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How does your game meet GBJam's theme
On the GBJam 14 page, the description of the secondary theme is made up of 4 parts in this order:
- retrieving lost treasure
- the gold-shines chiasmus
- following a souvenir's trail to recover old memories
- discovering a twist about the origin of the hidden artefacts
For the literal interpretation, the game is about fishing up lost artefacts, restoring them, and giving them back to their owners. The ending we did has a twist about the origin of the lost artefacts (I won't spoil it).
Thematically, we read the theme(s) as a focus on nostagia, and the game's art, music and design are meant to convey a calm and nostalgic atmosphere.
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Comments
I actually sat on the intro screen for a couple of minutes, enjoying the how the beat of the music was synced up with the animations. Super relaxing.
It took me a little while to understand the fishing mechanics, but the description on your game page helped.
The amphora jigsaw puzzle was devilish hard for me, haha. Maybe the rotations could be changed to 90 degrees per turn?
Overall, a super cute and chill game!
Glad you liked it !
I note the bit on the rotations, it's true that it's really hard when you don't know what it's supposed to look like from the start, I thought the fact that the outline was pixel perfect only on the correct rotation would help but maybe I should add it in the tips in the description.
While I like the overall idea of the fishing minigame I feel like needs a bit more tuning. The sonar bar does nothing to the player, just remove and so do with the flashing bar that shows the distance, so the player doesn’t have to wait a second between each input so that the bar flashes to see where even we moved. Additonally I feel like you could add a direciton pressed history next to the bar, just so if we go the wrong way, we can check the movement sequence and not wander away in accident.
Graphically the game looks okay, music and sound effect are well made, just needs a touch more time in the oven to be fully polished up!
The sonar is more of an artistic choice. Using a regular bar made it trivial (I would solve it in ~1s on average) so the gameplay was less interesting. In the current state it does feel slow because the game lacks the speed upgrades that were planned. However this game is also made to be slow paced, chill and nostalgic, part of the fishing experience is just waiting there looking at the art and enjoying the music.
I do agree though that the sonar part of the bar makes it harder to understand how the fishing minigame works. I personally remember gameboy games being a bit like this, not explaining really what to do and leaving you to try things and understand how they worked but I understand that compared to the more nervous and instant-feedback design of modern games, this feels very dated.
Very cute game! I wasn't sure what the twist was supposed to be at the end, though. (I think I get it, but I'm not sure)
I had a little trouble working out the fishing mini-game, but I got it it in the end, and I recovered all the items. Reassembling the urn was an interesting twist, considering all the others were just cleaning. (When I realized you could/had to rotate the pieces, I despaired for a moment, but it wasn't as hard as I feared it would be)
I think my only real complaint was that walking speed in town felt a little slow. (Also, there's a weird three-square area in front of Goosia's house where Doggy goes *under* the ground tiles instead of over them)
The twist has to do with explaining the origin of the artefacts, exactly like the last sentence in the description of the secondary theme 'old gold'. Whichever way you can make friends come to your home is a good way ;) (don't do this at home)
yes some parts of the game like walking were tuned for the possibility of buying upgrades so they feel very slow and repetitive without that but I'm glad you played it until the end ! (oops I messed up my layers when drawing those 3 tiles and they ended up on the buildings layer)
Aaaah, so I did interpret it correctly! That's nice to know. :D
A very cute entry! Loved the town you set up. Unfortunately, I'm pretty dense so I couldn't figure out the fishing mechanic. But everything else feels like it's something straight out of a gameboy game. ^^
It's too bad you couldn't experience the gameplay. For info, in the description there is an explanation of how it works: Essentially you are a player moving in a room (d-pad) and you have to find a zone, but all of that is hidden, the only thing you see is your gauge: periodically a white bar giving you the distance to the zone (not the moving bar, the 1px high one that fades). Fishing up artefacts then unlocks the two other gameplay loops
I read the description, but unfortunately my innate gaming skill is on par with a game's journalist.
A really impressive entry! The pallete was a beautiful and I liked the story as I played thorugh it, only thing I ask would be a sprint button for the treasure handout process!
good idea, I had planned to give out upgrades every handed item to speed up fishing cleaning and moving but it ended up not making the cut. I'm glad you liked it despite the missing pieces.
Frog gang!
The fishing mini-game is actually very cool. I would love to see how it could be expanded. The cleaning mini-game was a little less fun, but I love the pace and vibe of everything so it's hard to really criticize. Loved the different art styles. A really complete experience. (I also want to shout out your cover image, which I think is my favorite in the jam and is just a way better version of mine haha.)
Thanks, it means a lot ! I'm curious how you would expand the fishing, I have plenty of ideas myself but I'm on the other side so I'm always interested in the player's point of view on this if you got time. Also your game is extremely polished and original so I'm always up for learning from inspiration sources
Your fishing minigame is really unique! Essentially what you're doing is forcing the player to imagine a square where the treasure and fishing hook are randomly placed, and then in their mind move the fishing hook around based on cues from the bobber. It's sort of like playing "Hotter and Colder" with a blindfolded person. I'll pitch some ideas below, but I think leaning into that idea really brings out the uniqueness.
So I think I would try and expand the game in two ways:
1. Make the imaginary space more complicated. Maybe there could be a coral maze that you have to move the fish hook through without seeing. Or maybe there are hazards in the imaginary space like unexploded mines. Or maybe the player has to reel the treasure back to the surface dodging the hazards or fish that try and take the treasure back once the player has hooked it.
2. To counteract the increasing difficulty, give the player different and stronger bobbers. Maybe one that flashes red if you're too close to a hazard, one that disarms certain hazards, or catches fish. Maybe an upgrade for the sonar bobber you start with that displays a minuscule subsection of the hook's surroundings letting you navigate mazes more effectively.
You could then mix and match these in different locations that would make different strategies better or worse. Maybe Mr. Frog lost his treasure in the swamp which is full of hungry catfish and muck that slows you down. For the swamp then, it'd be more effective to use the bobber that glows red near enemies or maybe that lets you clear out the catfish first. But maybe Mr. Cat loves the high seas, and he lost his treasure in a part of the ocean with mines and strong currents.
These are just my first ideas. I just like the minigame. I don't think I've seen a fishing minigame like it before. (I wonder if the minigame is harder for aphantasiacs.)
Great little slice of game! It took me a while to figure out the fishing mechanic (I 100% had to read the instructions - I would have been lost without them...). Once I knew what I was meant to be doing it all made sense!
I love the character your art has given this game, and the music is top tier chiptune 💪
Thanks ! The fishing is indeed a bit rushed and hard to understand but I'm glad the instruction helped ! I'm glad you liked it
Great storytelling! I didn’t expect this game to have such a strong narrative right from the start. I really like the character designs. And the mechanic for cleaning the items you fish out of the water is SUPER RELAXING. The fishing mechanic took me a little while to understand at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was a fun challenge. Great job! :)
Thanks a lot ! Yes I realize now that full blind fishing was maybe a bit too non-standard, I probably should have added a tutorial for it.
Oh my god, I just checked out your game, and right away, I REALLY like what you've done with the fishing mechanics- That's so clever- In addition to that the music and the art style and the characters are all so charming! This is definitely something I wanna play in its entirety. I'm gonna get my teammates on board and do that as soon as we can. I'll get back to ya on how the experience was :)
Thanks a lot ! I hope you have a blast !
Nice game, a lot of potential, I think the concept is really good and you should make a game out of it outside of the GBJAM14, because I think this game would work wonderfully with mouse controls. Otherwise, love the idea, and the universe it charming and the gameplay loop is good !
Thanks a lot ! It's our first game for all 3 of us, (for me first on a real game engine) so we are still learning but this feedback is really encouraging !
Cute and cozy game! It feels a bit slow walking and moving the cleaning rag but overall it was fun.
Thank you for you feedback :)
Very nice graphics and cute characters. Unfortunately I'm not sure I understood how fishing works, and could not catch anything :(
Thank you for testing our game :) For fishing, you have to use the sonar that tells you how close you are from the treasure. The higher the bar is on the sonar the closer you are. We should have make this more obvious !
Thanks, I was able to fish some cool treasure :)
Good art, I feel like the transition from the blue color pallette openning to the normal color pallette is a bit werid.
Thank you for the feedback !!
Peak game, love it! Especially the art
Wow ! Thank you so much, it means a lot.
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