Shrimply Fishing, my submission for the jam category, is out! You can go play it right now in your Browser of Web or download it on your Windows/Linux machine!

To close off the project, here's my thoughts on how my experience of the jam went:

This is my second solo jam game I’ve managed to see through to completion, the third one I've attempted solo, and the sixth one I've been a part of in general. Nearly every asset used in this game was made by me, with the exception of a couple of sounds I pulled from freesound.org.

I took part in this jam almost entirely on a whim. I’ve been occupied taking my last semester in my undergraduate studies, and I didn’t even know that Ludum Dare was being held this year – especially after their initial announcement in January that Ludum Dare wouldn’t have any events in 2025 - until I saw other people mention theme voting. The weekend it was held just so happened to line up with me having some free time to crank out a game, so I just decided there and then that I'd give it a shot. I didn't exactly expect to come out the other side with a finished game. Somehow, I did!

(I Heart Default Godot Labels)

As I keep learning, working on a jam game all by yourself is a taxing yet incredibly rewarding experience. Letting the game's scope creep up is really easy and compromises are inevitable given how much a single person can scrap together in 3 days, but the beauty of game jams is how imperfection is inevitable and encouraged. I wasn't able to make an actual UI (there's placeholder text that uses Godot's default theme instead lol), but it's still just enough to convey the information the player needs. I made all of the fish art in under 30 minutes, but they're honestly funnier that way. And the "adaptive" music fades are not synced up at all, but wow! Three music tracks! I'm still very proud of what I made, even if I don't end up polishing some of its rougher edges after judging ends.

But, like I said, compromises! Here's a few things I'd change/add to the game that didn't make the cut for my jam submission:

• A more polished UI, obviously! Health would be positioned to the left of the shrimp, a depth meter would be at the right, and a distance meter would be at the bottom. I'd also add a little more feedback to prompt players about what to press when a fish bites.

• More fish variety! Not just what fish show up - I had a lot of fish types drawn up that I didn't have time to implement - but also differences in fish behavior. Maybe some fish have a detection range that make them chase the hook if it's close enough. Maybe some fish would need you to already have a smaller fish as bait to catch them. Maybe some are hostile unless you bait them into hitting a mine, which gives you an opportunity to catch it!

• A fish bestiary/"money" values for each fish - Some progression would've been nice to fit in, like tracking all the unique fish the player has caught in a bestiary, or assigning money values to each fish that add to the player's total amount when they catch one.

• More landmarks on the surface - Initially I wanted to put in some landmarks scattered across the ocean surface to indicate a certain type of fish spawning there or something special about the area. I still think that'd be a neat way to telegraph something noteworthy!

I didn't need to provide the source code since I didn't submit to the compo category, but I may open-source it at some point if I decide I don't want to update this game.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for checking out my dumb li'l shrimp game!