Hook: A Fishing Game

"Hook" is a short game about fishing. It aims to bring awareness about endangered freshwater fish in North America.

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Inspiration

We thought about our favorite games and what mechanics we enjoyed the most about them. The most striking to us was Stardew Valley's fishing minigame that enrages most players. We enjoyed that mechanic a lot, and thought it would be interesting if we could make a game focusing on that mechanic while bringing awareness to freshwater fish in North America.

Why endangered fish? We felt that a lot of the focus on endangered animals were specifically on ones that appeared 'cute' or 'cool' like pandas or snow leopards. But freshwater fish play a huge role in our ecosystems and they deserve to be focused on too, no matter how niche they were. Animals shouldn't need to have fur or cool patterns to be considered important enough to be preserved and brought awareness to.

What it does

"Hook" is a fishing game. The main mechanic is that you "button-mash" in order to successfully catch a fish within a designated time frame. If you fail, the fish swims away. If you succeed, you catch a rare fish and learn more about it. Catch all the fish, and, well... let's just say overfishing is a mechanic in this game too. We hope this game helps people recognize how cool fish are!

How we built it

"Hook" started on a single sheet of paper and a dream... we sketched out ideas on the paper, figuring out the key mechanics we wanted to include, and then everything followed after. Our coders first played with a game engine, then switched to Java in IntelliJ/VSCODE. Our graphic designer began researching the fish we wanted to showcase and started drawing the main graphics, like the fish sprites and title screen. Then it was back to our coders to implement the art into the game, while our graphic designer was back to work organizing the team and writing the devpost (hi!).

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the graphics was definitely the hardest part while developing this game. It was a challenge to implement the title screen, and even more challenging to implement the transitions, the fish graphics, and getting these two drastically different worlds- art and code- to connect! Luckily, we managed to conquer that obstacle and create something fun!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're really proud of the ending of the game and figuring out one problematic component of it: the text wrap. The text wrap had terrorized our coder, Laura, for hours, and when she finally figured it out, it was amazing. Steven, our other coder, thinks the ending is funny and super satisfying.

What we learned

We learned that making a game, even a small game, is really, really, hard. There's a lot of components that come together, and we had to think outside of the box often. Integrating the art was also more challenging than expected; we spent hours figuring out how to implement the title screen and other graphics. But it was rewarding, and when we got something right? It was epic.

What's next for "Hook: A Fishing Game"

We don't have any plans to stop learning anytime soon, whether it's about game development or the environment. We hope that this game is a useful tool for bringing awareness for cool, weird, and freaky fish around the world, and help others understand their value! "Hook" is simply our first step for our journey as game developers.

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