Anglerfisch by Arluci

[raw]
made by Arluci for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

You're a teeny-tiny anglerfish in a big, scary ocean — and everything wants to eat you! In this cute 3D survival adventure, you’ll need to dodge hungry sharks and gobble up smaller fish to grow bigger, stronger, and maybe just a little bit fearsome yourself.

Developed in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 57 by a team of 6, this game was a personal C++ deep-dive, built in Unreal Engine.

Can you survive the depths... or will you become someone else’s snack?

Controls: WASD - move Mouse - Camera angle SPACE - dash, eat F - light switch

90ab5887d9a419ddca656ce644c8bc7d.gif

Screenshot<em>2025-04-08</em>183921.png

Screenshot<em>2025-04-08</em>183814.png

Ratings

Overall 402th 3.607⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 569th 3.179⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 550th 3.089⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 125th 4.179⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 81th 4.429⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 294th 3.536⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Humor 271th 3.259⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 304th 3.786⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 35🗳️ 35🗨️

Feedback

BatTheCat
08. Apr 2025 · 14:03 UTC
pretty nice graphics
LDJam user 14887
09. Apr 2025 · 10:07 UTC
Wow this is so cool, reminds me ecco the dolphin on sega dreamcast somehow :D
Ryrumeli
09. Apr 2025 · 11:17 UTC
You guys clearly deserve that 5 for graphics here, no questions asked! Working on unreal to do anything in 72 hours is nothing if not herculean, and the controls here feel snappy and responsive. And in 6 people delivering this level of graphics is seriously outstanding, you guys are something else entirely. Not often I download over a gb for a ludum game! This entry is extremely fishy, in all the best ways!
magicstunts123
09. Apr 2025 · 11:42 UTC
@ryrumeli Thank you for your kind words!
And yeah, our 3D Artists really did an outstandig job! Seeing our protagonist for the first time was jawdropping :D
slay a stone
09. Apr 2025 · 17:33 UTC
Graphics were cool! Few things I would change:
- Not make eat/dash the same button, this was quite annoying
- Dash had zero cooldown so you could spam it and move insanely fast
- The fish were kinda hard to find, i didn't manage to find 20
Disvent
09. Apr 2025 · 17:50 UTC
The visuals are awesome — I really liked the artwork in the menu: stylish and even a bit calming. The music is good too, but after a while, the repeating notes start to get a bit overwhelming

As for the gameplay, to be honest, I didn’t really figure it out — after 10 minutes I barely managed to catch a single fish. The game feels pretty difficult.

The chase ambient is cool, but I didn’t fully understand the mechanic: I just kept smashing the spacebar until I flew off the edge of the map, and the fish seemed to fall behind. Maybe it’d be worth adding invisible walls or some kind of boundary to prevent leaving the map.
LDJam user 179298
09. Apr 2025 · 18:43 UTC
The visuals are great and the music is nice too but the gameplay is lacking and it's very hard to find any fish.
Salaro
10. Apr 2025 · 01:30 UTC
It's a very cool game! The graphics are nice and the audio is great!
olsonexi
10. Apr 2025 · 03:05 UTC
Very well made and fun game! The graphics are amazing. It seems like there aren't really enough of the smaller fish around to eat though. It's fun to just spam space rapidly and go ridiculously fast cause there's no upper limit on your speed.
Ronalchue
10. Apr 2025 · 12:45 UTC
It's very nice to swim, the dash feels nice, the graphics are great. It would be cool to have a little balance, an endless dash is unfair. Otherwise, great job!
Tenzz
10. Apr 2025 · 16:09 UTC
Okay, first things first, the graphics are GORGEOUS! I have no idea how you guys managed to make this in just 72 hours

Now, moving on, one thing that personally bugged me a little was the controls. Don’t get me wrong, they’re solid, but I think having dedicated buttons for going up and down would feel better, kind of like how Shift and Space work when flying in Minecraft. As for the dash, it feels more natural to map it to the left mouse button, especially since we’re already using the mouse to aim.

And yeah, I agree with the other comments, the game is a little on the though side and fish are definitely hard to find

One more thing I should mention (not sure if it’s performance related or just my laptop), after about 15 minutes of playing, the frame rate dropped hard, like, down to 10 FPS (Again, not sure if that’s the game or if my laptop was just throttling)
Mamboman
10. Apr 2025 · 21:09 UTC
Well done! I enjoyed just swimming around the beautiful environment and switching my light on and off. That's so funny :D It was very hard to find enough fish to eat. In one of the secret hiding spots I somehow managed to get under the sea ground (a bug I guess)
TurboLaser
11. Apr 2025 · 12:47 UTC
It’s been said before, but the graphics-music synergy is sublime. Collected 6 fish, then swam out of the game pool and couldn't get back in.
pabloa31
12. Apr 2025 · 00:24 UTC
I really like the atmosphere and visuals, super impressive! I managed to collect all 20 fish, but would be good a tutorial or explanation at the beginning to help with the controls. The dash mechanic is pretty helpful, and collecting the fish was a fun and relaxing experience, except when sharks were nearby. The hidden spots were also a nice touch and even saved me a couple of times.

In the shell hiding spot, when I tried to exit, the character slipped under the terrain for some reason, but when I went back in and tried again, it worked fine.

Overall, it was a good experience with beautiful visuals. Nice work!
JAMESDEV
23. Apr 2025 · 18:59 UTC
fish are so... crunchy