My game is starting to take shape! From my crudely drawn map of the world, ocean depth is simulated which affects the amount of food and enemies in the current area (deeper = harder). The swarm reproduces once enough food is eaten, looses “food” when bitten by predators and slowly starves if no food is eaten. A dead fish is food too, though

The current flocking behavior prioritizes eating above following the mouse cursor, so when a predator manages to kill one of the fishes in the swarm, the others will flock to the corpse, leading to a death spiral. I’m not sure if I even want to modify this behavior…

Once you’re dead, you see a statistics screen (not shown) and can visualize the route taken on the world map. This way, you have a souvenir to keep of your journey.

Regarding the theme minimalism: The bigger the swarm gets, the safer the individual fishes are, but it comes at the price of being slower. The player will have to make a tradeoff between safety and maneuverability.