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[TinyAngryCrab]

I object deeply to the crab representation in this game 

[Tuba]

I object deeply to the crab representation in this game 

Yeah, I can see you're angry 

[Tuba]

The Shotgun guy

Like weapons, I want enemies to be varied and different from each other, no stronger versions of other enemies. DOOM does that pretty well, both the original and the new one, with each enemy having different movement and attack patterns. Thanks to that, with just a few enemies, the original DOOM never felt repetitive thanks to enemy placement. The levels keep throwing the same enemies at you, but in different combinations and situations that make you think* and create strategies* to deal with them.

*Nothing too fancy, shooting usually works well

Mark Brown can explain it better than I:




And if you want more, I suggest this GDC talk from Matthias Worch, Dead Space 2 level designer:




So, today I wanna focus on this little guy:

This is one of the first and most common enemies you will find in the game, every 90s shooter had a "Shotgun guy" and so I wanted FISH to have one too. At first I just thought of a more generic enemy, but for some reason I draw a short fat fish with chubby cheeks. I also added an antennae at the top of his head for some reason, I thought it looked good... probably because of Majin Buu or this Gintama alien guy:

What's up with anime and fat character with antennae?

Making it an anglerfish and having that thing glow was a given. When drawing the sprites, I thought he wasn't looking very "piratey" so I gave him a peg leg. I thought the more "friendly" design was a nice twist for an enemy with a shotgun. In DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D, they are threatening, with red eyes and dark clothes. And you should be afraid of them because shotguns can give you some pretty big damage.

The small enemies in FPS are usually the weekest and not very threatening, like the grunts in Halo, runing from the player with squeaky voices. This is for all the grunts that Master Chief has killed, this little guy has a lot of fire power.

So much fire power that he can't handle the recoil.

He's also not very smart:

But look pretty cool in darker areas and bring up some interesting gameplay possibilities:

And Pescador doesn't care about any of that. Oh well.

Until next time!

[Tuba]

Mirrors are in!



*This game is being developed using Unreal Engine 4: The noble and pedigreed middleware from Epic Games.

[Tuba]

In a game called Fish, with fishmen and a fisherman (it’s important to know the difference) it’s expected for it to have water and swimming, so let’s jump in:



Well, it’s water, you can swim and there’s not really much about it, the game gets all bluish and blurry and you start losing health when the little avatar on the bottom gets all blue. And of course you get wet:



So, I an way, you can fish in FISH now:



Yeah, I got a little carried away with the whole water thing... and btw this is a new level in some sort of ancient temple.
What do you think?

[fireboy]

Cool game.
It reminds me of Doom and Duke Nukem (mostly by the mirror scene in the bathroom)
I really enjoyed the humor in catching enemies.

[Tuba]

Testing a new enemy for the game, an oyster that throws pearls at you:



Also preparing for a crowdfunding campaign that's coming very very soon.

[Tuba]

FISH now has a demo: https://8ah.itch.io/fish-demo

And a new trailer:





And finally turning to crowdfunding: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fish-an-old-school-fish-person-shooter-game
Support the game if you like it

And tell me if you find any bugs or crashes!

[Tuba]

The campaign is out for a week, not doing exactly well, got 1,100USD of the 15,000USD goal. :/
The demo was downloaded 151 times, earlier this week I uploaded a new version with a lot of fixes so if you had any trouble with the first one, give it a try.

Been sending the game to the press with no replies, but I still have a month to go so it's time to sit down and reevaluate what I'm doing wrong.

[ardydo]

Have you been trying to contact some specific game journalists? Like, if there is some guy really into doom inspired games or interesting indie games or even someone that follows you on twitter. I think that may make it easier to get any response and that may help giving it some traction.

Also somewhere that discusses doom and indiegames. You could also try reddit

Subredits like r/gamephysics may like some of your physics gif, r/doom or maybe even r/shooter. There may also be some specifc subrerereddidts about crowdfunding that may also be of some help.

Anyway, if there is anything that I could help you with feel free to contact me <3

[quantumpotato]

The campaign is out for a week, not doing exactly well, got 1,100USD of the 15,000USD goal. :/
The demo was downloaded 151 times, earlier this week I uploaded a new version with a lot of fixes so if you had any trouble with the first one, give it a try.

Been sending the game to the press with no replies, but I still have a month to go so it's time to sit down and reevaluate what I'm doing wrong.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/22/fish-fps-crowdfunding-demo/

[Tuba]

Yep, we're on RPS
It helped the demo to get some more downloads and a few new backers.

Spent the last week sending the game to more press outlets and lurking DOOM communities, getting feedback from the target audience (something I should have done a long time ago). One feedback I've heard that I thought was valid was that the weapons and the hook were lacking "punch", so I've been experimenting with lighting and camera effects to get that right. There are still space for improvements but it's like this now:



A new version of the demo with those changes is out: https://8ah.itch.io/fish-demo
Next priority is to get Mac and Linux versions running.

Any feedback about the game or the campaign itself is highly appreciated, thanks.

[Tuba]

FISH was at Glitch-Festa this weekend, a small expo in Curitiba - Brazil and I had the chance to watch random people play it, this was a great opportunity to gather feedback and see how people play it. One thing I noticed for instance is that most players were trying to drop fruits from the trees by shooting at them, so I decided to add that to the game, why not?



Anyway, everyone that played it seem to have liked, even though the game was pretty hard for people that are not used to old FPS, plenty of kids played and enjoyed it too, which was a surprise to me. Based on that I tried re-balancing the weapons and enemies and the easier difficulties should feel easier now. There's a demo available with those changes already: https://8ah.itch.io/fish-demo

Now, for the Indiegogo campaign. Yeah, it's not going well... I talked to some people in the forums that had successful campaigns to gather some data and learned a few things:

1) People seem to be enjoying the gameplay itself so I thought if I could make more people download the demo I could get more backers but that doesn't really seem to be the case. Having a demo is good, shows that you're confident in your project but most backers don't actually play it. Some successfully kickstarted games here have less demo downloads then FISH.

2) Your crowdfunding platform has a lot of influence, everyone I talked to had their projects on Kickstarter and some had 30% of their backers coming directly from Kickstarter's website, Indiegogo is responsible for 8% of my backers.

I haven't lost hope on it but I now that my chances are very small now. But I don't want to give up on the project and been thinking about alternatives to be able to finish it.

[Tuba]

Well, the campaign flopped 

So is life.

But I don't want to give up on this game, so I'm taking a few steps back and seeing what can be done to make it more viable. I certainly learned a lot in the last few weeks and I'm very tired for now.

Anyway, the demo is still up on https://8ah.itch.io/fish-demo
So, play it if you want and again, any feedback will be very appreciated.