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Fishbowl: Trailer Tour, Beyond the Demo!

Hi everyone!

Fishbowl’s trailer was released alongside our demo and we'd love to take you through it! But before that, if any of you played our demo, please take a moment to leave us a review. It would help us a LOT in continuing to make Fishbowl visible to other players on Steam.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The first person you meet in the trailer is Iris. She is Alo’s manager at work and Alo directly reports to her. You will have many conversations with her about work and also life.


Iris loves film making and she is also a DIY queen! We’ve made sure to have her home reflect that. There are a lot of objects that Iris has made herself. This sewing machine is inspired from the Usha sewing machines which were really popular in India at one time.


We then show you a bunch of self care and home care tasks that Alo does at home. The game starts off with the home being pretty barebones and as time goes by new activities and a few areas get unlocked. The home becomes more ‘alive’ over time.

The thing with all the care tasks in Fishbowl is that you can do as much or as little as you are able and you will get an outcome as per your choices and decisions.


Next up is our job that we do from home. Alo is a video editor and video editing in Fishbowl is a colour/symbol matching game. You are partnered with different work colleagues and they have their own abilities and challenges that they bring along to the video editing game!

This is Bulbul who seems to have messed up a previous file. Alo is going to try her best to help fix it.

Do your best Alo and Bulbul! 💜

Bulbul is an intern who has also moved to this new city like Alo. She lives in a teeny tiny studio apartment where the kitchen, hall, bedroom are basically just one room, AND with six other roommates! She’s figuring out how to cook so it's cheaper than ordering in and we are excited for you to see Bulbul’s story unfold in Fishbowl.


We then have Menguzonuo whom we all know and love! She has been working here for a long time. She is a pro at video editing and usually wants to finish work quickly!

A quick note on what we are actually editing! We work for this big social media influencer and content creator named Sitara and we are basically editing their vlogs and films and all such.


This is Alo’s mum! She runs Alo’s grandmum’s tea shop. As you know, Alo’s grandmum, Jaja passed away a little while back. And here, Alo’s Mum is thinking of giving away all her things. There are many such crucial choices in our game, which will create big and small changes in the story that you experience, as well as in the endings.


Alo ends up with all these packages containing things which belonged to her grandma. Jaja preserved these sentimental objects over the years. You now need to unpack them one at a time and progress in the story of the game.


This is Zuari, Alo’s childhood bestie who is a bit concerned about how Alo will go through all these packages.


These are our unpacking puzzles! When you interact with a box, an unpacking puzzle opens up. It is full of objects that feel nostalgic and sentimental. Also, some you can’t really make much sense of. To solve the puzzle, you free up the object at the bottom. So move things around and try to ‘get’ the special object underneath.


This is our journal! All the objects in the boxes will go into Alo’s journal which will tell you a little bit about them. The object that you uncovered might give you a memory. How you get these memories is a bit of a secret and we’d love for you to play the demo to know more about it.


This scene is an example of one such memory that Alo has received from an old object, a beloved record player. Memories sometimes unlock an activity. This record player lets you play tunes from the past whenever you’d like!


Along with memories Fishbowl also has this dream world of sorts which tells you more about the past as well as Alo’s inner thoughts. We have created this area with a lot of care and it has little details that will tell you more about the story if you are paying attention and observing with a keen eye.


Our trailer ends with smol Alo and her friends on the terrace looking at the evening sky filled with stars.

Hope you enjoy playing the demo and meeting some of these characters, experiencing some of these events. A reminder, if you’ve already played it, do leave us a review here and share with us what you thought of it!


Love,
Rhea & Prateek
💜imissmyfriends.studio

Fishbowl Demo Patch Notes

Hey everyone,

Thank you so much for playing the Fishbowl Demo and giving your feedback! Based on your messages we've made some updates to the demo, here are the patch notes:

[h2]🌱 Features[/h2]
  • Hint for Unpacking puzzle
  • Improve control scheme


[h2]🐞 Bugs[/h2]
  • Remove double knocking SFX
  • Fix soft-lock on fridge, shower and desk
  • FIx typos


We're still looking at the scaling issue that some of you have reported and also more features that have been requested. Being a two-person team we can't commit to timelines yet, but are grateful for all the feedback we've received so far.

If you have any other feedback please do email us, or leave a comment here.



Love,
Rhea & Prateek
💜 imissmyfriends.studio

Fishbowl: Play the demo today!

Hi everyone!

We are thrilled to share with you that the Fishbowl Demo + Trailer have released TODAY!!

We can’t wait for you to finally enter Alo’s little world and
💬 stay in touch with loved ones
📦 rediscover childhood memories
💻 work from home as a video editor
💜 know yourself better one day at a time

The demo is a peek into the game where you will be able to play the first day of our month-long story. We hope it gets you intrigued for what lies ahead.





It’s been three years of working on Fishbowl, (two years part-time and one year of heart-pouring full-time). We couldn’t have done it without friends and family who cheered us on, helped us with play-testing and certainly did not let us miss them, while we made the game. You know who you are ^_^

It really wouldn’t have been as fun or full without all of YOU! Our Fishbowl community!

Hope the experience of playing the demo stays with you while we are hard at work on the full game.



Tell us what you think of it and also, tell us if you spot anything… um… suspicious.

Fishbowl demo out on Steam (Mac + Windows) and PS5!


Love,
Rhea & Prateek
💜 imissmyfriends.studio

Fishbowl: Stories told through things left behind 📦

Hi everyone!

Today we want to tell you about the unpacking puzzles in Fishbowl and our thoughts behind them.

When you solve unpacking puzzles, you will rediscover childhood memories from our main character, Alo’s, past.

The puzzles require you to move objects around in order to ‘get’ the one at the bottom.

These puzzles have you unpack objects belonging to Jaja, Alo’s grandma, who passed away a little while ago. They tell stories of significant moments in Alo’s life, growing up.



Some of these objects will be dear to Alo, reminding her of a simpler time spent together with friends and family, while others may dive deep into some secrets.

We are hoping for our Indian friends to be able to spot a lot more than catches the eye. Like the Maggi and Hot and Sweet ketchup there. IYKYK.

Also, spot the box of ‘mathri’, a savoury flaky cookie or cracker from North India (Rajasthan) popularly eaten with ‘achaar’, Indian pickle. Yum!



Let’s dissect the objects in this one puzzle. Don’t worry, we won’t give away the object at the bottom which will give you a memory!

📗 Cross Stitch book: Jaja preserved this book through all these years.
🪡 Cross Stitch Embroidery: Some floral embroidery Jaja was working on.
🧵 Colourful threads: Jaja made sure to collect new colours of threads to add to her collection.
✂️ Scissors: Jaja’s trusted scissors which Alo was not allowed to play with when she was little.
🚃 Train: This wooden train toy is inspired from wooden Channapatna toys made in South India (Karnataka) that we love. If you like how this train looks, google it to see lots more beautifully hand-made toys.
🪙 Coin Purse: Jaja’s little coin purse, which would double up as Alo’s when she’d wrap Jaja’s sari around herself and pretend to be all grown up.
🧶 Yarn: Just some blue wool. Maybe Jaja was about to start making something new! 💔

Hope you enjoyed going through the objects in this puzzle with us. Fishbowl has lots of them so stick around for more. We are excited to share how to solve the puzzle and the memory you will get too, but all in good time. What would you like us to post about next? Leave a comment below!

Love,
Rhea & Prateek
💜imissmyfriends.studio

Storytelling Fishbowl's journey at The Storytellers Festival

Hi everyone!

It has been so much fun to be in The Storytellers festival!

We’ve been
✨ wishlisting games
👾 checking out cool demos
🥰 and seeing people react to our very first broadcast!

Hope you had the time to check out both the event and our broadcast which is live here on Steam! In case you haven’t, you still have time till the end of the week. It was a lot of fun to answer questions from our community across Twitter, Discord and Instagram. Hope we can do many more broadcasts in the future and tell you lots more about Fishbowl.




Love,
Rhea & Prateek
💜imissmyfriends.studio