Devblog Update 13 - Biome/Fishing Progress

Hi everyone! This has been a pretty crazy and amazing month for the game!

• We are now officially at 12K wishlists! HUGE thank you to everybody. And thank you for the older wishlists for sticking with me - I want to take my time making sure the game is going to be solid for a 1.0 launch, especially for my first game.

• The youtube cinematic was amazing for us this month, our discord rapidly grew which helped get it to a solid amount of people playing the beta, which really helps me with feedback and making sure we are 'finding the fun'

• After all the new attention for the game, in the end I'll just keep doing what I was doing - Work on the darn game and show progress - I don't like promising or talking about things I haven't prototyped or have working yet

• Time based fish is now possible, so we can have night-time or morning-time based fish. It's nice to have as a option now

• The catching system has been overhauled, you won't notice this but it was HUGE to make progress on this for my side. It's a lot easier to add fish to areas, and putting them into a catch-rate category

• This is going to be a beefy alpha that will take a while, there is still a lot of mechanics and ideas to help make the fishing experience more exciting and fun, as well as adding more to the biomes

• I will make a new youtube video soon to showcase all the new stuff I've been doing the last 2 months, between all the new town progress and the biome work happening

Bait Digging

• You'll now find little mounds of dirt near bodies of water that can give you 1-2 bait for the region

• It seems to be doing really well and people are enjoying it! We'll keep finding ways to reward exploration and interaction with the biomes

• Also added a message to pop up to tell you how much bait you've gained

Bubbles

• The bubbles mechanic seems popular! It increases biterate by 3X

• They appear and disappear in different biomes and bodies of water

• In the future I might need to add a 'maximum amount of times hit' so that they disappear after you've hit them after so many times for balance

Fishing Rod QOL

• I've been doing some more fine-tuning to the fishing rod experience to make it less janky

• Lure no longer slides around on water, it stays where it lands

• Nice little splash animations happen while your reeling, and it bobs up/down while in water

• Made it so while a fish is biting, you can't accidentally hit cancel anymore, playtesters on the discord mentioned wanting this QOL

• This will be a never ending battle, we'll keep chipping away at making it feel better

TONS of new fish added this month

Eel - Very rare, only catchable at night-time

Mullet - Common

Luthrainian Shad, a twist to the american shad

Poison Piranha - You don't want to catch these in parliament... not very valueable

Gold Shiner - Name is deceptive, they're quite common and cheap

Bullhead - Uncommon

Sardine - Super common for ocean

Poison Sardine - Yuck

Parliament Biome

• Parliament is almost wrapped up! I am doing some final touches this weekend and then I will begin planning the fourth biome

• I need a few more fish created to add a bit better balance for some of the new fishing spots here

• This was a difficult biome to complete, it is the first time introducing the 'Xeno' creatures that the ancients were battling. This was always part of the vision and story, but I struggle with character art and took me a while to figure out their look. I'll be doing a pass to add them to the ocean biome later

Bit of a sneak peak to the other 'ancients' during the war