Galactic Reef 

In our game you build your own planetary system that’s colonised by all kinds of Astrofish. You heard the fish from planet to planet and fertilize the corals on the way so that your fish have enough to eat. Later you can add more planets with all new kinds of fish.

Our Idea was that you could jump from planet to planet with your crabship in first person. This would require a bit of skill. The game could be described as a cozy platformer. All the planets revolve around your space station, the buoy where you store your resources.

The planets you have you can place in orbit at will and would affect their neighbours either good or bad.

To start we did some thinking on how exactly the planets and all this gravity and orbit stuff could work.

We also did some mood drawings and designs for the fish and other elements.

Day1

Farming is out active fishing is in

We came to the conclusion that we are trying to do two completely different things with the action and farming that may not work that well. So we decided that the player would have a more active role and chase the fish over difficult planetary terrain trying to catch it. 

You could then sell or display the fish at the buoy (cosmic fish &chips) and buy upgraded catching abilities or more planets with fish, and so on. But for the prototype we focused on the movement on and between planets as well as catching the fish.

We actually managed to get a working orbit system and gravity fairly quickly. Our player decided at first they would rather roll on the planet than walk but after they learned to walk jumping was not far away. We built a first planet with some obstacles to try out. The space buoy marks our first asset.

Day2

The fish do not fish

We continued to work on smoothing out the movement and adding our fish.

Our first Astrofish asset is goldfish like and has a swimming animation (to be added when the fish actually fish).

We had a couple of problems with the fish. First of all how they swim away from you over the terrain. Secondly the fish should swim in swarms and group themselves. At one point the fish swarm at the start of the game collectively decided to leave the planet and swam into the endless space. Which should not happen, so we have to work on that a bit more.

We also added the crabship asset so now you can see the mechanic crab claws while walking. On our Planets we also added more terrain and hiding places. New is also the space skybox.

Day3

Planets now available in color

The fish now have the swimming animation and try to actively swim away from you. But not so fast, the player now has a gravity rod (claw) with which you can pull the fish towards yourself. The gravity rod is also useful when you overshoot when jumping between planets. Now you can pull yourself towards your chosen planet. 

Actually catching the fish was next on the list. You now have a fish counter that goes up when you walk into a fish or pull it towards you. 

While the fish often get stuck on obstacles and do not swarm it is still fun to chase after them.

The planets are now full with mountains, hills, implied corals by a cylinder and a cave. We colored all these elements and now have a green themed and a blue themed planet. We also placed multiple fish on each planet and the player starts now from the space buoy.

The orbit system we created at the start we now used to let one planet revolve around the other like a moon. 

We hope we got your interest and give our Prototype a try!

Here to the game