I’ve been out of action for a while due to being sick, and as soon as I recovered, I was off to Japan for three weeks. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any fishing, but browsing their tackle shops was incredibly inspiring. I noticed a lot of brands similar to those we used to stock at the tackle shop I worked in for a while.

This break inevitably meant a pause in development, but I’m back and ready to dive in again. Coming back to the project with fresh eyes, I believe I’ve found a solution for a major roadblock I was facing: the pumping system. The previous version felt clunky and unintuitive, so I’ve redesigned it into a more combo-based system that factors in pressure and timing. I’m calling it Pump Sequences. It still needs refining over the next few weeks, but the new system i think gives players better feedback on what they’re doing wrong during the sequence.

I think this approach will encourage more creativity and reduce the need to rely solely on swapping rods for different effects. That said, rod swapping is still absolutely a key part of the mechanics.

Once this is sorted, I’ll be focusing on adding new fish states like Spooked, Feeding, and Resting to complete the fishing loop. This should make gameplay much more skill-based, with less reliance on randomness or luck.

If I can achieve this by the end of the year, I’ll be ready to bring testers on board and release a gameplay video. By that point, it will finally feel like a complete game.

As a stretch goal, I’d love to implement water column preferences for the fish AI system. This would allow for more realistic behavior, like adding big pelagics such as GTs (Giant Trevally), and making them feel natural, just like they do in real life.

Not sure if anyone reads these updates, but writing them helps me stay focused.

Cheers, y’all!