FISH FEAR ME news & patch notes

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! I'm excited to report that the free WOMEN WANT ME Content Expansion for FISH FEAR ME is OUT NOW! There's also a TON of other stuff happening today!

A quick overview of the day's happenings (each enumerated below):

• FISH FEAR ME: WOMEN WANT ME!

• The FISH FEAR ME OST on Steam!

• Unfair Flips!

• Steam Daily Deal!

• Fallen London: The Shape of Infinity!

Let's get started with the WOMEN WANT ME Expansion!

WOMEN WANT ME Patch Notes

New Content

• New map: The Lake of the Lady! Explore a sunken castle full of magical fish and hidden areas!

• 75+ new fish! Most of these are in the Lake of the Lady, but be sure to check the other maps, too...

• Five new metaprogression upgrades! To unlock this new upgrade tree, set sail to the Lake of the Lady! To reach the final pair of upgrades, though, you'll need to master this new area...

• New animated cutscenes by Gwyndolyn Marchant!

• Four new boats: Rocketship, Dragonship, Splintership, Arcane Vessel

• Ten new weapons: Harvester Gem, Whirlpool Gem, Reaper Gem, Water Gem, Shiprocket, Dragonfire, Splinterfish, Arcane Blast, Sword of the Deep, Broken Crown

• A new song (with a fully voiced variant!)

• New game mechanics! Track down powerful Champion Fish using the Bell of the Hunt, then sell them for bonus money and Forbidden Knowledge!

• 24 new achievements! This brings the game's total to 111!

• An entirely new boss fight! The Lady of the Lake is a powerful enemy, and her crown of swords is sharp indeed...

Changes and Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where music fadeout wouldn't occur if the music volume slider was at less than 50%

• Fixed a bug where music fadeout wouldn't occur in the Shadow Sea

• Fixed a bug where lures would be highlighted if the previous day's bounty required them, instead of the current day's

• Fixed a bug where certain areas in Nightmare Lake would have no marked biome at all

• Fixed a bug where Targeting System would make attacks accelerate more and more every time they spawned until they shot off the screen instantly

• Changed the wording in several achievements from "Slay the Leviathan" to "Slay a god" (since there are now multiple gods you can slay to trigger those achievements)

• Updated credits

The main thrust of this expansion is to add a lot of new content and choices to the early game, provide new ways to accelerate player progression, add more points of interest to every map, and to create more challenges and variety in late-game play. The Lake of the Lady should have something for everyone - I hope you enjoy!

The FISH FEAR ME Original Soundtrack is now on Steam!

That's right: you can now buy the FISH FEAR ME OST on Steam!

This features songs from the base game AND from the new WOMEN WANT ME expansion! There's some really good stuff in here, including voiced and unvoiced versions of the combat themes. Check it out!

Unfair Flips is out now!

My horrible little game for horrible little freaks, Unfair Flips, may now be inflicted upon the populace!

Unfair Flips is a non-idle clicker game about flipping a coin that hates you. Starting with just a 20% chance of getting heads, can you get ten heads in a row?

This one's really weird. I've already had one reviewer say the game is impossible to score or rank, and I don't disagree with them honestly? (That being said, please do score and rank the game by giving it a review. It helps a lot!)

FISH FEAR ME is 50% off for a Steam Daily Deal!

The knot that ties all this together: FISH FEAR ME has a Daily Deal today!! For those of you who aren't aware, basically this means that the game's gonna be front and center for a bunch of people over the next 24 hours (starting at 10am Pacific time). I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of new people in the forums over the next few days, so be sure to say hello and help 'em out when they ask about finding the Red Herring.

Anyways, if you have any friends who are interested in taking the plunge on FFM, be sure to let them know about this deal! The deal itself lasts longer than 24 hours, so there's some time, but be sure to grab it quick while it's at this historic discount!

And finally...

Fallen London: The Shape of Infinity

I was commissioned to write another Exceptional Story for Fallen London!! This one's about an enigmatic Transcendent Numericist, a quest to redefine mathematics, and an especially murderous living number...

The Shape of Infinity is out now, and available for the next month for Fallen London subscribers! I'm personally really happy with it -- it's a very personal story about the joys and perils of self-destruction, along with a heaping helping of the worst math jokes you've ever read. If you're into Fallen London, or otherwise interested in browser role-playing games about an alternate universe Victorian London that got stolen by bats and taken to a cavern the size of Europe (and then, from there, reading a story about living numbers written by yours truly), maybe give it a look!

Phew! That's it for today. I am going to lie down for seventeen hours. I hope you all enjoy WOMEN WANT ME, and also the FISH FEAR ME OST, and also Unfair Flips, and also the Daily Deal, and also Fallen London: The Shape of Infinity!

Happy fishing, Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! Welcome once more to that most beautiful of holidays: FISH FEAR ME Friday!

Next week is going to be incredibly chaotic. And exciting for y'all! Mostly chaotic for me. ALL of the following events are happening on Thursday, September 25th:

The WOMEN WANT ME Expansion

It's finally happening! The FREE major content expansion to FISH FEAR ME, featuring:

• A whole new region (The Lake of the Lady)

• 75+ new fish

• Five new meta upgrades

• New animated cutscenes by Gwyndolyn Marchant (check out that sword animation up there!)

• Four new boats

• Ten new weapons

• A new song (with two variants!)

• A bunch of new game mechanics

• Tons of new achievements

• A whole new final boss fight

If that sounds like a lot: that's because it is! We've put a ton of time and effort into this expansion over the last few months, and it's been a joy to watch it pay off. The Lake of the Lady will have something for players both new and old. I hope you all have fun!

Official FISH FEAR ME Soundtrack

That's right: the FISH FEAR ME OST is soon going to be available on Steam! This includes the new tracks from the expansion. Wishlist it now:

One of my favorite parts of working in games is getting to hear Josie Brechner's music. It's always a delight to behold, and the FISH FEAR ME soundtrack is no different! Check it out! Maybe buy it when it comes out! Josie is one of the most talented people in the industry IMO, and she absolutely outdid herself here.

Unfair Flips

This one's kind of a weird one! I had an idea for a tiny game while out for a walk one day, and I put it together in a few hours when I got home, and then I posted a couple videos of it. And now one of those videos has over a hundred thousand views.

Horrifying! Anyways, Unfair Flips is in the same universe as the rest of the GET RICH AND DIE TRYING series, and it has a similar tone, but it's very different mechanically from SNAKE FARM/FISH FEAR ME. Although people are threatening to mail snakes to my house because of this game. So maybe it's similar enough after all.

If this interests you at all, I'd ask that you give it a wishlist! Please play my horrible coin game.

It features pixel art by Gwyndolyn Marchant (who did the cutscene animations for FISH FEAR ME: WOMEN WANT ME!) and one (1) sound effect by Surasshu. You'll know it when you hear it.

A Secret Fourth Thing

What's this, you ask? All shall be revealed in time...

A Secret Fifth Thing

What's this, you ask? All shall be revealed in time...

My god. There is too much going on today! I thought it'd be fun to time two releases to the same day, but now in addition to those two things there are SEVERAL other things all happening at once. I'd apologize, but I'm the only one suffering here. It'll be fun for y'all!

That's it for this time! There is not a secret sixth thing, unless I've forgotten something massive. I've had covid the past few weeks (literally on day nineteen of quarantine right now -- it just will not go away!) and it's been "fun" watching this turbo combo of deadlines rush up while I've been tied to the train tracks. Fortunately I'm starting to feel better, and I feel confident in my ability to finish everything up in time!

Question of the Day

What do YOU think those secret Fourth and Fifth Things are?

Happy fishing, Heather Flowers

Ahoy, cosmic debtors! After untold aeons I have returned from the pit with ANOTHER FISH FEAR ME UPDATE!!

Update Notes - THE KRILL UPDATE

New Content

• Three new boats! (Whale, Steamboat, Stygian Raft). Their unlock conditions are spread across the game, so players of all skill levels have something to hunt down!

• Three new weapons! (Bullet Krill, Steam Engine, Bounty Hook). Try each of the new boats to unlock them!

• Two new fish! (Spiral Krill, Coalfish)

• Nine new achievements! One for each weapon, and two for each boat.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the post-run summary screen, um. wasn't displaying any unlocks. at all. Sorry about that!

Each of these new boats comes with a gameplay mechanic that twists the rules of the game in a fun new way. My personal favorite is the Steamboat's DISCOUNT ability, which makes a random item free whenever you refresh the shop! This can let you do some nonsense like filling your inventory with rare bait on Day 1!

(Get it? Like, discounts powered by steam? Steam-related discounts? Eh?)

AND SPEAKING OF STEAM DISCOUNTS:

As of RIGHT NOW, FISH FEAR ME is 30% off for the Steam Fishing Fest!! Tell your friends!! Tell your lovers!! Tell your friends' lovers!!

WOMEN WANT ME Update

So the WOMEN WANT ME Free Content Expansion is still coming! It's been a little slower than I'd like (I had a day job for a bit, which significantly slowed my progress) but I'm OFFICIALLY back to fishmaking full time! Things should speed up a LOT from here.

One of the things I mentioned previously about this expansion is I'm bringing on a new artist, Gwyndolyn Marchant, to do cutscene animations for the game. It turns out that when you hire experienced artists, they make things that look really good!! Check out this screen from the expansion:

Look at that! I'm obsessed, tbh. The dithering on the cobblestones is GORGEOUS.

That's all for this time! I hope you enjoy the new content :)

Happy fishing, Heather Flowers

Patch Notes

• Added controller navigation support to the entire game! All UI elements can now be interacted with via controller. You can play the entire game without once touching the keyboard or mouse!
• Similarly, beefed up support for mouse and keyboard players. You can finally use the scroll wheel to select bait, or use the keyboard to navigate UI menus!
• Updated the key binding menu backend to support a much more robust interaction system. The result of this is that more control rebinding options are available. Try it out!

Question of the Week

Patch notes:

• Fixed a bug where selecting one item in the shop with the controller and clicking another item with the mouse would buy the first item for the price of the second one, allowing you to buy an infinite number of each item and breaking the game.
• Fixed a bug where pausing while selling fish would result in nothing being selected
• Added a selection delay to the death screen so you can't double-tap A and accidentally skip the run summary screen

THE CONTROLLER SUPPORT BETA

BETA CHANGE NOTES

• Added controller navigation support to the entire game! All UI elements can now be interacted with via controller. You can play the entire game without once touching the keyboard or mouse!
• Similarly, beefed up support for mouse and keyboard players. You can finally use the scroll wheel to select bait, or use the keyboard to navigate UI menus!
• Updated the key binding menu backend to support a much more robust interaction system. The result of this is that more control rebinding options are available. Try it out!

TO ACCESS THE CONTROLLER SUPPORT BETA:

• Right-click FISH FEAR ME in your Steam library
• Go to Properties->Betas
• Type in the code ControllerTest
• Opt into the beta
• Update your game
• Have fun!

Question of the Week

Controller Progress Update

WOMEN WANT ME Progress Update

Question of the Week

Designing the Leviathan

Programming the Leviathan

• The Leviathan itself has relatively low health, but regularly becomes invincible. This way, high-DPS builds are rewarded but can't completely curbstomp it, and low-DPS builds can make decent progress.
• To end these invincibility periods, you need to either kill all summoned guardian fish OR survive for 45 seconds. Again, multiple solutions! A good survival build can make it through the 45-second maximum no problem, while the DPS build can chew through the spawned enemies.
• When the clock strikes midnight, ALL fish spawning pools are refilled. Even if you fished out the entirety of Nightmare Lake on Day 7, there are still new fish for you to catch during the fight. This way, you're given ample opportunities to heal (and summon skeletal minions) while battling the Leviathan!

Writing the Leviathan

Question of the Week

Discounts!

Viscounts!

Question of the Week

Patch Notes

Misc

• ⚓ Added the ability to pause during the Leviathan fight

Controller Navigation

Women Want Me

• The map is called The Lake of the Lady, after its inhabitant, the Lady of the Lake
• It introduces a new mechanic that will change the way you approach every other map
• The majority of the map is a sunken castle full of champions and monsters
• There are six planned biomes in the map
• It has a unique location theme song
• It has a completely new day-7 boss fight unique to this location

Question of the Week

Patch Notes

Game Balance

• ⚓ Significantly buffed money-making weapons:
• Party Cannon: $1/shot -> $5/shot
• Ritual of Pain: Changed money gained per ritual from $5 to $10 (LVL 1-2), from $5 to $25 (LVL 3), and from $10 to $50 (LVL 4-6)
• Metal Detector: Changed like so: LVL 1: $1 per overheal, max $25 -> $1 per overheal, max $50 LVL 2: $1 per overheal, max $50 -> $2 per overheal, max $75 LVL 3: $1 per overheal, max $100 -> $2 per overheal, max $100 LVL 4: $2 per overheal, max $200 -> $4 per overheal, max $200 LVL 5: $3 per overheal, max $500 -> $6 per overheal, max $500 LVL 6: $3 per overheal, no max -> $10 per overheal, no max

Bugfixes/Misc

• ⚓Fixed a bug where Metal Detector + Summoning Ritual would produce extremely loud noises when triggered simultaneously
• Fixed a bug where damage numbers were showing up as the wrong color
• Optimization: Changed fish and projectile physics from dynamic to kinematic
• Optimization: Made squids spawn trails slightly less often

Upcoming Content

Optimization and Usability

WOMEN WANT ME

Community Spotlight

Question of the Week

Optimization and Usability

Women Want Me

Discounts

Question of the Week

PATCH NOTES

Balance changes

• ⚓ Buffed Cursed Crown: now, instead of the curse being that you're stuck at 1hp forever, it's that you can no longer heal. This is still a very significant downside, but it should hopefully provide build niche opportunities outside of Ghost Ship runs.
• ⚓ Added triple invincibility duration on expending a Stitched Heart
• Accidentally nerfed and then partially buffed Chum. So it turns out that Chum was actually getting called twice per fish summon initialization, which meant that it was significantly stronger than intended when combined with Ichthyomancy, Dragon Tooth, or Tamed Shark. I fixed the double call to rein in the balance more towards what I'd intended... and then gave it a more intentional buff so it'd stay competitive in the meta. It's weaker than it was, but stronger than it was originally supposed to be!
• Improved fish summon AI

Bugfixes

• ⚓ Fixed a bug where the Trawler and Party Boat would show missing day 4 unlocks
• ⚓ Fixed a bug where using the Bell of the Deep would consume junk fish lots, causing the spawn pool to deplete prematurely

Misc

• ⚓ Changed the sprite for Moonwater Lure to make it more apparent when it's been unlocked (and cuter)
• Made the "continuous hold" fishing minigame the default. I'm keeping classic mode in the options menu for the real sickos, but it's very apparent that this new version is strongly preferred by pretty much everyone. I'll be doing some UI changes on it soon to make it more visually clear what's going on, but the long and short is you can hold down the spacebar forever now to just continually summon new fish!
• Did a gigantic optimization pass on pretty much the entire game.

• Continuing to work on optimization
• Continuing to work on usability
• Giving the new fishing minigame a more unique look
• Making controller support a lot more functional (this one's a bit of a bear to fix, but I promise it's on my list)
• Starting production on the free WOMEN WANT ME expansion

Question of the Week

PATCH NOTES

New content

• ⚓ Added an alternate version of the fishing minigame which allows you to spawn more fish by just continuously holding the FISH button. To activate it, look in the Options menu!

Bugfixes/misc

• ⚓ Fixed a bug where swapping bait partway through the fishing minigame would cause the wrong type of bait to be expended
• ⚓ Fixed a bug where sacrificing fish to an altar would cause Ichthyomancy to become dormant until you earned back all the fish you lost
• Fixed a major performance hitch when succeeding at the fishing minigame
• Fixed a bug where every boat's destruction animation briefly turned it into the rowboat

Question of the Week

OPTIMIZATION

USABILITY

CONTENT

BALANCE CHANGES

MISC CHANGES

BUGFIXES

PATCH NOTES

• Fixed a garbage collection issue that would cause game saving to fail in rare circumstances
• Fixed an issue where pressing "Fast Sell" on the first available frame would trap you in slow sell mode

• The game will be launching on February 21st for $9.99, with a 20% discount for the first two weeks (so $7.99 in practice).
• It features three maps, fifteen biomes, sixteen boats, thirty weapons, and 150ish fish to catch. If playtests are anything to go by, this results in somewhere around 30-60 hours of content for completionists.
• It ALSO features a storyline exploring the Fisherman’s cosmic debt. To resolve this debt, you’ll need to delve into the eldritch waters beneath the earth, learn arcane rituals, and slay the Leviathan before it consumes you.
• It’s about 3-5 times larger than the demo? At least. There’s a LOT of content here, including a fully-fleshed-out metaprogression system and fourteen separate game-bending lures which augment builds and give access to special ultra-rare bounties.
• If the game launches well, I have plans for multiple free content expansions with new maps, boats, weapons, and more! The first content expansion will be called WOMEN WANT ME.
• I will be taking down the free demo when the game launches. This isn’t because I’m opposed to free demos, but because the demo will corrupt newer saves and completely erase 90% of your progress if you try to open it after opening the main game. There’s no way around this outside of completely remaking the demo, which I probably… do not have time to do.
• That being said, if you played the demo, the game should remember your progress when you start the full game, and unlock anything you would’ve unlocked at your current level of progression!