So I'm still totally stoked with how the general combat of SeaCrit seems to be coming together, there's just so many avenues to take in a fight. The layers of positioning, of deciding if you need to retreat or if you should charge up your attacks, sending off attacks just right to hit as many enemies for max damage at the right time... I really think there's something special here.

But one element I'm not happy with is the gobble mechanics. I decided that if ALL fish are gobbleable, it becomes really tedious chasing down all fish and eating them to finish them off. If SOME of them become gobbleable, then it becomes confusing... "Why do some fish shrink when they get low on life, but others don't!?"

I don't have a solution to this dilemma I was hoping by bitching and moaning about it here the answer would come to me as it does sometimes writing these blogs... I just had the idea that maybe I could make the upgrades only drop from mini boss fish, but they'd have to be big to denote that they're mini bosses, and it would look kinda goofy if they shrank down to gobbleable...

HMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Is that a bad thing!?

This actually solved 2 problems, another problem I was having was that if certain fish dropped upgrades... the player would just be overwhelmed by the shear volume of upgrades they were getting. I would have had to adjust the system so that the player would be consuming 30 of a given upgrade like "Homing" to get a really solid bonus on it, because of the sheer # of fish that would be dropping this upgrade. But if I make these fish more rare, or on a timer then I'm able to assume the player will only get maybe 5 to 10 in a given playthrough.

It's funny, I wasn't expecting to come to a sensible conclusion to this problem here! But boom there it is, and it's relatively easy to implement! Only mechanic I need to revamp/ add is make it so these minibosses don't die till they're gobbled.

Alrighty, feelin' pretty good about moving forward.

Health is doing a bit better today, still feeling kinda winded. I know I shouldn't blather about this health stuff, I'm such a bitch lately, but it is what it is. At least the game is becoming strong!

Last blog was a doozey. I know it's taboo to go that hard, I know that most all publishers and many movers and shakers in this industry will see posts like that, see you're not on their team, and do everything in their power to destroy you. But I kinda don't have anything left to lose at this point and as we've said before, the last thing I want to do is feed this disgusting, petulant beast that has gripped this industry.

I don't think people realize how toxic and detrimental to good games that they've become, we've become brainwashed and convinced we're fighting some righteous holy war in soft bubbles of privilege. What a weird time to be alive making a silly little fish game.