This post was originally written in January 2018. At the time the game was still called Hook, Line and Thinker

History

I started making this game on the PICO-8 for Fishing Jam 2 at the end of October 2016. I vaguely remembered enjoying screenshots of a grid-based fishing roguelike from the first Fishing Jam and liked the idea of making a grid-based fishing puzzle game with a handful of sea creatures that have different effects when reeled in.

It was a 7 day jam but I forgot about it until the second day and had to go to work all week, so in total I spent 4 evenings and 2 full days over the weekend making my entry. You can play the 6 day jam version and read the daily devlog, which does a good job of documenting progress and explaining my thought process as I was designing the game.

I definitely didn’t steal a sprite from Pokémon Red/Blue for the person fishing

The reception to the jam version was good and I really liked my game so I decided to keep working on it. A week or so later a talented audio designer friend of mine (Andrew Dodds) messaged me saying he liked the game and had some audio ideas. We’d enjoyed working together before so he joined the project and we started encouraging each other with feedback.

By the end of 2016 the game was coming along nicely and we were starting to max out some of the limitations of PICO-8, requiring clever solutions to work around them (one of the main ones being the number of audio clips). Around this time I started thinking it would be nice if the game were on mobile as it would be more accessible and began looking at different mobile engines.

Late on January 2nd 2017 I found Defold, then found the Defold GDC Competition 2017. This was a 3 month competition ending in 3 weeks time, where 6 winning games made with Defold would be demoed at GDC in San Francisco (flights and accommodation included). Too good to be true, so I went for it. Since both engines run on Lua I figured I could copy+paste most of the code, but since the architectures are so different I ended up rewriting everything from scratch.

I spent the first week doing tutorials and just generally trying to work out what the hell a Defold was. In week two I ported most of the core gameplay and in week 3 I worked on polish, UI and new levels. It was a pretty hard crunch; I was working around 90 hours a week, spending more time on this fishing game than at my full-time job. We submitted with 45 minutes to spare. I spent a week recovering and anxiously awaiting what I was sure would be a no, only to find out we were one of the winners! After a second and even more intense 3-week-crunch I got on a plane and headed for GDC.

GDC was an incredible experience, but one I struggled to enjoy. Watching and talking to people playing the game taught me a lot about which parts were good and which parts needed work. Reception was pretty positive which was a big motivation boost. I regret not leaving the booth more often to explore, though we were busy almost all the time. In the evenings I was a total mess; fried after 6 weeks of working 90+ hours and now literally thousands of miles outside my comfort zone, I completely failed to engage with the social aspect of GDC. I skipped or bailed early from the various parties and meetups each night, made few connections and spent a disappointing amount of time in our hotel room. Pushing myself so extremely was not a good idea, but at the same time it got us to GDC with a game I was proud to show.

In the months since then I’ve continued working on the game on-and-off, largely depending on my mood and energy after my full-time job. Among many other things this work has included new game mechanics, a lot of level design iteration and/or replacement, localising the game to 12 languages, adding an undo button, creating a series of GameBoy-esque virtual cases and many, many small bits of polish.

At this point I’m happy with almost all the content in the game and most of the remaining work is just polish and the tech required to release a game on the app stores. The plan is to release as a $0.99/£0.99/€0.99 premium game on Android and iOS when it’s ready, which I would really like to be in 2018.

Way back on the sixth day of this project, in the devlog of the original jam version, I wrote “This is already the biggest, best and most complete game I’ve made.” What a long way we’ve come since then.

A more personal account of this history can be played in W.I.P., a game about making the game I’m making.

Motivations

I don’t really care about money. Yes I’d like the game to sell well, not for fame and fortune but because I think people will genuinely enjoy it. More than anything the purpose of this game is educational; I now have at least a rudimentary understanding of and appreciation for pixel art, puzzle design, localization, releasing a game on the app stores (I’m still working on that one) and many other areas of game development. I’ve given this game a lot and it’s given me a lot back. I’m very grateful for that. Ultimately I just want to make the game as good as I know I can make it, in the hopes that a few people out there in the void will appreciate it.

Thanks for reading.

Follow me on itch or Twitter to see what I work on next