Hey {{nickname|there}},
Thomas Stewart of Set Sail Games recently posted an update on his game “Just Keep Fishing”, published by Aarimous and Thornity. It’s described as “A short incremental game about catching a lot fish.”. But most importantly, there’s no catching Turtles.
These three minds have come together to work on a game that puts all of their strengths together into one cohesive package. The game is still early on in development, which makes it a perfect time to study this game and understand what is being done to validate the game before it reaches Steam with a demo.
If you’re interested in checking the game out, you can wishlist it on Steam and you can check out the build I played on itch.io. You can watch my full study on YouTube.
There is no tutorial
It seems like a lot of incremental games are moving toward a pattern of guiding the player through an onboarding experience without using text. This is refreshing because many of these games are designed to be short experiences that can be finished in one sitting. If a good chunk of the time is spent on reading text boxes, then the percentage of the game that is spent reading can eat into the time playing the game. The strength of incremental developers is making the entirety of the game about layering on systems and mechanics at a natural pace, such that it never feels like the flow of the game is never interrupted.
Just Keep Fishing does this well and even has nice animations to highlight the power of it being a 3D world. When the boat pops up, ready to take you to the next island, you can’t help but want to throw planks of wood at it.
Similarly, Thornity’s iconic skill tree is back again in this game. You have the upgrades with very clear feedback as to where you need to go next. Every UI component has some kind of animation when it pops up or is hovered, or stays stationary if it is unimportant (purchased upgrades). These small things may feel like unnecessary additions for an early build, but it’s actually a key piece of usability feedback that “rewards” the player for taking the “correct” actions. Simple is effective.
You catch fish and sell them
One of things I noticed in the capsule art is that the title of the game explains everything that you do in the game just in the logo itself. You catch fish and get money. See if you can spot it. The core loop comes down to running to the water to fill up your backpack with fish and running to the barrel to get your loot (the sea shanty instrumental music helps you feel like you’re a fish in a barrel… or something).
Because the map is condensed, this loop happens very quickly, much like a normal incremental game. The fishing genre is tied in by removing the usual time pressure mechanic that appear in other incremental titles. It’s at your leisure to catch however many fish you want and nothing is forcing you to even move onto the next island except for the desire to see what fish you may encounter next. You’re not forced to upgrade anything until you feel ready and the progress toward the next island is passively gained through fishing up wood as you collect your fish. All in all, the description is accurate and the fantasy fully delivered.
The only friction I ran into was adding planks to the boat. Normally, everything goes into the barrel and the planks go into your backpack without taking up a slot. However, you still have to run to the boat to capture that progress. It’s not clear if that adds anything to the game, and when we have drones automating fishing for us, it feels like having planks automatically get added to the boat wouldn’t be too far fetched.
Yes, there are drones
To add a bit of automation, there are fishing drones in the game that pull in fish for you. There’s nothing wrong with the mechanic of automatic fishing, but it did feel a bit out of place given the experience feels much more low tech. Again, even the music features acoustic instruments over electronic ones. It felt a bit immersion breaking to have drones flying overhead and generally I just ignored them. I questioned if having something like fishing nets that pooled up fish in a spot over time could achieve something similar without breaking that immersion.
In a similar way, the berry bushes felt a bit out of place. I didn’t see if there were any upgrades for them and thematically I associated it with “foraging”. Again, it raised a question in my mind if there was another way to achieve something similar while keeping it more aligned to the fishing fantasy. Are there more low tech fishing techniques that could be show cased to fulfill a similar purpose?
Early Validation
The last piece that is still yet to be seen is how well this game does with its core audience. Will incremental players enjoy this casual pace? If you’ve watched my video on Incremental Games being Grassroots, you’ve heard of Incremental DB. reaching the right audience is no a challenge for game in this genre and it’s one of the unfair advantages these games have for validation. Thomas Steward and Aarimous are also leveraging their audience on YouTube to get players onto the game. All of these put together will mean that they have visibility and it’s now up to players determining if the fantasy of the game is being promised even in this short gameplay loop.
Thornity has spoken a lot about the importance of the average median playtime of demos exceeding 10 minutes. This demo feels like it’s on track to fulfill that requirement while also keeping early players wanting more. Having this build end before the 3rd island and with a “Wishlist on Steam” button is a great way to test the product market fit. We love a good funnel.
What am I going to do?
Seeing the scope of this build and how much went into it helps me understand where I should be putting more emphasis for my games. I struggle with making pleasant and easy to navigate UI elements, but it’s clear that investing in that will have a huge impact on getting players into a flow state while playing my games. I am also really impressed with how effective the game loop is even this early on. This appears to be very close to the Production Point described by Heartbeast, where the game needs to shift from exploration of mechanics into execution of filling in content.
For my next game, I want to really think more about the fantasy I am promising to players, the onboarding experience within the first 2 minutes of gameplay, and how the mechanics tie both of those things together in a way that is achievable for a part-time dev.
Check out the game on itch and send me a note with your biggest takeaway! We all have something to learn from each other and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers,
Connor