasting up some tasty carrot dogs and slurping up some slushies in the mart.

Here's how you're going to chat to animal friends in the game. The bubbles even wiggle!

Now for some behind the scenes! Here's the tool we're using to do content scripting and dialog. We are using Yarn by the awesome Infinite Ammo that was used for Night in the Woods along with Yarn Spinner by The Secret Lab! Both are free and open source so you should check them out.

Here is a screen shot of one of the nodes where you're ordering some fancy coffee from the cafe.

And here is a tool in Unity that we made to change triggers from Yarn in real time! This is super useful to check for flags and to see if save files are working properly.

And finally we did our first showing of the game to the Tokyo Indies Meetup while we were out on our honeymoon! Photo by the @tokyo_indies. Big thanks to them for having us and having such an awesome event! Definitely check them out if you're ever in Tokyo!

So now that we're married and have gone on our honeymoon we are back to the grindstone for this game so that means more updates! We are gearing up to be at GDC 2018 to show it off to whoever wants to see. If you're out there hit us up and we can hang out :D

Edit: centered images

Thanks so much!

Having seen the trailer and not downloading yet I'll give you my first impressions of what I've seen.

First and foremost is that it doesn't look like a game that I would want to play. This is because it looks very generic like the characters were purchased from a site. The trailer doesn't highlight effectively what is exciting about the game. It takes a while to get to game play and the game play presented doesn't look fun and is held too long instead of conveying the message of what you do then highlighting the next thing. The games aesthetic also seems to be all over the place, I saw roman soldiers, gangsters, and robots but that doesn't seem to have an underlying theme to them. The game play looks cheap as well, I saw enemies moving really fast back and forth in a platforming section and it just felt silly.

Ok I'll stop there for negatives because I don't think that's fair and isn't constructive. What I think you can do is celebrate that you finished a game and shipped it, that's hard no matter the project. 

Here's some things you can do to improve yourself.

I would say to focus in on a main game play mechanic and to polish that to high quality rather than pushing for multiple game types. If you are using purchased assets I would say those are good for prototyping but try to find someone to work with on art. If you are doing art I would say find a style that's not realistic since it's really hard for a small project and will get a lot of flak from an audience if it isn't great.

Congrats on finishing your game and releasing it, and good luck on your future games. I'll download it and if I have any other feed back I'll post it here.

I'm digging the character designs. Since you are delving into heavy stuff I hope that it is well thought out and well executed with respect. Looking forward to seeing more.

Fennel Fox is off to the mart to find some tasty snacks! There's a little Vending Machine outside the Mart also. And what's this? One of those cool new Electric Cars!

I also wanted to share this little video of my SO Shandiin animating the Barista Mouse in Blender.

Hope you're having an awesome day! 

Hey thanks! She's super awesome. We're thinking fairly short little game, like a vignette. We're mostly figuring out 3D workflow since this the first 3D games she's done but we've worked together on a couple mobile games before this. Also my job has me make games and installations for museums and events.

Hey thanks! Hopefully, this game will have a fast production cycle. Definitely check out my twitch channel, I do some live deving there sometimes.

Fennel Fox (Title TBD)

This little game is about a little fox going on a little adventure to find his keys so he can go home and play video games. It’s a cute low poly adventure game that is being made by me and my fiance.

We'll be updating this on this thread but we also have two Twitch streams for both art and programming!

twitch.tv/shandiin

twitch.tv/subliminalman

Also we post on Twitter alot

twitter.com/shandiin

twitter.com/subliminalman

Looks really cool. I dig the pixel art and I'm really excited for the battle system! I love me some active turn based! How many bosses will there be? Something I do enjoy about RPG's is the battle systems and it would be nice to have a good amount of play with it.

Really cool that you took a personal touch to the game and pulled from your life experiences .I've felt a lot of what you described after during and after releasing my games. I hope you are feeling better though. 

Also is it coming to MacOS?

This game looks awesome! Love me some low-res fantasy :D

I'm really digging your plasma blast here!

This game has an awesome style to it! Love the 80's vibe and the premis! So freaking awesome!

This game saved me and my family from chopping wood for hours on end. Thank you Blip you made us happy again.