Today I continued to iterate on the difficulty of Fishyphus by questioning what skills it values and how it rewards skillful play. These skills are quick sound localization and reflexes.

This led to a breakthrough in how the fishing minigame rewards these skills, allowing the overall difficulty to be slightly tightened. It now applies bonuses to the waiting timer and initial reeling speed when the audio cues are reacted to within a short window. And now the fishing spots are slightly audible during the minigame to allow sailors to plot their next moves.

Tonight’s progress included:

• Applying a bonus to the minigame waiting phase on good cast timings.
• Applying a bonus to the minigame reeling phase on good wait timings.
• Making fishing spots slightly audible during the minigame.
• Tweaking the reaper difficulty slightly toward its favor.
• Fixing an exploit where the reaper won’t spawn when loading a game.
• Adding a button to prevent accidentally skipping the game over screen.

The following builds will continue to gradually iterate on these details. Once the final music is added, it will somhow be feature-complete! I’m still considering what direction to swim for the second half of the jam.