A game by its cover - Lucky Fishing

[britzl]

A couple of people from the Stockholm office here at King are doing an internal game jam over summer. We decided to use the “A game by its cover” game jam as an inspiration. The idea is pretty cool and I’m excited to see what my colleagues will come up with!

We started yesterday and decided to end on the 15th of August right after everyone is back from summer vacation (which means we’ll keep jamming two weeks after the official jam has ended). If anyone would like to join the jam and come and present your results with the rest of us at the Stockholm office on the 15th of August then please let us know!

I’ll keep posting about my progress here just to keep me motivated.

[britzl]

Ok, so I need to pick a Famicase to base my game on. There’s around a 100 different cases to chose from. Some are really cool and some are plain weird. I’ve started collecting the ones I like in a separate document. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick a Famicase today or tomorrow and come up with a cool idea so I can start coding soon.

[britzl]

Still struggling to pick a Famicase. I started with 41 different cases and now I’m down to 23. Some of the ones left on my list could be really fun games, but they are quite heavy on graphics and I’d need to team up with an artist for it to work. Take this case for instance:

El Luchamor

“In “El Luchamor” you take the role of Jesus, a Luchador, that is fighting for peace in Puerto Azucar. Your enemies are the infamous “El Presidente” and his gang “Los Hijos del Leon”. The game is a sidescrolling Brawler with light RPG elements and an interconnected world. You can use weapons and visit many shops like the local Tacoria “Gallina Loca!” to fresh up your Health and buy upgrades.”

A side-scrolling brawler game could be quite fun to code with the right kind of graphics.

And the complete opposite would be this one that is more of a technical challenge of making a multiplayer Pong game:

And this would be something in between where it could be possible to do a mix between Ridiculous Fishing and other casual fishing games:

[britzl]

Marmoset Hexels seems lika a really cool software! I might just go ahead and buy that.

I’m down to 11 choices now. I should be able to make a decision or post the top three here tonight to get some input.

[britzl]

Gah! So this was harder than expected and the clock is ticking. I will start playing around with two different games:

Strung Out - A game about a cat in space totally strung out on catnip.

Lucky Fishing - A silly fishing game

[britzl]

Some progress with lots of developer art for Lucky Fishing:

Not sure if I can make it into something fun though…

Fling/swipe to throw and tap to reel in.

[Axel]

…And I was the lucky fi… guy who teamed up with Björn to make some prettier graphics! So far, nothing more exciting than tracing the available fishes and half-assed attempts at animating a squid. More to come!

By the way, we’ll probably add some fish not available in the cover – but what’s cool to fish? Swordfish? Sharks? Sea horses? Blobfish?

[sven]

+1 for blobfish!

[Erik_Angelin]

What about monkfish, king crab or eel? Or old boots, shopping carts and bicycles Looking really nice so far!

[Axel]

@sven, it’s… beautiful!

@erik_angelin – Great ideas, thanks! Definitely need some irritating “non-fish-objects” too.

[britzl]

Ha, blobfish! Cool!

I uploaded a new HTML5 version here: http://bitfront.com/luckyfishing/

I’ve made some additions such as scoring and lives, but I have so far had very limited time to work on this project…

[ArmandCloud]

Hello, @britzl

Couldnt play , game loads, hand shows where to tab , but couldnt tabbed . I am using android chrome .

Best Regards,

[britzl]

Hmm, ok, I haven’t tested the HTML5 build in a mobile browser. It works perfectly fine on Chrome on OSX. You can swipe to throw the line from anywhere you want and also tap anywhere you want to reel in. I’ll create an APK and IPA as well.

[britzl]

Ok, uploaded some builds:

APK
OSX
WIN
LINUX

[ArmandCloud]

@britzl ,

Sorry false alarm, it worked in android chrome( low fps ), pc chrome (perfect ), windows build (needs vsync).

Damn i am fishing good !

Best Regards,

[britzl]

Decreased weight of fish so you can catch more before you get too weighed down and lose your catch. Updated links:

APK
OSX
WIN
LINUX

[Sublustris]

WIN

Is not working. (game doesnot respond to clicks)

[Axel]

Realised the deadline for the jam is on Wednesday, so I guess that means crunch time. Nothing major so far – some visuals and a jellyfish loop.

[britzl]

Axel sent me a ton of new assets yesterday evening and after a few changes and tweaks I have the new graphics in place. It looks great! Can you catch the elusive blobfish lurking on the bottom (I might need to tweak the rarity)?

APK
OSX
WIN
LINUX
HTML5

[Axel]

A beautiful, yet… elusive, creature. Full of elegance, a being emanating nothing but gracefulness and poise. It’s – the blobfish.