Great work on the game! I had quite a bit of fun playing,even with just this demo. Some notes:
- Including a list of things you weren't able to finish in time was actually really nice, helped me to set my expectations and focus more on what you did get done.
- The how to play screen does its job, but a title screen using the thumbnail you made would have been really nice. I'm sure this is coming later, though.
- Exquisite work on the bait names. Exquisite work on the things you can catch, too - I had a ton of fun just reading through all the things I caught!
- The art is all fairly simple but charming, it all does its job well - I know you used a tileset, but you still did well in building out a nice little scene. The camera is also handled really well. I do wish I could see all the things I've caught, just because some of them sound so funny, but I get that would have been a lot of work
- The sound effects that are here are nice, but one for selecting your bait and another for when the exclamation points come up would have made things even better. (Also, the excalamation points could have maybe popped a bit more, like being slightly bigger or having a dark outline.)
- The catching mechanics are simple but effective, but I do wish there was more feedback about what was going on. It seems like holding down space before releasing makes the line go out further, but there was no sound or visual cue to tell me this - that would have been nice.
- The slight delay between hitting space to reel in and starting the fishing minigamemade me screw up the catch the first few times, I'd either have the minigame start immediately after the player starts reeling in or have MORE of a delay so the player isn't caught off-guard by the start of the minigame.
- I assume the randomization will fix this, but the game does feel very easy right now. That said, missing the yellow bar by even a bit makes the catch dramatically worse, so you might want to improve the yields of the orange area a bit to compensate when you make the game trickier.
- The jackpots were fun, but they almost felt TOO strong - one jackpot gave me some $100,000 and plenty of bait, and basically removed all tension for the rest of the game.
- It's a small thing, but maybe coloring bait differently in the catch log could be nice, so the player knows how much extra bait they've reeled in?
- I like the bait selection menu, but I do feel like the font (while readable) was maybe a bit small and not as cool as it could have been.
- Being able to lose by running out of bait and money adds just enough tension to make the game engaging without detracting from the relaxing nature of a fishing game, so great work on that! Of course, it's real hard to lose if you don't mess up your first few catches, but I assume the full game will add more to the mechanics.
All in all, I enjoyed this game more than I expected to - the music and sound make it relaxing, and it's fun to see all the weird stuff you can fish up. Great work, I'm excited to see where you take this game from here!