Today I focused on polishing the user experience of Fishyphus.

The ability to reset progress has found a new home amongst a few other key options on the new Settings screen. Importantly, this screen also has a graphics toggle, which serves as a reminder that Fishyphus can be enjoyed as an audio-only experience.

This build also introduces the briefest tutorial I could find acceptable. Perhaps it’s not common knowledge that I dislike implementing tutorials. They can easily break immersion and treat players as if they don’t know how to press forward on an analog stick in The Year 2023. I prefer to throw folks directly into new experiences and give them the space to learn and grow.

However, Fishyphus is not as straightforward as the walking simulators that I typically make. Therefore, I felt that a few interstitial screens could at least helpfully mention the basic concepts. That, plus the changes introduced in the past few builds, give it a rewarding early game.

Finally, this build introduces another new mechanic: the weight penalty. The purpose of this penalty is to give higher scores diminishing returns. As fish are caught beyond a limit, the maximum speed of the ship is reduced, until it’s no faster than the reaper’s normal speed. This eventually forces death upon the sailor, who is rewarded with a higher weight limit.

Tonight’s progress included:

• Adding a tutorial screen that displays text when relevant.
• Implementing the Settings screen with a few key options.
• Moving the Reset Progress button to the new Settings screen.
• Improving the minigame timing bonus calculations.
• Adding the weight limit mechanic which enforces a speed limit.

In my last update, I mentioned that Fishyphus is approaching a release milestone. I’m quite proud of the result already! However, I would like to expand it further over the next few weeks that the jam is still running. Where it goes from here is still unclear.