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[Farbs]

Hi folks,

After much ado-ing (and fro-ing and to-ing) I've finished Fishie Fishie, the game I've fiddled around with for the past two and half years.



Caution:
This game is composed entirely of love.
If approached, it may attempt to hug you.

Despite it's super friendly casual appearance, Fishie Fishie features a devillishly challenging one button control system, and is consequently doomed to be a commercial catastrophe. Rather than redesigning the gameplay to suit my wallet, I decided to finish the game as originally envisaged and release it as freeware. Which I've just done. Before I start pimping it out to the public though I'd really appreciate some feedback. The first few fixes always make a world of difference.

So... what do you think?

[SplinterOfChaos]

Composed entirely of love? Then what's this LEMON ZEST I detect? In fact, I doubt it's very good love. Probably store-brand.

The game is great. And nicely darkly humorous in a way that seems entirely light hearted...except for the fact your KILLING BABY ANIMALS! But they're so cute when they die. I just want to hug them!...but they're already gone.

The only problem I ran into was that when I tried to skip some congratulatory music at the end of a level, it kept playing until I beat the level.

I'm really impressed that the game did not look stretched on my wide screen. That's actually my biggest deterant from making my own game full-screen optional. If you don't mind, how do you do it? I'm hoping there's an API unspecific answer, or that you used SDL or OpenGL.

[Melly]

What do I think? I think this is one of the most addictive one-switch games I've played ever. It's not made of love, it's made of win.

Oh, and it's hard. o.o

[deadeye]

The installer left out msvcr71.dll, which means I had to download it separately to play.

Once I got it going, though, it seemed to run fine.  The sprites are nice and crisp, and the backgrounds have a nice painted look to them but the large portraits of the fish in between levels and the hungry-fish health bar seem to be a little lacking in the same detail. 

The controls are a little strange at first, but then again I've never been much of one for one-switch games.  Oddly enough the fewer buttons there are the more confusing it is for me.  Anything less than three or more than eight and I have to start thinking about it.  I did get better the more I played, though (I got to the crocodile babies on my second game).  One thing I did find strange is that I click with the mouse button to start a game, but the mouse button is not one of the buttons I can use to control the fish.

Overall I think you have a unique and fairly polished game, but in all honesty I think this would fare better as a browser game.  The simplicity of the controls and the single-board arcade style doesn't lend itself to something that I would invest time in playing at home, but more like something that I would go back to a few times a week on lunch breaks.

[Zaphos]

Notes:
* I like the art!  It's well-done and fits the game.
* The sounds get a bit annoying, and the toggles on the bottom right are a bit hard to notice.
* I was a bit confused when I pressed the down arrow in the main menu and the game started.
* I didn't read the text at first so was confused for a bit -- I didn't immediately realize that holding the key would turn, since I for some reason was only tapping it or releasing it.  For illiterate people like me it would help to stick pictures on the opening instructions -- like 3 pictures of a little animated fish turning left, going straight, and turning right, with captions "No key pressed," "key tapped," and "key held" respectively.
* I didn't understand the combo system the first time I played, since my attention is always on the fish, not the score in the upper left.  The fish only mentions the combo score when I've broken the combo, which made for very confusion feedback; for a while I thought he was just randomly telling me what my score was.
The game seems very random and repetitive when you don't understand the score system -- the score is really the heart of it.
* On a similar note it took me a while to realize how long it takes for a combo to 'break' ... it would be helpful to have a timer or something visual to show that, since I still don't have a good intuition of when exactly my combo will break.
* Some of the stages seem kind of random in difficulty; if the fishes are swimming about relatively freely the level can be really hard or really easy depending on the order the player goes after the fishes, but there's not really an intuitive way for the player to know how he should do it.
* It might be fun to have more 'stable' challenges, where there's some specific tricky thing the player *must* do to get through the level, and where the player is not expected to get it on the first try, but has (for example) 3 chances or a number of lives to expend on it.
* Lives or some other way to retry an area the player messes up on would definitely seem to add a 'skill building' feel to the game, as the player would be allowed to work on the tricky level specifically for a bit and so would be able to tell if it was actually a tricky level or if they just screwed up, and would have time to strategize about how to best approach the tricky levels.

Overall my impressing of the game so far is that it's lightweight, fun, easy to pick up but also a (surprisingly) bit confusing at first, and it doesn't quite seem to have the sense of skill or strategy or connection to the score to make it a fully compelling high-score game.

[Melly]

Something tells me we'll need sum Guertin' Feedbackin' magics.

[Farbs]

Fck, this is some awesome feedback people. Thanks so much! Specific bits follow:

Composed entirely of love? Then what's this LEMON ZEST I detect? In fact, I doubt it's very good love. Probably store-brand.

I do not reveal my sources

The game is great. And nicely darkly humorous in a way that seems entirely light hearted...except for the fact your KILLING BABY ANIMALS! But they're so cute when they die. I just want to hug them!...but they're already gone.

I think you're going to like the ending then. Heheh.

The only problem I ran into was that when I tried to skip some congratulatory music at the end of a level, it kept playing until I beat the level.

That's very weird. Did it only happen once? Which OS are you using?

I'm really impressed that the game did not look stretched on my wide screen. That's actually my biggest deterant from making my own game full-screen optional. If you don't mind, how do you do it? I'm hoping there's an API unspecific answer, or that you used SDL or OpenGL.

Honestly, I have no idea! I just tell the popcap framework what resolution I'd like and it handles the rest. Their framework is free to download though, so you could take a peek and see what they're doing.

Oh, and it's hard. o.o

Yeeeah. Has anyone beaten it yet?

The installer left out msvcr71.dll, which means I had to download it separately to play.

ARGH! I always forget stuff like that. I've uploaded a new installer which should fix it.
This feedback is gold.

The controls are a little strange at first, but then again I've never been much of one for one-switch games.  Oddly enough the fewer buttons there are the more confusing it is for me.  Anything less than three or more than eight and I have to start thinking about it.  I did get better the more I played, though (I got to the crocodile babies on my second game).  One thing I did find strange is that I click with the mouse button to start a game, but the mouse button is not one of the buttons I can use to control the fish.

Overall I think you have a unique and fairly polished game, but in all honesty I think this would fare better as a browser game.  The simplicity of the controls and the single-board arcade style doesn't lend itself to something that I would invest time in playing at home, but more like something that I would go back to a few times a week on lunch breaks.

I had mouse control for a while, but it seemed to confuse people even more because they expected the cursor position to mean something. I agree that it'd be better as a browser game too. In fact, most of my games and prototypes would. I'm actually learning AS3 now so that I can make the jump.

* I was a bit confused when I pressed the down arrow in the main menu and the game started.

Good point. I fixed this in PCFM already, but forgot to clean up the Fishie Fishie version. I'll port it across tonight.

* I didn't read the text at first so was confused for a bit -- I didn't immediately realize that holding the key would turn, since I for some reason was only tapping it or releasing it.  For illiterate people like me it would help to stick pictures on the opening instructions -- like 3 pictures of a little animated fish turning left, going straight, and turning right, with captions "No key pressed," "key tapped," and "key held" respectively.

I'd hoped not to have to do this, but yeah, I think you're right.

* I didn't understand the combo system the first time I played...

I didn't really think people would take much interest in the combo system, and would focus more on getting through all the levels. In the end I toned it down so that it wouldn't distract or confuse people. Hmm.

* Lives or some other way to retry an area the player messes up on would definitely seem to add a 'skill building' feel to the game, as the player would be allowed to work on the tricky level specifically for a bit and so would be able to tell if it was actually a tricky level or if they just screwed up, and would have time to strategize about how to best approach the tricky levels.

There are checkpoints every 5 levels, so with some level of mastery dying isn't a big deal. I agree that this is a bit boned in the early game though. Balancing the game for first time players has been one of my biggest problems, 'cos I can't slow it down too much or people get bored. Hmm again.

Overall my impressing of the game so far is that it's lightweight, fun, easy to pick up but also a (surprisingly) bit confusing at first, and it doesn't quite seem to have the sense of skill or strategy or connection to the score to make it a fully compelling high-score game.

I think you're right. The high score thing is really just there as an additional goal though, it's not supposed to be the meat of the game. Still, I'll look into explaining it better to the player.

Something tells me we'll need sum Guertin' Feedbackin' magics.

That would make me a very happy Farbs.

[SplinterOfChaos]

The problem did happen again, but the circumstances are very hard to pick out from the times when this does not happen.

Windows XP is the OS.

[ColossusEntertainment]

I'm really impressed that the game did not look stretched on my wide screen. That's actually my biggest deterant from making my own game full-screen optional. If you don't mind, how do you do it? I'm hoping there's an API unspecific answer, or that you used SDL or OpenGL.

I've tried to get around that with my games as well and I think it should work, but I don't have a widescreen monitor so haven't tested it. Basically, what I do is compare the existing screen resolution with the games desired resolution, and then I stretch the game image to fit, without affecting the aspect ratio (introducing borders where necessary). As an additional mode (useful for pixelart) I have it so it will put bigger borders in rather than stretching the pixels so they look ugly (in that mode I only scale by an integer factor (x2, x3, x4 etc).

So in other words, I don't change the users resolution, but scale the games output to fit while preserving aspect ratio.

Hope this helps.

[SplinterOfChaos]

Yup, that helps. Now it just boils down to getting what the screen native resolution is, and that becomes platform specific unless I'm misinformed.

But how your game actually works is it makes the box kind of small. In fact, the text is too small at times...or that's just how tired I am right now.

[Alex May]

Great game, really nice control system.

I think the user interface needs streamlining. It would be nice to be able to control it all with one switch, but at the very least I'd like the menu to function with arrow keys - at the moment pressing an arrow key takes me into the game which surprised me. I think one ought to be able to control the game entirely with the mouse or entirely with the keyboard. Pressing escape should toggle a pause menu IMO instead of using a two-hits-to-quit system. Also when you die you get dumped straight back at level 1 without going through the menu or high score table first.

Great game though

[Farbs]

Cool, thanks haowan. I'm uploading a version with key controlled menus now.

Death dumps you back to the nearest 5th level down, so level 0, 5, 10, 15 etc. This is particularly harsh on new players however, and it leads them to believe that death will always discard their efforts. This is bad. I'll change it so that you restart your current level if you die in the first 5.

[Alex May]

I think it's fine, you just need to communicate that that's what happening - if it's like "lose a life, and go back to the nearest level that was a multiple of 5" then the player should be aware that that's what is hapening - so like, I dunno, you could flash up a little line of numbers showing what level you were at and have a fish icon move from the level you died on back to the level they're going to start on. You could have a list of levels from game start that the player can look at to show which ones they've played and which ones they perfected (or just top score for each level), and they could choose to start from any level they already played or something.

[Farbs]

Too slow... changes to respawn locations are being uploaded now
If you die in the first 5 levels now you just get to restart the current one. Otherwise you go back to the nearest signpost. I've added some quick text into the game to try to communicate this too.

[Movius]

Excellent game.

one thing I found with the controls: Turning clockwise by pressing the button always seemed slightly slower than letting the fish spin the other way naturally. There doesn't really seem much that can be done about it though, as it's mostly to do with the delay between player's brain and keyboard.

It would perhaps be more intuitive if pressing a button toggled between turning clockwise and anti-clockwise, rather than one way while a button is held and the other when the button isn't held. It wouldn't really change the method you use to move in a straight line. That may take a lot of the challenge out of the game though.

[Guert]

Pretty cute game you got there!

Ok, here are a couple of coments form my behalf.

First, If the game is solely played with the keyboard, I suggest that you turn off the mouse when the game starts. All you would need to do is to make the side options accessible when the game is paused and all the game will be played using only the keyboard.

Gameplay wise, the game is quite interesting since it uses only one input. My main issue with it is that we can't control the fish as much as we would like to. For instance, I don't feel like I truly control the fish. It becomes very obvious in levels with mean fishes. I felt like most of the time, I found myself in a negative situation but couldn't do anything to prevent it from happening. Perhaps it could be interesting to add a new mechanic that would allow a bit more control. The idea of toggling the rotation direction is interesting. Perhaps the game could also benefit from being played with two buttons, such as having a button for turning left and turning right. It's hard to tell right now but perhaps it would be interesting to test on your side.

Still, I like the simplicity of having only one button. Perhaps tweaking the rotation speed along wth the general speed of the fish would help. Like, making the base speed of the fish slower and keeping the tapping speed at the same level combined with faster rotation could help. But, it's hard to say since I can't experience with the values right now. But in general, I feel like we can't do exactly what we want to do when we want it. 

I feel that, in general, the hunger gauge reduces too fast. It feels like when the "EAT!" message appears, we don't have very long before the game is over. Perhaps make it reduce slower after eating a fish? Then, the longer it takes before the player eats a fish, the more penality the player will get but eatign a fish will stop the gauge from reducing for a short while, based on the amount of fishes eaten in a row... Just a thought...

The spinning "Well done" message spins too fast, I had a hard time to know what was written. Perhaps make it spin, pause for a few secs then spin again?

The picture of the fish when dead (greenish, holding its belly) feels too rewarding. Perhaps have him sad instead of smilling out of satiety? 

How does hitting crocodiles affect the gameplay? Does it lower the gauge? If so, it should show. Right now, I know that the crocodile make me "curse" in-game but I haven't noticed if they affect something else.

So yeah, it's a cool game with some interesting idea, good humor, interesting music and overall presentation. It kept me entertained for a while I don't have anyhing much to say right now since alot of good comments have covered alot of ground. You have alot of possibilities open with all the suggestions you've received so far.

Good job!
Later!
(And I hope I haven't let you down in terms of feedback )

[Zaphos]

Played it some more, so more notes:
 * It took me some time to fully realize how the fish come in groups, and hitting a bigger fish makes the groups stop being attracted to you.  I noticed how the fish pulls a bunch at once but didn't really understand the mechanics of it for a while.  It's pretty important to understand when thinking about how to do some stages so it'd be nice to make it more clear somehow.
 * The difficulty jumps absurdly in the White Point Bay area; the second stage of it I can't beat consistently and the third is essentially the same as the second, so I never get anywhere on it.  I got to the last stage once, but went on the wrong side of the 'monster' so it was impossible to win.  The control of the fish is hard enough that asking a player to chase down individual fishes is probably not a good idea.
 * I do think I would enjoy it more if I had lives and only had to go back to the start of an area when the lives run out, just because as it is (before White Point Bay) there are a lot of places where I'm only having trouble with one stage, but I keep having to replay through all the other stages to get to it and it's boring.
 * The score should perhaps give more points for harder levels, because currently when I'm in (for example) White Point Bay, there's just no way I'd score as well there as I do in the first area so the score feels unfair.  Alternatively not fully reseting the scores on death (so you always get the benefit of whatever you did in the earlier levels, albeit perhaps diminished in some way) could also help.

[Farbs]

Cool, thanks again for the feedback folks.

re: Toggle type movement
This was actually my original design! What I found though was that although it made more sense rationally, it didn't have the same physicality as the hold/release model. I think it really helps that the player flexes muscles one way to turn left, and another to turn right. It's much easier to learn than considering which way the fish is currently facing before deciding whether to turn. I also tried the two button idea, but again it didn't work so well. The system in there now is harder to explain, and a little harder to use at the start, but eventually it feels much more natural. Darnit.

re: fish control
I think I know what this is. I tuned the game for jet powered turbo fish then slowed everything down for the early levels. What this means is that in early levels the fish handles like a drift racer in slow motion, constantly sliding out all over the place. This also means that the player needs to anticipate and initiate a turn long before the object they wish to hit or avoid, which is of course utter pants for new players. I'll investigate better ways of scaling the player movement.

re: spinning "Well Done"
Agreed. I've changed it (locally) so that it spins back & forth. This gives the sensation of speed I wanted but also means it slows to a halt as it changes direction giving people a chance to read it.

re: happy dead fish
I used to have a smelly dead fish illustration here but it was upsetting the playtesters. I replaced it with this guy temporarily, then decided not to spend any more money on the project I could use any of the other illustrations, but I thought this one was the closest. Also I kind of like the idea that the fish isn't so worried about dying.

re: white pointer bay
Yeah, it's too hard. I'll turn them into tiny little blood streams. Originally the game had no groups at all, and you had to catch every single little fishie by itself. It took be 12 months to realize what a terrible mistake that was

re: scores
For me the scores are what keeps the early game interesting. It's a fun challenge to try to get an unbroken chain of perfects. I don't want to give higher scores for later in the game 'cos I want to keep the player's early game performance relevant. It's an interesting idea though.

I don't think I'll get another new version out tonight, but I'll try to clean up some of these issues in the next few days.

Your kind (and critical) words are all very much appreciated.

[Alex May]

I like the dead fish as it is, but the spinning well done message was blowing my mind... so much so that i forgot to mention it before!

[grzegorz.holdys]

The game is really addictive and guess what? It works on Linux!