The Loch: A Scottish Fishing RPG

[Alexander]

Howdy folks!

I'm Alexander, and I'm a game design student from Scotland. I've taken part in a couple of Game Jams before (most notably the Scottish Game Jam as part of the Global Game Jam) and it's been awesome, so I figured I'd give the FishingJam a go as well . I'd love to hear from other folk taking part in the jam as well, so don't be afraid to hijack the thread and say "hi"; I dig all things Sunken Ruin-y and Cyclopean Sea Monster-y, so if you're making one of those, hit me up so I can check it out!

Design

The Loch (working title for now) will be a RPG where you play as a fisher named Angie exploring a loch in Scotland, looking for items and materials with which you can make and lures for fly fishing - Angie can then use those flies to catch specific fish in the area, and once you've caught all of them, you win!

I'd like for The Loch to be a contemplative, headspace-y kind of game, where it's not so much focused on action, battling or reflexes, but on taking your time to explore. With that exploration in mind, there'll be a bunch of different areas in the game, including the titular Loch, an oil platform, sunken ruins in an ancient forest, and a mysterious island out at sea that has been abandoned by its inhabitants, among others. Different fish can be found in different areas (and in different zones inside those areas), so exploring the world is crucial to meeting your goal of finding all the fish you can.

Implementation

I'll be using to make The Loch; it's fairly simple to learn, easy to use, and quick to troubleshoot, and it means I don't have to worry much about the coding side of the game. I'll also be making most of the art myself (but probably using sprite resources and the like). And as for music, I imagine I'll be scouring the a fair bit.

Concept Art

To kick things off, here's a couple doodles I've done while I was brainstorming for ideas, and a quick sprite version of the main character, Angie!

Doodles for Levels / The Loch

leveldoodles1.png (130.81 KiB) Viewed 33693 times

Angie

Angie Avatar.png (4.32 KiB) Viewed 33693 times

[rogueNoodle]

Great concepts - really like the forest scene!

[Alexander]

Monday Progress Update: So far so good! Thus far I've created the main staging area of the loch, plus two buildings that the player's going to use. I've also added some baseline functionality as well, like making it rain on certain days (and not indoors :T ), and made some progress on the game's design as well.

Thus far, I'm intending to only use the default tilesets as a placeholder until I've gotten the vast majority of the mechanisms and scenarios into the game; then I can focus on busting out a bunch of tilesets for things I'm guaranteed to use (rather than estimating what I'll need beforehand then potentially getting screwed when I find out such-and-such wouldn't be possible).

Also, WOE UNTO RPGMAKER LITE: Initially I wasn't going to have a battle system until I realised that actually, you could just rename most of the battle options to turn it into a fishing minigame. Then I discovered you can't rename said battle options in RPGMaker Lite. :T Ah well.

TL1.png (179.99 KiB) Viewed 33615 times

[Alexander]

Tuesday Progress Update: So it only took one day for me to accidentally miss updating the thread. In fairness, Tuesday was a pretty slow day progress-wise, since it was one of my friends' birthdays and they'd booked me an appointment with DELICIOUS CAKE. Totally justified.

So yes. On Tuesday, I started work on the East and West shoreline of the Loch (part of the former is shown below). The East Shoreline has a sandy bay/beach area with two characters - a deaf fisherman and his interpreter - and further to the east is a small forest maze (a staple of just about every RPG that ever existed, most likely) that leads into the Woods!

Wednesday Progress Update: It might only be halfway through the day, but I've already made a substantial amount of progress - I've finally got the fishing event to work properly! I'm using the Lite version of RPGMaker, which means you can only have 10 Events on a given map; I was worried that that would mean the only way to have fishing in the game would be if the player was standing in front of one of (at most) ten tiles on the map, which would be kind of anathema to the idea of just whipping your fishing rod out at the shoreline and casting away. Luckily, I've managed to find a way around it, so I'm ready to work on the basic fishing system!

And, better yet, I've discovered that RPGMaker Lite DOES allow you to rename battle commands, stats and so on, so the fishing system can go ahead as planned! I'm mega excited to get that working and show folk, so here's to hoping it'll be smooth sailing from here on out (protip: it won't be and it never is).

The Loch - East Shore

TL2.png (232.37 KiB) Viewed 33582 times

[btxsqdr]

never used rpgmaker before, but it looks very promissing. i hope you get that gameplay etc. finished in time. looking forward to it

[Alexander]

[Alexander]

Angus & Drew

Didn't get a whole lot done today unfortunately, since I was busy writing a feature about sexuality & Silent Hill (as you do). Aside from working out some kinks with the tutorial, all that I got done today was adding in the dialogue system for two characters, Angus (a deaf angler) and Drew (his son and interpreter).

Tomorrow I'm aiming to finish the main scenario (i.e., get fishing rod, get lure, get fish, buy new tackle, etc), so that the bare minimum that'll be complete by Sunday is that. On Saturday, I hope to expand the game to get as much in as I can, before working on the art assets on Saturday night/Sunday in time for the end of the Jam.

[emmett9001]

Not a huge fan of RPGs in general, but this looks pretty fun. Looking forward to seeing it in action!

[Alexander]

[Alexander]

Today I managed to finish most of the map (there's a couple more areas that I want to do, but they may have to go in a future version of the game instead). Otherwise, more or less everything is sorted, including at least two Weird Events that I couldn't help but include because I'm not used to making Nice Games! So yes, The Loch may kind of a little bit feature letters from a stalker and an island descending into Hell. But it's still very, very chilled.

Like a body in a freezer.

The Loch - Story

TL6.png (156.47 KiB) Viewed 33424 times