Development Status Update
It has been a little while since an update on our progress and we have some good news. We have been given production funding from the Swiss arts council known as "ProHelvetia" to help us get Fishery ready for release.
What does this mean for players?
Firstly, it guarantees we will actually release Fishery. Up until now we have only been able to work on Fishery in our spare time between projects secondary to our main work which is a small 3d animation studio. Thanks to this grant we can now work on Fishery full time until it's release.
We have also decided that we won't be doing a Kickstarter campaign. This is mostly because now that we have funding, we would rather spend the time and money working on the game than working on a Kickstarter campaign for a month. We have also spoken to people who know a lot about Kickstarter campaigns including people who have had successful ones and we have determined that it probably won’t be successful enough to justify making it in the first place.
This also gives us more time to add more features and polish to the first Early Access release than we initially planned. Features like:
Multiple aquariums:
We have almost finished work on implementing the multiple aquariums features. This is where players can have more than one fish tank in their game scene which makes things so much more interesting as you can have separate aquariums for different fish, plants, themes and purposes etc.
Better manipulation/editing tools:
We have completely remade how players can move, rotate and scale objects. These changes make it much easier and more intuitive to quickly make changes and decorate your aquariums with ease.
Objectives:
It is crucial to give players things to do and work towards. Our objective system is being made larger and more interesting, so players don't get bored. This is also a mechanism for players to unlock fish, plants and other objects during gameplay as a reward and incentive for making progress.
More art content:
We will have more time to add some more species of plants and fish. We are also going to be adding more objects/ornaments to decorate the aquarium with.
Better UI:
We are also in the process of modifying the in-game UI to work better with high resolution monitors and be a bit more user friendly.
Breeding:
The ability to breed fish is one of the most important features in the whole game. The programming and implementation of the breeding system itself is not difficult. The problem is that we just have to design and create the art content of the baby fish and that just takes time especially when you think of all the combinations of inter-species fish breeding. However, breeding will be possible for a few species of fish when Fishery is first released and then through updates will be keep adding more and more to the game.
and much more...
When?
Some of you have probably noticed we have had a bit of a hard time estimating when we will actually release Fishery. This is due to the nature of working on it as a second job. Since that is no longer a problem we can say that we are aiming to get it released within the first few months of 2019 but we will only announce a release date when we are absolutely sure we can make it.
We will try to make more regular updates and show more progress in the coming months.
The Fishery Team
What does this mean for players?
Firstly, it guarantees we will actually release Fishery. Up until now we have only been able to work on Fishery in our spare time between projects secondary to our main work which is a small 3d animation studio. Thanks to this grant we can now work on Fishery full time until it's release.
We have also decided that we won't be doing a Kickstarter campaign. This is mostly because now that we have funding, we would rather spend the time and money working on the game than working on a Kickstarter campaign for a month. We have also spoken to people who know a lot about Kickstarter campaigns including people who have had successful ones and we have determined that it probably won’t be successful enough to justify making it in the first place.
This also gives us more time to add more features and polish to the first Early Access release than we initially planned. Features like:
Multiple aquariums:
We have almost finished work on implementing the multiple aquariums features. This is where players can have more than one fish tank in their game scene which makes things so much more interesting as you can have separate aquariums for different fish, plants, themes and purposes etc.
Better manipulation/editing tools:
We have completely remade how players can move, rotate and scale objects. These changes make it much easier and more intuitive to quickly make changes and decorate your aquariums with ease.
Objectives:
It is crucial to give players things to do and work towards. Our objective system is being made larger and more interesting, so players don't get bored. This is also a mechanism for players to unlock fish, plants and other objects during gameplay as a reward and incentive for making progress.
More art content:
We will have more time to add some more species of plants and fish. We are also going to be adding more objects/ornaments to decorate the aquarium with.
Better UI:
We are also in the process of modifying the in-game UI to work better with high resolution monitors and be a bit more user friendly.
Breeding:
The ability to breed fish is one of the most important features in the whole game. The programming and implementation of the breeding system itself is not difficult. The problem is that we just have to design and create the art content of the baby fish and that just takes time especially when you think of all the combinations of inter-species fish breeding. However, breeding will be possible for a few species of fish when Fishery is first released and then through updates will be keep adding more and more to the game.
and much more...
When?
Some of you have probably noticed we have had a bit of a hard time estimating when we will actually release Fishery. This is due to the nature of working on it as a second job. Since that is no longer a problem we can say that we are aiming to get it released within the first few months of 2019 but we will only announce a release date when we are absolutely sure we can make it.
We will try to make more regular updates and show more progress in the coming months.
The Fishery Team