Man Eats Fish [FINISHED]

[SuperMoof]

Finishing up the final things now. The game will be pretty unpolished and untuned, but if it turned out okay I may spend some time improving it later. Here is a big boat:

[SuperMoof]

Here is the state of the game after 7 days:

www.supermoof.com/games/maneatsfish/pro ... index.html

It is still a work in progress so I hope to spend some more time cleaning it up. The sea screen has had the least amount of love so it needs a lot of work (different sprites for the different boats, the map isn't finished, etc). I ahven't spent any time tuning it, so prices and whatnot are probably crazy and broken.

How to play:
At the start of each day you have the opportunity to go out and fish. This takes you to a top down map view, and you must find fish spots in the ocean and fish on them. When you're done finishing, return home by 5pm in order to open your shop. If you return home later than 5pm, yo can't open your shop that day.
When you're done fishing you are taking to a screen with all your fishes. You can move any fish that you want to cook up to the shop tank. You can also get a storage tank, and a romance tank. Putting fish in a romance tank allows them to breed.
At night, people will come to your shop. They will eat your fish, and randomly give you an online review score. This score is based off of the stats of the fish that the person ate a part of - each fish has 3 tastiness stats. Therefore, when you get a romance tank you will want to try and breed fish with high tastiness together to make more tasty fish.
The number of people who come to your shop at night is based on your average online review score.

I will write more and put up some screenshots later, after work tomorrow probably.

[AnomalousUnderdog]

Comments:

Graphics are nice, reminds me of the old Civ and Colonization DOS games.

The aspect of having to return by 5 pm or you won't be able to open shop is nice. It's a gamble to go out fishing as it won't be a sure success you'd get fish at all. You also have to plan out your path when fishing so you'd end up in a position that's nearest to the docks to save time in the trip back home.

There was a day where I went through all the fishing sites and my fisherman caught nothing! Actually, any of my attempts to fish always result in catching nothing. Even two days after that (case I had to skip one day to rent my boat to get enough money to fish).

It happened when I had fish left in my boat at the end of the day, then rented it out the next day. By 4 PM, the time I could open shop, the boat says it's not empty but if I click on it, there's nothing in the list.



Here's some suggestions for later improvements:
1. During the times where you fast-forward the time (when you rent your boat) I would appreciate the fast-forwardness to be faster.
2. Or a fast-forward toggle button while your shop is open, or when you wait for the next day (when you rent your boat). Probably toggle-able at different speeds. Kinda like in tower defense games.
3. Some sort of unobtrusive alert that shows once when 5 pm is nearing while you are fishing, or perhaps a "n hours until 5 pm" message beside the time? Probably not something you'd like but I think beginners will appreciate it.
4. Perhaps some change in color in the label for space remaining when you have ran out of space in your boat (red maybe)? I was stupidly still roaming around for fish before I realized I didn't have space anymore.
5. In the day summary, a comparison of yesterday's funds against today's (with the difference), so you'd get an idea if you performed better or not (was it worth it that I fished today?).
Example:

Yesterday's funds: $28
Today's funds: $21 (-$7 difference)

Something like that.

6. There should probably be an option to skip opening the shop if you have no fish at all.

[SuperMoof]

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! I agree with pretty much all of this. I'm not sure why you weren't catching any fish, I'm going to take a look into that. I'm going to work on tweaking the speeds of things, and look into adding some of the other stuff you mentioned. I had planned to put a warning in when it got close to 5pm, but I rushed so much last night to get something done within the 7 day period. Now that I'm out of the 7 days I'm going to fix it up and polish it at a more leisurely pace.

I've just uploaded a build with a quick fix for the customer issue, so it should be easier to make money now that you have more than 2 customers a night:
www.supermoof.com/games/maneatsfish/pro ... index.html

[@mr_ianthompson]

Hey,
I love this it is fantastic. The day/night cycle worked perfectly as did the tide system. Transferring fish over and breeding etc is good stuff, lots of systems for such a short period of time.

I would of liked to see a few more aesthetic bits, a little more attention paid to the overworld bit and perhaps a little animation to show you catching fish, but these are all minor points! I see you got a nicer looking fishing boat, maybe when it catches something we can see the net being pulled out?

Anyway, good job man. I liked it.

[SuperMoof]

Thanks! I really appreciate the feedback. The whole overworld and the fishing screen was put together on the final day of the jam so it's probably the part that needs the most amount of attention. I over scoped the project a bit. I'm going to continue polishing it up and maybe add some animations for fishing and whatnot.

[SunGazer]

I just made this account to say that I love this little game! It's amazingly fun, please keep updating it!

[SuperMoof]

thank you! I will probably update it a little more before calling it done

[SuperMoof]

I updated a bunch of stuff, fixed some bugs and added some polish. This is probably about as far as I will take the game, unless I get inspired to add some other stuff, as it seems like a decent stopping point for a 7 day game + a few days of polish.

[sorio]

Also created an account just to compliment the creator. Beautiful and relaxing. Thank you!!

Minor bugs:
* The day you upgrade a boat, you get the old fuel fee/rental rate rather than the new one
* Missing a splash screen if you don't come home before midnight (eg, "you head home, exhausted")

A few ideas/feature requests (I know, I know, you're done with it 0:-) :
1. Let the fisherman sell fish not served in the restaurant, for 10% of the restaurant price. Without a way to cover fuel costs, a demanding chef can't build a restaurant that only serves great food.
2a. Offer a "fish on boat" screen after each fishing spot, perhaps without tastiness rating?, to allow immediately throwing back fish when you're looking for a different species.
2b. Alternately, allow automatic fishing filters (no craycray, no fish under 3 avg tastiness, no fish over 10 lb) - if you would have caught a filtered fish, you don't; but don't catch anything in its place, either.
3. Let the boat go out more than once, until 5pm.
4. Reduce the light level as the sun sets, for late fishers.

In the absence of 2., 3. is a simple way to look through larger batches of fish to find good ones - particularly if you're willing to forego one night of serving food, to fish longer.