News — Fancy Fish Games

The Future Fancy Fish Games

DavidMaletz — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:52:05 +0000

After the launch and final post-launch updates of Aground, we floundered (hah) for a bit deciding what to do next. We made many prototypes - several of which were put on hold, before finally settling on two games. Yes, that’s right, we’re working on two big games right now, and if that wasn’t wild enough, we also just finished a third game in a month-long game jam that you can play right now for free!

Stardander School for Witches

After finishing , the Visual Novel we made right before starting Aground, we had many ideas for better story-based games. But, at the time, we decided to hold off on them because of how challenging the visual novel market is. However, we both really like the magical school setting and kept trying to think of ways to make our witchy game idea better. We had loads of ideas before, during and after Aground’s development - from a tower-defense based game, to a multiplayer-only game. But, eventually we settled on a management/simulation style game where you can recruit, train, and battle with your witches - sort of like Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

This game is Stardander School for Witches, a narrative-heavy RPG rich in lore and worldbuilding, focusing on Dare (the fae cat you play as) and the witches she recruits. You can view the trailer for Stardander School for Witches below:

Stardander School for Witches will release Fall 2022, and you can wishlist it right now on Steam!

Aground Zero

We also wanted to do something directly related to Aground, but I always want to try something new, and making DLC for the base game just didn’t excite me. I wanted to change the art style, as a lot of people didn’t like the pixel art. The idea for Aground Zero came to me when I was reminiscing about one of our first commercial projects, I Can’t Escape: Darkness (ICED), which was a 3D game. I really liked a lot of the things I did for ICED, especially the lighting system (and I even had plans for a sequel), and I thought - why not make a 3D Aground spinoff? This idea was shortly before April, and prompted the April Fool’s joke of Aground: Minecraft Edition - a farcical but also partially true joke.

Aground Zero takes place during the events of the main game - but deep underground on Earth where you are one of the few survivors of the bombardment. You have to build up a bunker and rescue other survivors and eventually make your way to the surface. While it’ll have the mining and crafting of Aground, it’ll focus more on the base building aspects - taking the ideas from my scrapped colony update for Aground. You can view a short teaser for Aground Zero below:

You can wishlist Aground Zero on Steam now:

Stardander Revenant

As if making two games at the same time wasn’t enough, when the Spooktober visual novel jam came around, we couldn’t resist making a halloween-themed spinoff of Stardander. The core mechanics are the same as Stardander School for Witches, but the story, characters and enemies were all made in the month of September for the jam.

Stardander Revenant is short (1-2 hours) and story-focused, but I definitely like the interactions between the two main characters (fun fact: they are based on our cats). You’ll also have some interesting battles (especially on hard mode) that require you to utilize the spells that your two older witches have learned (and you get to teach them some more spells along the way). You can view the trailer for Stardander Revenant below:

And you can play Stardander Revenant now, for free:

Wrapping Up

That’s a lot of announcements to go through, and it looks like 2022 is going to be a busy year for us at Fancy Fish Games! Which game are you most excited for? Did you give Stardander Revenant a try?

And, after having made many prototypes, I have plenty of ideas for what to make next! My game ideas document continues to grow (now at 61 entries), so Stardander and Aground Zero are only the beginning! Look forward to a lot more from Fancy Fish Games!

Lets Play Policy

DavidMaletz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 12:11:00 +0000

So, you want to record a video of one of our games and post it on Youtube, but are worried about copyright? Well, worry no longer - as our official policy is to allow recording, sharing or monetizing videos of our games with absolutely no restrictions. So, upload your videos with no worries, if any copyright claims are sent to you it was done without my permission, and just let me know about it and I will make sure the claim is removed.

I love seeing people's reactions to my games, so feel free to post links to videos of our games here or just tweet them @DavidMaletz. As a courtesy, it would be nice to also include a link to the game, game's website or http://fancyfishgames.com/ in the video's description. Thanks!

End of the Year

DavidMaletz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 12:21:18 +0000

We're coming fast to the end of the year - a time to reflect on how things went and plan ahead for the future. And it was quite the year for me - I joined One Game A Month and released four games - doubling the number of games I have released. I also attempted my first crowd-funded project - Rhythos RPG Builder, and while it failed, I learned a lot from it and have the beginnings of a very useful toolset for future games. I'm also over halfway done with Deity Quest (a larger game project I started after One Game A Month), and I even submitted Deity Quest to the IGF. It's been a busy year, and while I'm still not able to work full time on game development, I've made some big strides, and have even bigger plans for next year!

Projects Completed in 2013
Check here to see the four games we released this year, along with descriptions and comments about the development and release of those games!

Ongoing Projects in 2013
Click here to see news about Havencall and Deity Quest, which should be released early next year!

Future
So, what comes next? Well, hopefully Deity Quest and Havencall will be released and successful. The more successful games I release, the further I get in my goal to one day make this a full time indie game studio! I've certainly been learning a lot and improving in both game design, programming and marketing my games (while I don't like marketing, I have to at least know how to contact press and let people know my games are released). And of course, I always have new game ideas - two of which have complete design documents and are planned to begin production next year! Both of these games are pretty big in scope, and I finally have a design that fits my epic These Falling Stars world and story, so look forward to that!

Also, I just posted a Lets Play Policy, allowing you to upload, stream and monetize videos of our games with no restrictions - click the link for more details.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Ongoing Projects in 2013

DavidMaletz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 11:58:39 +0000

Deity Quest was started after Rhythos RPG Builder failed. I had gotten far off track from One Game A Month, and I wanted to develop one of the larger game ideas I had. Deity Quest mixes up the elements of pokemon, rpgs and dungeon crawlers and has an interesting 6 vs 6 battle system where you support your followers with items and spells. There's a lot of depth and strategy to Deity Quest's battles, but it is also accessible for casual players as the battles can be largely automated. If completed (which, at the rate I'm going it should be done by March of next year at the latest), Deity Quest will be the largest game in terms of features and gameplay length that I have ever made. With all of the base framework done (and several iterations of testing, tweaking and balancing the core), along with over half of the gameplay complete, I'm confident that I will finish this game early next year (and then have time to balance, playtest and get another beta out before March).

And what's the deal with Havencall? Well, right now, the ball is in Natalie's court, as all of the base framework is done and I need assets before I start adding content to the game. However, she's been getting a lot of art and backgrounds done, and even though we have to keep pushing the release date forward, she's promised now to have all the art done by March of next year, and the game will hopefully be released a few months after that!

Projects Completed in 2013

DavidMaletz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 11:56:19 +0000

I Can't Escape was my first One Game A Month, and by far my most successful one in terms of popularity and number of hits. Since I knew I wanted to participate in One Game A Month at the end of last year, I had actually started planning I Can't Escape in December of last year - so while the actual development didn't start until the beginning of this year, I had done the planning and team recruitment for the project in advance, and that extra planning definitely made a big difference. The actual gameplay for I Can't Escape was deliberately small, making it possible to complete in a month's time, and that simple gameplay made it easier to break player expectations and create the eerie atmosphere that made the game so successful.

A Different Color was my second game, and also had much less time for development since my original idea for February ended up being too large to do in one month. The goal for this game was to make something simple that had a strong message, based on some of my own experiences in life. It was short and didn't reach as many people as I Can't Escape, but those it did reach seemed to like it a lot, and many people seemed very touched or saddened by the story. There were also people who didn't like the message or misunderstood it, but that's expected for a game like this. I certainly touched upon some very sensitive subjects with this game, but that was my goal.

Trip Through Time was my third game, and in my opinion a failure. I was trying out new genres without the proper time or research, and the game mechanics didn't turn out as fun as I thought they would. This happens a lot in game development - sometimes when you finish that early prototype, you have something immediately fun, but more often it ends up not being as fun as you imagined or requires a lot of tweaking and redesign. With enough time, tweaks and improvements, perhaps I could have made this game a success, however, sometimes it's best to return to the drawing board and move on (which is one thing One Game A Month helped me learn). Deus Shift (2011-2012) took me over a year to complete and was redesigned from the ground up three times (with lots of scrapped code and assets). While the game is now fun and well balanced, it took way too long and is still missing some important features (like a good tutorial or campaign mode). Would it have been better to have scrapped the first Deus Shift prototype and tried out three new games ideas instead of redesigning it three times?

Rhythos! Arcade BETA was my fourth and final One Game A Month, and perhaps my most ambitious in terms of gameplay features. It was a redesign of the game that I postponed in February, and is basically a twitch/rhythm-based RPG battle system with a ladder of enemies to progress through. Rhythos was my second most popular One Game A Month, and as you may have guessed, what spawned Rhythos RPG Builder. I wanted to create a full RPG using this battle system but obviously couldn't do it in a month, so I planned to crowdfund an open source RPG Builder to allow myself and others to make RPGs with this battle system.

Rhythos RPG Builder was then created, and I fixed up an old tile map editor I had worked on in the past and added the Rhythos battle system to it. However, the kickstarter did not reach it's funding goal, and work on Rhythos has been postponed indefinitely. The reason could be that I didn't market the editor enough, or simply that it was what I wanted, and not what other developers wanted (a lot of comments were that people wanted a more traditional turn-based battle system). Finally, I think that it's tough crowd-funding an Open Source project, as if the project is successful, everyone gets to use the editor, not just the backers. If I had a strong community behind Rhythos from the start, I could have overcome this problem, but I jumped into crowd-funding the project a few weeks after Rhythos! Arcade BETA and without any strong plans. This was still a good learning experience however, and I do want to go back to Rhythos RPG Builder eventually.

Rhythos RPG Builder

DavidMaletz — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:57:19 +0000

As mentioned in my last news post, I'm currently creating a free, open source RPG builder that will be cross platform and support many cool features and is built upon the battle system of Rhythos! Arcade BETA. The builder will have an accessible dual-scripting system and be highly expandable, including a powerful plugin API. The editing capabilities are inspired by RPG Maker and based off of an older tilemap editor I have been developing on and off in my free time for the past year or so. The builder also uses the great 16-bit style graphics provided by the Liberated Pixel Cup/Open Game Art.

I know first hand how hard finishing a project like this can be. I've had experience making game development tools before including VIDE, a 2D animation tool, HTML Tactics, a DOM-based tactics game editor, and a 3d cloud and atmosphere rendering API. I'm also the founder and lead programmer of Fancy Fish Games, with 6 games released so far. I feel I have the skills to make this project a reality as well as the knowledge of what it's like to be a game developer using the tools! With my experience and a large codebase already complete, I am confident I will be able to come though and finish this project, but I'm going to need a little help!

A 2x speed example video of me creating a simple house interior in the Rhythos Map Editor.

That's why I've started a kickstarter page (which includes a lot more details about the project) here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidmaletz/rhythos-rpg-builder! If you're able to back the project, that's great! But even if you can't contribute monetarily, feel free to contact me if you are interested in supporting the project as a coder or artist! This is truly a community-driven project and any support possible (even just spreading the word to other developers) would be awesome! You can also peruse the current codebase on github here: https://github.com/davidmaletz/rhythos . It still needs integration work and a lot of features before I'll consider it stable, but feel free to check it out and let me know if you are interesting in contributing code!

And of course, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or feature requests - this project is very expandable, and I hope to support a lot of options, features, battle systems and release targets eventually. I'm creating this tool for the community and with the community, so I want to know what you want!

April Development Update

NatalieMaletz — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:23:00 +0000

Greetings! It's been a while since our last development update, but that doesn't mean exciting stuff hasn't been happening! Here's what we've been making and some insight into the development process.

Art
A large new area was completed yesterday. This is one of 6 of the most important areas in the game, and is a part of the first world (of three) that Aura adventures through. Here is a partial screenshot of the scene (it shows about 1/4 of the entire thing):

(click for full size)
And here is a GIF showing a step-by-step of the digital painting process:

Additionally, four mini-scenes (all related to the first puzzle of the game) were completed. These smaller scenes are accessible from the space-time ruins area. Here is Aura standing in one of them:

You can also find detailed step-by-step notes about painting this interior on my blog: Process Journal: Ruins Interior.

The four non-player characters we posted about before were also completed (as well as animated). Here are a few of them painted up (not to scale):

Art assets for cut-scenes have been progressing as well, including the revision/improvement of this close-up of Aura we posted before:

What do you think? Better, right?

Animations
Speaking of that close-up shot, animations have been made for it, including several different expressions and a hair animation. Here's a screen-capture of my workspace, using VIDE (our animation engine), showing the bones, frames, and layers of the animations:

And here is a short video showing a little bit of the animations (just hair and blinking, no expressions):

Several animations for in-game Aura have also been created since our last update, including a sit/stand and stumble/fall.

Writing
Writing has progressed by leaps and bounds since our last update! Since Havencall is such a strongly story-driven game, we recently decided to take a good long time organizing, revising, and re-writing all the story material we had into a comprehensive, all-inclusive "Game Script."

The game script is currently very close to complete (just a few scenes left to write/revise), and currently weighs in at 30 single-spaced pages! With the script in place, all of the details of every scene, puzzle, interaction, dialogue and battle is available for us to reference at any time. It's an invaluable resource, and is already helping to speed along development in all other areas.

Music
Last but not least, an awesome new song was recently completed by our talented composer. Give it a listen:

Track 4 - Indie DB

That's it for now, but look forward to more updates as we forge ahead in development!

Connect with us!
Facebook page
Havencall on IndieDB
Fancy Fish Games on Twitter

I Can't Escape - A One Month Game Experiment

DavidMaletz — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:27:51 +0000

When I joined McFunkypants One Game A Month challenge, I knew that I wanted to accomplish two things:
1) To experiment with interesting game designs I wouldn't normally pursue.
2) To connect with new talented individuals.
I figured that worst case, it'd only be a month, and best case, I'd have an interesting game and know new people I could work with and trust. In this sense, "I Can't Escape" turned out to be a best case scenario!

When I designed I Can't Escape, I wanted something very simple at its core - something that could be feasibly finished in a single week! Even though the challenge gave me a whole month, it's always better to underdesign than overdesign - more can always be added, but game development almost always takes longer than you expect. Even a simple "one week" game idea might end up needing the whole month! I also chose a genre I had never explored before - I Can't Escape is my first horror and atmospheric game. It was interesting to see what I could come up with in this new territory.

At its core, I Can't Escape is exactly what it seems: you explore a creepy underground maze, stumbling around pretty much randomly without a map, and fall down pits until you reach the end. I wont say exactly what you can find in the levels, but there is no battle system, no shooting of zombies, just simple exploration with a simple goal - to escape. In order to escape, all you need to do is climb a ladder on the first level. The "horror" part is more subtle than most horror games I've played. Instead of enemies jumping out at you, there's an overwhelming sense of being watched and followed (there are literally eyes in the walls watching you - this is one of the most common events you can stumble upon). This builds the anticipation of something just around the corner, but that tension is never dispersed by having that something actually jump out at you.

Aforementioned eye staring at you deep in the dungeon.

The game is designed to make you feel lost and trapped. The levels are incredibly large and maze-like with no map to guide you. It wont take long before you have absolutely no clue where you are. The game is also designed to make you fall deeper - you're "supposed" to go up, but instead somehow you always end up going down into darker and scarier levels. With subtle effects like the movement speed slowly increasing, the anxiety rises as you realize that it's very unlikely you will even reach the first floor again, let alone escape. Eventually, you reach a level where you are trapped behind locked doors, and you literally can't escape. The light then slowly fades out, and the single word "END" appears.

The game taunts you with the possibility of escape, it even starts with you landing right in front of a ladder, with only a locked door keeping you from freedom. Along the way, you will find keys that unlock doors, and sometimes even find ladders you can climb, bringing you closer to the top. But, despite your best efforts, you still eventually fall down deeper and deeper. Sound like a metaphor for real life? Hopefully not! I won't answer whether it is possible to escape or not, as there are several rare events you can stumble upon in the game, but don't expect escaping to be easy!

A ladder on the first floor with no pit blocking it? Is it real? Did the developer just create this image as a joke??

This was an experiment for me, so I've released it for free on Newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/610205, and I encourage everyone to try it! I also released the source code here: https://github.com/davidmaletz/CantEscape. The code is not particularly clean (lots of hacks happen with short deadlines), but if you can read it, perhaps you can answer some of the questions I've kept quiet on, and maybe even add an easy way to escape! It's too early to say how people will receive the game, and I've certainly had comments from people who didn't get it, but I've had far more comments from people who it "scared the pants right off," and that is very encouraging for me as a developer.

I really enjoyed the experience of working with Chase Bethea and Josh Goskey (this was the first time I worked with them on a project, but not the last), and I really appreciate the effort they put into the game (and of course, my lovely wife Natalie helped too)! For a one month project, I'm very impressed and proud of the work we did!

I've already moved on to my February game, so I doubt I will go back and make many changes to this game, but feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think about I Can't Escape!

Art Update

NatalieMaletz — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:00:07 +0000

Hi folks, I’m the artist working on Havencall! A lot has been going on here at Fancy Fish Games, and it has largely been focused around creating art and assets lately, so I’m here to tell you about our progress!

First, a little background on the visual design of Havencall: the game is meant to make you feel like you are walking through a painting. The art style is half-way between a simpler cartoony look and a detailed, realistic one. Luckily, our in-house animation tools make it easy to create many animations without having to draw things frame-by-frame, so we were able to go with this somewhat detailed style without the project taking a ridiculously long time.

For instance, here is a new animation of the main character, Aura, falling through the air and landing (please note this animation is “in place,” so it looks a little funny since she will actually be moving downwards rapidly during the first half of the animation):

Aura already has a running and idle animation (which you can check out in our prototype video), and next on the list for her will be a front-facing run and a back facing run, so she can move towards and away from the camera. Here she is in her in-game front and back standing positions, all ready to be animated:

A complete new area was finished recently, and I wrote a long walk-through about the process of making it, if you are interested in that sort of thing (link). I’ll give a short summary here: the scene is a desolate wasteland area, with rocky plateaus, a group of volcanoes, and a range of ice mountains in the distance. Here's a sketch of the landscape:

And here is the completed scene. Note this is much, much smaller than the in-game version, since the image is so wide:

Here are a few closer clips of the scene:

At this point the scene will get some animations (cloths flapping, treetops blowing in the wind, tumbleweeds tumbling), a few NPCs for Aura to interact with, and a new sky (the sky in this scene needs to be dynamic for gameplay purposes). Then, the mountains in the distance of this scene will be used for another scene which takes place high in the sky above this town. The scene in the sky is the location of an epic boss "battle," so I am very excited to start working on that!

I’ve also been delving into some cut scene material recently, some of which I won’t reveal so as not to spoil it. But here is a short sequence with some close-up frames of our protagonist:

This is still just a draft - in the final version her expression will change slightly over the course of these frames, and her hair will be animated to blow in the wind. Here's a close-up from the second frame above:

There’s still a lot to do, but progress is definitely happening and we hope to have a lot more gameplay-oriented material in soon!

Let us know what you think of all this! Leave us a comment below!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Announcing Havencall

DavidMaletz — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:06:25 +0000

We are very excited to officially announce Havencall, our first game using the VIDE animation toolkit! Havencall will be a short (2-4 hour) point and click adventure game which tells the story of a strange girl named Aura, and her journey between worlds to find the haven of her dreams. The original idea for this game dates back to 2009, but it wasn't until recently that everything came together: the technology, the story, and the design for what is in many ways our dream game - both to play and create.

Aura being beckoned into another world by a strange glowing figure.

The game's story and progression have been written, all of the puzzles have been designed, and we're busy working on concept art and hammering out the details. We plan to release Havencall sometime in 2013, for PC, Mac, Linux, and potentially mobile devices as well. The gameplay will revolve around interacting with items and people, solving puzzles, awakening powerful abilities, and even fighting magical devices.

My hope is for the game to be a stunning audio/visual experience that brings the strange and varied worlds of Aura's universe to life, with unusual puzzles and challenges along the way. I don't want to reveal too much of the story, so I will only say that it will be a mystical, magical and even philosophical journey.

Sneak Peek: Concept art of Aura's hometown, a small primitive village completely isolated inside a space-time bubble.

Our trajectory now is to solidify the art style, music style, and prototype the puzzles to make sure we have all of the details ironed out, and then we plan to try to fund the project on Kickstarter. It will be our first time using Kickstarter, which should be an interesting experience in itself, but hopefully a good one as well.

If you're curious about the game, drop me a line, and feel free to follow us as we bring this game, and all of its worlds, to life!

Early Prototype Completed

DavidMaletz — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:08:24 +0000

An early version of Havencall is running, with movement and basic gameplay complete! We've been working hard to complete the early prototype, and also recorded a video to share our progress. Here are some of the features already in the prototype:

Movement: The prototype scales and moves our protagonist, Aura, between layers to give the feeling that she is actually walking through a digital painting. You can only move along static paths, but those paths allow you to go anywhere of importance.

Interaction: The prototype allows you to click objects to interact with them, and can pathfind to move you to the object. The cursor will change to denote where and what kind of magic you can use at the moment. Clicking and holding when that cursor is up activates the magic.

Animation: The prototype uses the VIDE animation engine, and can support deformed image animations. Aura was animated in VIDE, along with the cursor charge and clock hands animation. Eventually, we plan to do a lot more animations to make the world come alive, including flora & fauna, and other characters you can interact with and talk to.

Sound: The prototype has many "fake 3D" sound effects, which adjusts the pan and volume of the sound effects automatically based on the position of the player.

Of course, an image is worth 1,000 words, and a video is worth 1,000 pictures, so check out the video and see all of these features in action:

We're still early in production and nothing is finalized yet, but we're definitely making progress, and I hope to have more to show soon! But first, it's turkey time - have a great holiday everyone!

Global Game Jam 2016: Quotidian

NatalieMaletz — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 13:28:19 +0000

This year, we participated in the Global Game Jam event in Phoenix. We met other game developers, worked with someone new, and made a game we are quite happy with, in just 48 hours! What a wild, but wonderful experience!

The theme of the jam this year was "Ritual" - we decided to interpret that as a "daily ritual" - with a twist. We named our game "Quotidian."

quo·tid·i·an

kwōˈtidēən/

adjective

of or occurring every day; daily

This is Quotidian's short description: "Wake up in the morning. Drink a cup of coffee. Close the curtains and go to bed. The days change, but the ritual does not."

If that sounds mundane to you... well... prepare to be surprised. The best way to understand the game is simply to play it - it takes less than 10 minutes to play, and is available free on Newgrounds:

Play Quotidian Here

Screens: