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How does your game interpret and use the Theme / Halloween?
Once a year, after dark, a quiet pond opens to the spirit world. The player casts for the shapes moving beneath the water and reels them close enough to meet. These encounters only happen at night; dawn closes the connection.
We approached Halloween through remembrance and the closeness of the living and the dead, creating a quiet supernatural story about grief, gratitude, and saying goodbye.
Game Engine?
Game Engine / Tools (Other)?
4
Graphics & Audio: What did you create or use?
Have you participated in a game jam before this one?
Roughly how much time did you spend developing? (in hours)
40
Anything else you'd like to share about your game or development process?
Angler’s Wake was inspired by my grandmother, who taught me to love videogames and loved fishing. The game comes from gratitude for the time we had together and the connections we carry with us.
Created by Ryan Pond and Jericho Black, with spirit music by E. We combined our own artwork with credited third-party audio and fonts. AI assistance was used for programming, debugging, text editing, and development workflows.
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Comments
Thanks for explaining how to retrieve an empty cast, Ryan! I’ve rated the game and shared it with some friends to try. A little on-screen reminder after a missed cast could help newcomers like me. Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback on our game too. Really glad we connected through this jam!
Thank you for sharing it with your friends! I’m really glad we connected through the jam too.
And I agree about the on-screen reminder. A small prompt after a missed cast would make the next step clearer without interrupting the atmosphere.
Hearing where someone hesitated is really useful, especially when it’s something I’ve stopped noticing from playing my own game so much.
The game is easy to understand, and I was able to start playing without even going through the tutorial. At the same time, the unique world and music create a great atmosphere that really drew me into the game.
Thank you! It’s especially good to hear you could jump straight in without the tutorial. I wanted the fishing to be approachable so people could settle into the world and discover the spirits’ stories without getting stuck on the controls.
I’m glad the music and atmosphere drew you in, too. We were aiming for something quiet and a little eerie, but also somewhere you’d want to linger and see who you might meet. Thanks for spending some time by the water with us!
Lovely entry and a really great way to pay tribute to someone you love :) The artstyle and ambience fit the vibe really well and the story was beautifully told. I liked the loop of the game also - some mechanical activity combined with a progressing story. The fishing mechanic itself was easy to learn and fun to do.
A few suggestions in case you decide to build on this further - The fishing mechanic implemented was solid, but it was pretty easy (and thats perfectly fine if youre going for that) but it could have some more challenge without it being too overwhelming - check out cult of the lamb fishing mechanic - you can add on to what you already have to give it more depth and add a little bit of challenge especially when you are reeling back the fish, I think you had the tension and alignment but i didnt understand how it factored in the equation as i always caught the fish.
Overall great job on this! Art and music are great and the sound effects fit really well. Congrats!
Thank you! this is really useful feedback.
I’ve actually played a little bit of Cult of the Lamb, but apparently not enough to even realize it had fishing, so that gives me a very specific reason to go back and study how they handle it.
And I agree with your point about the difficulty. The tension/alignment system is there, and I wanted the player to be actively doing something during the catch instead of just waiting for a result, but it definitely ended up being pretty forgiving.
Part of that was intentional because I really wanted people to be able to make it through the full game and experience the story. But I also would have liked to do another balancing pass and push the fishing a little further. Enough that the tension meter actually matters and a catch can genuinely be lost, without making it frustrating or turning the story into something players have to grind through.
That was one of the places where the 96-hour limit caught up with me a bit. The system was functional, but I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to tune the challenge.
So I think your criticism is completely fair. If I keep developing Angler’s Wake, making the fishing deeper and more skillful without losing the relaxed, reflective feel is definitely something I’d want to work on.
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback, and for giving me another game mechanic to go study.
As the artist I’m happy to hear it was a selling point, because I am a programmer/ game designer first haha. We built is simple on purpose since it was a jam but your feedback is very good and would definitely be the direction to move in if the project was continued.
Thats very encouraging to hear since im also a programmer/ designer first and learning art now haha. awesome :)
Noooo! I wanted more!
This absolutely had vibes of something that came from the heart! I'd love for this game to be bigger. With more gameplay mechanics and more importantly- more plot, more characters and more of that melancholic atmosphere.
The presentation was good. I liked how the music changed and I liked... fishing sounds? I guess you could call them that :)
I think, over all, the game is relatable to anyone who experienced grief. Makes you think of people you miss. I didn't expect a jam game to bring on the feelings like that, but I guess here we are.
Thank you! This is exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping the game might create.
The fact that the melancholy, the grief, and that feeling of missing someone came through means a lot to me, because that was really the heart of the project.
And yes, I would absolutely love to keep developing it. More story, more characters, more spirit encounters, more fishing, more variety in what you can catch, and more reasons to spend time in that world are all things I can see fitting naturally into a larger version of Angler’s Wake.
The 96-hour version really only gave us enough time to establish the core idea and prove out the feeling of it, so hearing “I wanted more” is probably one of the best things I could hear.
Thank you for playing it and for taking the time to write this. I’m really glad it connected with you.
Thanks for the perfect review haha These are the type of reviews are the reason I create games.