https://youtu.be/zOS5nmgcspE

This Ludum Dare, I made a sequel to a game I made for Game Makers Toolkit Jam 2024 called Fish Feud. I've been wanting to expand a bit on the mechanics of the first game, because I felt like it had a lot more potential as a WAY more up close and personal Dogfight/6DOF game (and obviously I like balloons lol).

I also wanted to explore more of the story I expanded on, which is mostly only represented with the Psychonauts style slideshow at the beginning of the game. I made a more simple story for the game but I'd love to get deeper into the world they are in at some point.

For the story in the game: Basically Sam (orange) and Trent (green) are a salamander couple living in some rural area where they like to get fish(?), and they're constantly having to deal with this pervasive, parasitic bubble species called Gleam that is growing in numbers every day via osmosis. Two well-developed Gleam get a fish(?) higher-up to get angry at the salamanders for using them as food, and give them the money and tools to exact revenge. This is a win-win for them because if they kill all the fish they have no food, but if the fish kill them its even better.

At first I wasn't sure how I wanted to go about implementation, I just knew I wanted to have guns and fun enemies to fight against. I wanted to have maybe 3 guns for the jam but I REALLY had to keep things simple if I was gonna overscope my project this hard, so I had the one shotgun that was perfect for hitting fast-moving flying targets.

Enemy variation was a hard thing to accomplish; dogfighting flying fish bowls was already really fun, but I had to have some sort of priority hierarchy so the player would have to think harder about their surroundings besides keep moving

I ended up with a fish sniper, which will slowly line up a shot unless you can stun them or kill them first. There's also a red fish bowl that shoots faster but it's kinda meh. The boss at the end was supposed to be a robot controlled by the pink fish leader in the story, but I ended up just modeling a mecha-coffin (Hallooweeeennnn!) with two snipers attached. Not terrible, it encouraged the player to try and stay close enough to stun them, but if they got too close they'd be riddled with bullets.

I am very eternally grateful for the music from Newgrounds, I managed to find some fantastic tracks from talented artists. This game was submitted just in time for the Jam, but I had forgotten to add their attribution to the final screen. So I added it and updated the game under Extra instead.

You can find the original music here (I compressed to ogg and made some loop cuts for the game): Photophobia by Zunami-music: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1459714 King Of Australia by Arteshtorm: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1468955 Neon Battle by crazymatt117: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1461810 Power Move by JamesTheMuttz: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1035913

I made the choice to not have a health bar, and instead keeping track of how many times you've been hit like in Pizza Tower. I was worried the faster pace of the game and the lack of a tutorial would make the game too hard for most people and give a bad first impression. If I make this into a proper game, I'd prefer to have short fast-paced levels where dying isn't too punishing.

Speaking of which, I wanted to have a small handful of interesting environments since enemy variety was going to be so low. I didn't have a convenient explanation for the level hopping, so I gave the fish a teleporting ray. It doesn't really help them at all but it makes the game more fun hehe

I had Trent sit atop Sam as they fly around, so they could be a neato support character that you appreciate. I wanted some more support mechanics, but the only one I could add was helping reload your gun. I still really like this because it's very diegetic and adds weight to the characters and world.

Ultimately I am super proud of myself for what I've made; a really cursed redneck ace combat :) But I achieved all the goals I set out for from the beginning for the project. I'd like to extrapolate on these ideas and make something with more depth in the movement and combat. I hope you like my game, and I'm excited to play more of your games as well!

Fish Feud 2 Submission Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/fish-feud-2

Here is a timelapse of me working on the game:

https://youtu.be/r3hnASNz2gg