FISH FEAR ME News

That's right: 20% off! Two dollars off! $7.99! The normal price but smaller!

Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell a stranger on the street! Whisper it in the ear of a lover! Watch that lover whisper it to a fish! Throw the fish back to sea as a warning! Let them warn the other fish of the tide of death to come! The tide of fishermen rising from the waters below! The moon pushes and pulls, as does the price of this video game! We are at a HIGH TIDE OF SAVINGS!

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! The tides rise, the tides fall, and FISH FEAR ME Friday returns to us once more.



Two exciting pieces of news:

First, FISH FEAR ME is now in a bundle with Genome Guardian! For those not aware, Genome Guardian is a roguelite turret shooter where you fight off cells while mutating your weaponry with DNA. It's a very cool game -- check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45393/_Genome_Guardian_x_FISH_FEAR_ME__Roguelike_Duo/

Second, FISH FEAR ME will be going on sale on April 7th! This will be the game's first post-launch sale, at 20% off. Tell your friends if you think they'd like it! (Or your enemies, if you think they wouldn't????)



This past week, we got Dloot (the lead singer on the FISH FEAR ME title track) back in the studio to record lyrics for the new song in the upcoming free WOMEN WANT ME content expansion! The new song is an extreme bop: I've had the chorus stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. The song, KINGFISHER, tells the woeful tale of the Lady of the Lake: her history, her bleak fate, and her murderous intent towards the Fisherman. Or, to quote the chorus directly:

KINGFISHER, TAKE UP THE SWORD
KINGFISHER, WEAR THE CROWN
KINGFISHER, THIS ALL COULD BE YOURS
GRAB YOUR FATE OR DROWN


Is fate the result of human action or human inaction? Is the future as set in stone as the past?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! We have sailed once again to FISH FEAR ME Friday!

Just a quick patch notes this week -- there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work going into the upcoming free content expansion, so that's where the majority of our dev time is currently pointed. As always, changes marked with ⚓ are community suggestions!


[h2]Misc[/h2]

• ⚓ Added the ability to pause during the Leviathan fight

In exciting news, controller navigation has made huge steps forward in the past couple weeks! Every screen requires a bespoke UI solution, so it'll still be a while before this update is ready to make public, but it's VERY cool to see in progress. Here's several menu screens, all being navigated entirely with the controller!!



I've said it before and I'll say it again: Noé, our visiting programmer, is a genius.


The upcoming free content expansion, WOMEN WANT ME, is continuing apace! I've gotten the level design solidified and have started implementing it in-engine -- I can't show you that, of course, but I'll give you some facts about the area:

• The map is called The Lake of the Lady, after its inhabitant, the Lady of the Lake
  
• It introduces a new mechanic that will change the way you approach every other map
  
• The majority of the map is a sunken castle full of champions and monsters
  
• There are six planned biomes in the map
  
• It has a unique location theme song
  
• It has a completely new day-7 boss fight unique to this location
  

Long story short, it's a lot of stuff! I'm very excited for it.


What item do you always take whenever it shows up? What item do you never take?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! We have once again made it to FISH FEAR ME Friday!

First, patch notes! As always, patch notes marked with ⚓ are community suggestions.


[h2]Game Balance[/h2]

• ⚓ Significantly buffed money-making weapons:
• Party Cannon: $1/shot -> $5/shot
  
• Ritual of Pain: Changed money gained per ritual from $5 to $10 (LVL 1-2), from $5 to $25 (LVL 3), and from $10 to $50 (LVL 4-6)
  
• Metal Detector: Changed like so:
  LVL 1: $1 per overheal, max $25 -> $1 per overheal, max $50
  LVL 2: $1 per overheal, max $50 -> $2 per overheal, max $75
  LVL 3: $1 per overheal, max $100 -> $2 per overheal, max $100
  LVL 4: $2 per overheal, max $200 -> $4 per overheal, max $200
  LVL 5: $3 per overheal, max $500 -> $6 per overheal, max $500
  LVL 6: $3 per overheal, no max -> $10 per overheal, no max
  

Money-making weapons were broadly underpowered as a category, given their high opportunity cost and low reward. The idea in buffing them like this is to make them more viable in the early-game and provide a stronger risk-reward profile: here's a way of getting significant extra money on top of your fishing, but you miss out on getting a more combat-viable weapon in that slot.
[h2]Bugfixes/Misc[/h2]

• ⚓Fixed a bug where Metal Detector + Summoning Ritual would produce extremely loud noises when triggered simultaneously
  
• Fixed a bug where damage numbers were showing up as the wrong color
  
• Optimization: Changed fish and projectile physics from dynamic to kinematic
  
• Optimization: Made squids spawn trails slightly less often
  

The dynamic->kinematic change should ideally have zero effect on gameplay but decently improve performance. If you notice anything behaving strangely (like its physics is "wrong" for whatever reason) let us know -- this is probably why!


[h2]Optimization and Usability[/h2]
Visiting programmer Noé has been hard at work recently doing controller UI navigation, and it's starting to show results! This game has a lot of menus, and each one requires a semi-bespoke solution, so it's a bit of a Herculean task. Still, progress is being made!!

[h2]WOMEN WANT ME[/h2]
Work on the WOMEN WANT ME expansion is going well! I recently spent a day jamming with Josie Brechner, the game's composer, as we figured out the arc of the expansion's new song. The song's name is KINGFISHER, and it's both a tragic tale of the Lady of the Lake's eternal solitude and an absolute banger. I've been listening to a WIP version of the track on loop all morning -- it's really good.

As some of you know, when I work on content expansions for games, I usually start by setting up a few new mechanics to play with, and then putting them through their paces. For SNAKE FARM: THE CURSE OF RAMONA, this was bomb attacks and teleporting snakes; for WOMEN WANT ME, I'm starting out by creating some new fish AI patterns!



This stop-and-start pattern is useful in a few different contexts -- here, it creates a swarm of lizards that aim and pounce, but it can also be used for the Mimic Octopus I posted about a couple weeks ago:



Get ready to never trust a bounty again :)


I'm excited to report that FISH FEAR ME has its first mod!! Sea Sick Me by SilverQueenRuby is a mod that rotates the camera alongside the boat, de-centers the boat and UI, gives physics to UI elements, and adds screenshake when you're hit. I'm not adding a gif to demonstrate, because I genuinely cannot play this mod for more than thirty seconds without feeling physically ill. It's a delight.

Check it out!

https://www.nexusmods.com/fishfearme/mods/1




What's your favorite fish?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! Welcome to yet another FISH FEAR ME Friday!

No patch notes today! We're currently working on some longer-term goals, so it might be a bit before they're ready to push. Still, I'm here to tell you all about all the news in the cosmic sea!


As you might know, recently I brought on visiting programmer Noé Charron to work on performance optimization with fantastic results. They've also started working on controller UI navigation! Much like optimization, this is a long process with a lot of fiddly bits, so it may be a bit before it's complete. I'm very much looking forward to it, though -- with a little time and a lot of work, soon the entire game will be playable with a controller!


Preproduction for the free WOMEN WANT ME expansion is still going well! This stage involves creating a lot of .txt files I call wishlists -- what the expansion would include if I had infinite time and money. I usually end up making it through about 80% of these items and scrapping the remaining 20%.

One of the wishlist items I'm excited to report is coming true is that I'm bringing in Gwyndolyn Marchant to do some pixel art for the expansion! Gwyn's a fantastic artist and I'm really happy to have her on board.

SNAKE FARM, the semi-prequel to FISH FEAR ME, is currently 75% off for the Steam Spring Sale! If you haven't heard of SNAKE FARM, it's basically if FISH FEAR ME was a twin-stick shooter about farming snakes for oil in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And, for the next week, it's less than a dollar!

Gull's cousin is there. Their name's Goose.




What new weapons/items would you like to see in an expansion?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers