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Big Fish's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #15 | 3.273 | 3.273 |
| Audio | #17 | 2.727 | 2.727 |
| Overall | #22 | 2.509 | 2.509 |
| Gameplay | #22 | 2.545 | 2.545 |
| Engagement & General | #29 | 2.273 | 2.273 |
| Story | #34 | 1.727 | 1.727 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Game Maker Studio 2
Team/Developer
TOQ Games
Comments on the jam
Get it now while it's free!
Discord username
TheOnlyQuarry#4926
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Comments
The player movement is good, sometimes feels a little clunky, but overall feels nice. The music has a weird loop. Great work!
The player's movement felt nice, especially with using a controller. The art is great like the music, it creates a good atmosphere. Good game!
Nice game, here are my feedback on it:
+ The controls under the water are really neat, I felt well the rapidity and the agility of the character, it was a good feeling!
+/- I liked a lot the art direction/universe, however, it is too bad that there are some elements which are too pixelated.
+/- I found nice the variety of the dangers, but I died too many times, it was a bit hard for my taste.
+/- The music doesn't loop well, especially the first one, we can hear when it restarts, otherwise in general the music is nice.
Overall: Cool work!
I agree with you on all points, my friend. Thank you so much for your feedback. I've now signed up for the Super MVM Jam, so I hope you try it again then. I'll be able to fix the music, get everything up to a higher resolution. I actually was hoping to make the game a challenge, but to keep it easy in main areas. I'd recommend, if you find it hard, take the approach of not eating as many enemies. As you eat more, your enemy types will change and grow. Eating just the mushrooms is showing kindness to the environment and although you lose access to some abilities that may help against the boss, you wont have to face a number of larger foes.
Hey Edalbung, turns out "fix the music" translates to "kick the musician off of the team and claim his worthlessness, despite the fact that he has been working on this same game for a year prior." Anyway, expect completely different music going forward, because I will be "disallowed from contributing"
i have a good time playing this game, the land movement seem a bit janky but the underwater movement feel good. and both the music and graphic make a relaxing yet mysterious atmosphere
the only big problem i have with this game is sometime when you move from a room to the next one, the enemy was directly on top of you so you cannot do anything but take the damage. other than that it was great.
also can you actually beat the giant blue lobster thing, i think i have explore every place in the map and collecting every green orb but i don't seem to found a power up that can kill it. from the look of it the dash bite and the spinning attack cannot harm the lobster either.
Wait, should the land movement be smooth? Haha. Youre a fish out of water so the mechanics will feel weird at first. This was intentional. I can't make it too easy. ;) Where's the fun in that? This game has 2 hidden moves that allow players with some experience to traverse places early on.
-you can swim faster if you think like a fish. So move back and forth to build speed like a fish does.
-with some practice you can wall climb and this opens up the map early on.
I agree about the enemies being too close to doors sometimes. Their location is saved between rooms so I'll have to find a way to keep them from being near a door when you return to the room. Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't sure if it was a real problem or not.
The crabs are safe in their holes and I'm still working on animations for combating them. So at this point they are just a nuisance. Fun fact - they cant see you if your small. ;)
Did you find the last ability yet? You'll have to have the spinning attack to get it. And when you do it'll blow your mind. It's optional, but well worth it when used against the boss.
Thank you so much for playing and for the awesome feedback! All of this will be taken into great consideration as I continue on the game.
edit: I just made the crab animation and it can be damaged now. I also made it so enemies can't meet you at the door. Sadly you'll have to wait for the voting period to end.
its relaxing to play, i dig it
would prefer a bit more guidance
excellent graphics and audio
I left out some of the conveyance, because I felt the game needed to feel open to experienced players while deterring new players from exploring too far. For instance, were you able to find the first ability pretty easily? After that, your options open up entirely and you can fight the boss at any time. This allows for that fun experience of stumbling upon a hard enemy and running away or putting up a good fight. Even then. Beating him is your only real requirement to finish the game while the more violent abilities are for players who explore and work their way up the food chain. Everything else can be circumvented with some skill. Ta-da! A metroidvania for different skill levels. Also did you notice how the rooms changed a little and enemies got more difficult as you moved around the map eating things? I wanted to create that feeling of being a little lost and having to come back to previous spot just to find that new enemies have emerged from eating the smaller ones. The carnivorous players will have more of a challenge while the players who stick to eating mushrooms like my 7 year old niece wont have to deal with as many baddies. A game for all ages :)
i liked exploring and the open endlessness of it, i guess i just didn't like feeling lost before i started finding things like a boss to go after because it was kinda aimless. but ended up enjoying it anyway. yup, noticed there where more difficult enemies didn't know that what because of what i was eating.
some other thoughts i maybe should have mentioned:
the boss fight felt a bit too long
sometimes the camera didn't keep ahead of me and i didn't see where i was going
really liked the ai for enemies, felt like they where underwater, good job with that
This is some really good feedback, my friend. Thank you so much.!
The boss battle is long unless you use the electric tail. But I've been on the fence about increasing the damage dealt overall and I think you've convinced me, so I'll shorten that boss fight a smidge.
I agree that when I start swimming really fast I can't see any enemies ahead of me. I think I want to fix the camera by zooming it out just a little.
I think conveyance is so important in games and you're right about Big Fish feeling too open near the beginning. I really wanted the player to not feel trapped in a tiny game for the jam. I intend to use an accordion style of progression, keeping things linear near the beginning and end, while slowly opening the game up to the player throughout the middle, but for the jam period, I didn't unfold the areas as well as I could have. For the SuperMVM, however, I plan to have a much, much larger game with more bosses and powers. That will let me build a better flow for the map layout.
Thank you again for your insight! I've been so happy with how great of a community this is and I hope to see you and everyone else again at the SuperMVM!
Loved all the cool backgrounds and images! It was super satisfying growing my tadpole. Would love to see a full game someday.
Thank you! You most definitely will see this game again :)
I've been playing around with a new art style that has a painted look, while still being a form of pixel art. What I came up with was this water-pixel effect with occasional outlining. I'm really glad you like it!
This game is nice and very polished! I love how smooth the controls are and the main mechanics is really interesting, keep it up!
Thank you so much for saying that! I'd like to take this game to the 3 month metroidvania jam so I can expand on the world and mechanics.
Cool game! Beautiful backgrounds, controls feels good. The moment you can jump out from the water is awesome :) I was able to got vent to my greed and ate every living thing i can ))
That moment you're talking about took me a while to get right. And honestly I couldn't get the splash animation right up until the last few days. The splash noise forced me to get better at my audio grouping too.
I loved your use of water to entice bugs and grow plants. I want to entice things and grow things in my game now too. Haha. Thank you for inspiring me.
The full game is free to download and play during the Jam week. Have fun and leave a comment below!