The Salmoning by villhest

[raw]
made by villhest for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

Hi all! We're happy to join the LD55 Jam.

Thank you all for a crazy weekend with a lot of fun and hard work. Hats off to @RadixLecti for great company and for awesome coding skills. It's our first project together, and it's been great. It's also my first ldjam in a decade!

We didn't quite get the game to where we wanted it to be (time flies!), but there should be enough salmon for everyone. It's been surprisingly time consuming and fun to re-learn Unity and Blender (it's been years and all the buttons have moved), not to mention making every little thing from scratch. We even went out into the forest to take texture pics and to record sounds.

What we wouldn't do for just one more day!

Tools used: - Unity - Visual Code - Visual Studio - Git - Blender - Audition - Photoshop - Illustrator - Figma - Our phones for recording audio and taking pictures

You can play through your browser on mobile/win/mac. Maybe Linux too we don't know. The stamina bar is only visible if you go full screen.

To control, simply touch or click, hold, and WIGGLE FAST! It's a fish eats fish world out there. Try to eat other things before your stamina runs out (it's almost impossible!), don't crash, and please don't salmon flop out of the world.

If you salmon very, very fast, something might happen.

Have fun, and thanks for playing!

Ratings

Overall 1056th 3.097⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Fun 800th 3.226⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 415th 3.532⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1160th 2.569⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 915th 3.145⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Audio 685th 2.931⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 393th 3.367⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Mood 996th 3.069⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 28🗳️ 38🗨️

Feedback

Marin Davys
16. Apr 2024 · 14:15 UTC
I like the pun and think the controls work well - the idea of oscillating mouse movements up-and-down to increase speed is a lot of fun. The sound design breaks a bit when you try to get above the water, but otherwise it sounded on point. Good job!
LDJam user 388364
16. Apr 2024 · 14:21 UTC
i absolutely adore the movement, it's so fun. Love the dolphin jumps. Sadly there is no way of rating the game, otherwise i would have rated it very high. 10/10 pun
treehuggerbear
16. Apr 2024 · 14:29 UTC
The sounds and visuals are so good! The controls are very interesting, would love to see a full game made out of this!
blaster391
16. Apr 2024 · 15:14 UTC
It is very satisfying to zoom along the river! The ambience is perfect, after seeing the mention of jumping in the other comments I went back to try it, I loved the brief birdsong you hear as you sail across the water
Unfrog
16. Apr 2024 · 15:25 UTC
Love the play on the theme. I noticed there was a sweet spot in the middle top right where you never have to move. But the fun is in dodging the obstacles and jumping out of the water. The god rays are a nice touch, I think adding water caustics to the bottom of the stream would compliment that. Good job!
Escyll
16. Apr 2024 · 15:45 UTC
Nice twist to the theme. Well done ;).
Bitlytic
16. Apr 2024 · 15:50 UTC
Holy this game lets you schmoove. If there was a more involved game where you moved around like this I would absolutely love it
TheKatMol
16. Apr 2024 · 15:51 UTC
The sounds are really good! I love the visuals but would have loved a bigger challenge.
D0vid
16. Apr 2024 · 17:21 UTC
Very fun controls, very unique idea, sound design is nice, unfortunate sound bug when exiting the water but nothing nasty !

Great job it's a fun game :)
Aysa
16. Apr 2024 · 19:56 UTC
Funny wordplay hahaha I want to put the pumping music from "Jaws" on the background
srslie
16. Apr 2024 · 19:58 UTC
Pretty, low stress, good pun, good music. I swam through a lot of branches but didn't seem to slow me down.
kr4ft3r
16. Apr 2024 · 20:09 UTC
Well, I played a few retries but couldn't catch anything, due to controls, or at least I think the issue is the sudden acceleration that happens when changing depth. I found by accident that you can move by hopping in and out of the water, which is a very nice feature and that became my main mode of travel and the only thing I was doing for 10 minutes. Great mood overall despite gameplay issue.
LDJam user 238639
16. Apr 2024 · 20:21 UTC
I like being a fast fish. I found it very difficult to eat the other fish, though, and some audio+visual feedback when eating them definitely would've helped. I echo what the last person said also about it being hard to intentionally steer into the fish to eat them. The high speed and their small size also makes them hard to see.
xuanqiuyun
17. Apr 2024 · 02:57 UTC
Interesting mechanism.
Falk Hoeppner
17. Apr 2024 · 03:06 UTC
I'm glad that pun made it into the jam! We are all better for it :D.
felixx
17. Apr 2024 · 09:12 UTC
Salmoning is just a great pun
Francesca Bianchi
17. Apr 2024 · 09:21 UTC
I liked the game and the creativity, I find it a bit challenging to avoid the obstacles and at first I didn't notice the other fish
nardandas
18. Apr 2024 · 05:07 UTC
I enjoyed salmoning, but didn't really seem to get the game. It seemed like I only lost stamina while hitting things, and could never really get far enough over to eat. Anyway, I had fun going fast!
Alan Rubinoff
19. Apr 2024 · 16:31 UTC
I didn't feel the Summoning theme experience much except for the title lol, but I actually liked it a lot. I must admit, at first, I didn't understand how to play; I thought it was something in first-person and that I had to dodge the fish in front of me. But then I realized it was me; as I moved the mouse, the speed changed until I started to get agitated and went at full speed. I jumped up onto the water, and that's when I got excited. Quite an inspiring concept, and I liked how you repeated assets to create a very pleasant atmosphere. Congratulations on that.
Marcie
19. Apr 2024 · 16:33 UTC
I had a hard time figuring out the controls, but once I did it was so satisfying! I really like the idea (very funny pun) and the environment is coherent, which is nice.
Well done!
Hélicule
19. Apr 2024 · 17:00 UTC
Probably the funniest twist on the jam theme so far, I had a great time playing the game!
brainles etertainment
24. Apr 2024 · 18:57 UTC
5 out of 5 for theme, 100% hit. The gameplay itself is pretty innovative, at least I didn't stumble such mechanics before. It seems like a prototype for a really cool mobile timekiller.
Yanato
29. Apr 2024 · 18:59 UTC
Okay, that was... unexpected. A few minutes of relaxing swimming in the river
LDJam user 374482
03. May 2024 · 18:12 UTC
I had fun seeing how high i could get the salmon to jump, was a chill game and i like the pun