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Are you ready to shoot fish in space?

YES.




So I decided to try to do the versus theme at Global Game Jam, and this is what came out.  You are a fish hunter in deep space hunting rare fish for money that is paid to you by space sushi restaurants.  However, over harvesting the fish will result in an extinction.  The music is by the lovely Josh Whelchel (http://jwmusic.org).

CONTROLS
PLAYER 1:
WASD - moves
G - Shoots left
H - Shoots right

PLAYER 2:
ARROWS - moves
> - shoots left
? - shoots right

HOW TO PLAY
Shoot the fish to kill them.

Pick them up after their dead to cash them in.

Certain fish are worth a lot of money during the game, pay attention.

The player with the most money at the end wins.

However, if you are responsible for one of the fish species going extinct, you will be fined.

The fine is $100 per fish killed, payable to the intergalatic fish preserve society.

If a species goes extinct, the round will end.

If not, the round will end after 2 minutes of play.




 :gentleman:

T-this... this... this looks so great!

I'll test it tomorrow, but for now I'll just say that I utterly love the looks!

sweet can't wait to play when i get home

FUCK YOU FOR MAKING ANOTHER PLATFORMER YOU FUCK.

Damn it all, I don't have a numpad on my laptop!

NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

This looks all kinds of crazy.  :-*

Kyle Pulver, I demand you make a Mac version of this right now!

yeah kyle it's flash COME ON ;D

I KNOW I KNOW I have to boot into OSX to make a stupid OSX projector file though BAH.

Think of the Maccers, though! They deserve to be able to play games too!  :beg:

(Totally PC here, but hey, some Mac users are decent people, and deserve to be able to play this :D)

The zip file now contains a .app for you pretentious mac loving jerks.

No NumPad = No can play :'(

If anyone has any suggestions for keyboard controls that don't use the numpad and are actually playable with two people on the same keyboard then I'm all ears!  :gentleman:

left/right mouse button, enter/rshift, </>, ralt/rshift, not being able to play the game means I don't know if these fit. Why not just let the user define the keys?

Best option ever. Else, I like WASD+G H and Arrows+ Enter Rshift. But customizable keys it's way better.

I had no trouble with wasdfg and arrows+nm - good compatibility for laptop fun.

INTERESTING I had some hand space issues with that.  I'll work on trying to get custom controls in the next update.

WASD +VB
Arrows + ./

Seems to be a suitable distance from eachother, unless your prepared to allow BUTTON-style emergent gameplay.

I always end up playing the game with Joy2Key and 2 360 controllers anyway... those keys should work though.  Can flash read from an external file for controls?  Hmm...

http://vimeo.com/20228341

WHOOAAAOHH Its on the Winnitron for GDC.

I shall be releasing a build with the winnitron updates soon!

Okay I changed some stuff including the controls, but they're not customizable SORRY.  I did what I could before GDC madness.

We took it for a spin.. it looks like it could be fun (and the music is awesome), but there were so many things going on at the same time, and it was hard to make distinctions between all the game element, so it was very confusing, didn't understand at all what was going on...

Sounds about right!

We tried this the other day and thought it had a lot of charm. Lines like KYLE PULVER PRESENTS KYLE PULVER'S and MASH BUTTON TO SKIP THIS do a great job of setting the silly, fun tone. I think an earlier version of the instructions had SPACE inserted before all the nouns? I remember liking that. Removing it probably does make the instructions easier to read, though.

When the game starts, it's like walking into one of those crazy, frantic Japanese game shows where something ridiculous and chaotic is going on that you can't figure out but can't really look away. It's almost kind of a sensory overload. There's just so much going on and so many elements on screen that they all become kind of meaningless and all you can really focus on is your person (at least who you think is your person) and trying, you think, to move or do something by mashing buttons frantically because are you hearing this music and feel like whatever you do you have to do it quickly and frantically because look at all these fish and numbers everywhere and lines and pulsing circles and dots and smoke and numbers and lines and arrows and flashing things and spinning things and hurry up because are you hearing this music and the price of fish just went up and someone just got a level but I don't who and is the crowd cheering or am I crazy and did I mention the music?

After about 3 rounds I finally realized that you shoot fish and then they follow you around in this leash sort of red circle and then eventually die and then you pick them up. But I still don't understand any information on the HUD and I still can't really distinguish between fish. It's a testament to the overall experience, though, that we played that many times without really knowing what was going on!

It really feels like you're playing the very last level of a very long and difficult game (the epic music really contributes to this feeling too). Like this is the last test, when they throw everything at you at once and say (if games could talk) something like, "well this is everything I've got, if you can beat this you've mastered the game!"

It doesn't really have a learning curve, it's more of a learning cliff.

To make it more accessible you could try introducing different elements one at a time. Maybe you have different game modes like simple, normal, chaotic. Or, maybe players compete on a series of escalating levels. Each level adds another element to the mix. So you start with one type of fish and a fixed price. Then each level you add another element like maybe in level 2 you can get experience. Then slowly add back in fluctuating fish price, finite fish populations, multiple types of fish, etc.

Although, I almost suspect that all these game mechanics and rules and elements on the screen are intended to be a kind of deliberately crazy aesthetic whose purpose is just to create a kind of confusing and overwhelming atmosphere. Could it be? I don't know!

This game was fun to play and review! Thanks!

That's a pretty awesome write up!

I think the only thing you didn't get was the whole "red leash" thing.  That actually means that fish are aggressive toward you and will attack you when close, it doesn't really have anything to do with them dying.  They end up dying because they're chasing you instead of eating other fish!