My objective for the first 48 hours of the jam was to produce a working prototype of the core game loop.

To accomplish that, this build spawns fish throughout the world and provides a way to catch them without the full fishing minigame. Placeholder audio and haptic cues lead the way and, once the boat reaches a complete stop, pressing the Action button does the rest. This is a nice start!

Today’s progress involved:

• Writing the How to Play section for the game manual.
• Polishing finer points of the graphics and particle system.
• Adding evolving geometry to the ocean surface.
• Generating the fishing spots and streaming them around the player.
• Spawning catchable fish around their fishing spots.
• Outlining the state machine that will power the fishing minigame.
• Circumventing the fishing minigame to immediately catch fish.
• Stunning the reaper when fish are caught.
• Implementing haptics for when the reaper or fishing spots are near.
• Synthesizing a placeholder sound for fish.

Going into the next week, I’m planning to take it slow until the weekend, and polish what’s already here. I’m satisfied with the game visually at the point, so most time will be spent tweaking the placeholder audio. After that, my goal for the next big feature push will be the fishing minigame. Once complete, the rest of the jam will be sound design, game balance, and polish.