The main sets and the rules of the game are there. I wish there was more; when I right-click and go into fullscreen inside Flash, I can see that it's not entirely blacked out at the edges. The borders are visible, and I can see the other fish from there. So, I wish there was a higher expansion of the black set. This is good and functional, and I think you should develop the concept further. You are awesome; thank you for creating games. I think it's really nice that you are very passionate and skilled, and you deserve respect. You absolutely have my respect.
Author Comments
My first submission to Newgrounds, and my first proper Flash game!
Controls: WASD / ArrowKeys or Mouse
I think it works on phones too.
EDIT: Yes it does!
Made in Flash 8.
Please give feedback, as I'd love to develop the concept further!
andai responds:
Thank you very much for the kind words!
works on mobile, wow
though the turn speed is too slow to do more than go forward, couldn't get 1 point
add some bubbles, seaweed!
underwater mines!
pretty neat though
andai responds:
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, it started out life as a prototype for a mobile game. Years ago I tried to port it to the browser (JS) but didn't get far. I'm amazed and delighted that I can use Flash for gamedev again!
I had bubbles originally (both background, and the fish would leave a little trail, which would help you find them if they were off-screen). I definitely want to add that to this version.
Mines are interesting, I hadn't thought of that! The original prototype definitely had more "flavor" in terms of color, visuals. So it would be interesting to add more kinds of objects to the game to make the world have some soul. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, but it appears I've unfortunately gone past the "no simpler" threshold!
Thanks for the encouragement
good concept. Immediate kudos for doing this on Flash 8.
the biggest way you could improve this by makig movement more obvious
at first, I thought the player fish was stuck on one spot and you just rotate the fish to scare off the other or something as they all converge towards you. some background elements may make it more obvious that you're actually moving
the other fish are too quick, as if you're heading in a direction it is almost too late and you just hope to get lucky and bigger fish are not in your path.
The title 'ZenFish' is great, it reminds me of the game 'Azurefish'
I think this game should have some kind of peaceful music to match the title?
overall, this game is not bad, this is just my feedback
its actually exciting to think where you can go with this
andai responds:
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
>making movement more obvious
This is interesting. Original prototype (Unity) had background particles and a smooth camera, but I didn't quite have time to do those in Flash. I can see how being perfectly fixed in the center and having no sense of absolute speed would harm the experience.
>tuning difficulty / controls / AI
That's definitely an aspect that didn't get enough attention! I was lucky to get the game done before the deadline. Game design is a "search problem" in the sense that you're exploring many different possibilities, and how they all interact with each other. Over time you develop an intuition for what works and what might work better. I haven't spent enough time doing that here!
re: name & music
Thanks! I'm actually not exactly sure what vibe I am going for with the game. The original game was supposed to be causal and relaxing.
Actually I didn't set out to make a game, I tried to find one that I wanted to play (probably inspired by Fishy, I recently rediscovered!) but I couldn't find anything that was like what I had in mind. So I realized I have to make it.
I sort of achieved that relaxing vibe in the Unity version: it was much less stressful, because the fish also attacked each other. So most of the time you could just chill and watch the ecosystem do its own thing.
I ran out of time to implement the "everyone against everyone" mechanic in this one, but I'd love to add it here too.
(Also they had more colors, shapes, sounds etc. So it was stimulating to just watch.)
For music I had some ideas but ran out of time! I want to keep it minimalistic, and especially keep the file size low (which I think is the most magical thing about Flash, this game for example is 8KB). It would be really nice if it could be generated dynamically, in response to how intense the gameplay is. I'll have to experiment with that!
Thanks again for the feedback and encouragement
Okay, that works. The difficulty is high, all the fishes are fast and growth rate is really slow... Not bad overall I guess
andai responds:
Thanks for the feedback. There is sadly no growth! I did have growth in a previous prototype, but I wasn't sure what to do when the player got huge (as big as the screen) and just ate all the fish without effort. I'll probably have to go play Flow or Katamari for inspiration...
It's unfortunately really hard to see and really hard to catch anything. It would maybe be better if the fish were color coded, so it's easier to see what is prey (other than them just swimming away). Most of the time I just die immediately because I slam into a large fish as it lurches out from the dark. Even when I thought I was doing good, I just died to a fish that I couldn't see was chasing me. Also, it's hard to tell how much you're moving because the background is unchanging (maybe some repeating dark background structures would help, akin to Hero in the Ocean). There are some good things about this game. I like the mouse controls, they're pretty straightforward and responsive. The visual style is pretty good too, albeit a little plain. Overall, this is a good first flash game with a lot of potential, but at the end of the day it's just overly difficult as a result of the vignette and the behavior of the fish.
I do look forward to any revisions if you decide to continue developing this.
andai responds:
Thanks for the feedback! Original version (Unity) had bubbles. I was heavily constrained for time while making this version, so I leaned heavily into minimalism. I think I leaned too far, since most of the suggestions people made are things that were present in the original version XD
(Also didn't have much time to test and fine-tune it, which is the most important part of game development... ack!)
You're right that due to lack of bubbles, the absolute velocity is now impossible to judge. I was hoping that relative velocity would be all that matters, but I see how it can be disorienting.
Thanks for the encouragement. I would indeed love to keep working on this!
