FISH FEAR ME News

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! Tides rise, the moon falls, and FISH FEAR ME Friday returns gently once more.

Today, I wanted to talk about everyone's favorite eldritch monstrosity, the Leviathan! Making a satisfying ending to a roguelike presents interesting challenges for design, programming, and narrative, so let's dive right in!

Spoilers abound for the end of the game, so beware!!


From very early on, I wanted FISH FEAR ME to have a strong finish to its "main storyline." The obvious comparison point is the Reaper from Vampire Survivors: you've reached the time limit, which means it's time to die! Overcoming this barrier (and meeting the actual endpoint of the run) is the final challenge of the main campaign, so it's important that it shines.

The design for the Reaper is interesting to me for a few reasons. First is the fact that it can be done in any run once you reach a certain point. All the items you need are available on every map; all you have to do is take the time to walk to them (and accept their downsides/challenges). This is a very core principle which I wanted to uphold while making FISH FEAR ME. Preparing to fight the Leviathan may be a significant undertaking, but it's doable in every map once you've unlocked the Bell of the Deep and Ghost Knife.

However, where our design sensibilities differed is that I wanted the Leviathan to be a unique fight for each map. An original design for the game had a completely different encounter for each map: a kraken for Shipwreck Bay, a horde of fish for Nightmare Lake, etc. It would've been a cool idea, but a significant chunk of work (and it would've somewhat dampened the impact of the fight, being with A Leviathan rather than The Leviathan). In the end, I made it so that the Leviathan summons guardian fish from your current map and forces you to fight them, making each fight substantially different while maintaining the unique character of each map!


FISH FEAR ME is a game with a wide variety of player builds, which means it's very difficult to know what setup the player is going to have when they reach the Leviathan fight. All I can know is that they're strong enough to complete all five altar rituals. Can they deal fifty damage per second? Five thousand? I don't know!

Therefore, the Leviathan boss fight must be winnable by all types of endgame build: if you have high DPS, you can gun it down (but not too fast). If you have high health, you can outlive it (at a high risk). If you summon the undead, there are undead for you to summon (but not an infinite amount). Eventually, the following design decisions were reached:

• The Leviathan itself has relatively low health, but regularly becomes invincible. This way, high-DPS builds are rewarded but can't completely curbstomp it, and low-DPS builds can make decent progress.
  
• To end these invincibility periods, you need to either kill all summoned guardian fish OR survive for 45 seconds. Again, multiple solutions! A good survival build can make it through the 45-second maximum no problem, while the DPS build can chew through the spawned enemies.
  
• When the clock strikes midnight, ALL fish spawning pools are refilled. Even if you fished out the entirety of Nightmare Lake on Day 7, there are still new fish for you to catch during the fight. This way, you're given ample opportunities to heal (and summon skeletal minions) while battling the Leviathan!
  

"Writing" is an interesting word given the low word count of the game, but I do generally try to keep an internal sense of logic: why things happen, why things happen again, etc. The biggest question every roguelike invites writing-wise is "Why does this keep happening?" Why does the Fisherman keep fishing after he dies? Why can you fight the Leviathan multiple times? Why does paying off the life debt not end the game?

The world of FISH FEAR ME is one of cosmic loops: death and undeath, debt and undebt. "As above, so below, so further, so above." The relationship between the Leviathan and the Fisherman is one of these loops: we live, we fish, we die, we fish again. The two are permanently connected. Even when you slay the Leviathan, it gets its revenge.



That's all for this week! Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week for another FISH FEAR ME Friday!


What are some of your favorite bosses in roguelikes/survivorslikes?

Happy fishing,
Heather Flowers

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