Weird Fishes

The reworked version of the Top-Down Shooter task, titled “Weird Fishes,” draws its inspiration from the track of the same name featured in the 2007 album “In Rainbows” by the band Radiohead. The game is deeply influenced by the song’s emotions and lyrics, which is why it shares its name.

In the original design, the game encountered numerous issues, leading to a difficult and frustrating gameplay experience. However, with this rework, those problems have been addressed and resolved, resulting in significantly improved overall playability. Players can now enjoy a smoother and more enjoyable gaming experience. The rework not only fixed existing problems but also introduces new features and designs that make it more appealing.

In the original game, movement functioned as tank controls. However, the act of shooting was the only way for the player to move. The idea was to have the fish move backwards from the recoil of shooting. To add to this, the player would increase in speed after each shot. The issues presented with this are:

• Aiming was difficult. Aiming at an enemy meant rotating the players body towards them. And firing would cause the player to toss backwards, throwing off their aim.
• Moving was difficult, as the player had to align the sprite in the opposite direction for where they needed to go.
• The increasing speed also made it hard for the player to control their movement with precision.

The game also included a boss fight which didn’t work. To access the boss, 50 enemies had to be killed beforehand. Touching the boss enemy meant being instantly killed, and because of issues in coding, the enemy could not be killed. What resulted was the bizarre experience of a PNG image of Thom Yorke slowly chasing you in a white void.

Ultimately, the intention and inspiration behind this game was mental health. It’s a battle for a lot of people, and for some it can feel like it never ends. The imagery and feel of the game are supposed to represent a feeling of being lost and out of place, and the gameplay behind it symbolises the struggle that could come out of that. Accompanying the game is the track Weird Fishes from the album In Rainbows by the band Radiohead released in 2007, which is what inspired the imagery and feel of the game.

The Reworked Game

To fix the issues that were present in the original game, firstly I improved the movement by allowing the player to move freely forward and backward while retaining tank controls. Secondly, I revamped the shooting mechanics, replacing the old system with a separate gun object controlled by aiming with by moving the mouse on the screen, inspired by a tutorial by Sean Spalding from their Platform Game series. I also implemented smoother camera movement from the same tutorial series. The result from these changes was a much smoother controls, a far cry from the janky controls featured in the first game.

To combat boredom and repetition, I introduced two new enemy types in the game. The first is a smaller enemy with less health, spawning more frequently with a max of 50. The second is a larger enemy with more health, and takes longer to spawn up to 5. This added variation in the enemies you can kill and more excitement with the improved controls making it easier to defeat enemies.

To give the game a goal (more or less) I made a score system based on killing the enemies. The larger enemies will increase your score by 10 points, the normal enemies increase by 5, and the small enemies by 1. Players can record their high score and try to beat it, which is unfortunately not a feature in the game. To make sure the player doesn’t die, I implemented healthpacks that will randomly spawn across the map. The player starts off with 20 health points and these healthpacks increase the players health by 5 points after the player has taken damage. Both of the score and health values appear on the top left of the game screen.

Atthis point, the game had finished its first stage of development. Entering the second phase introduced the main menu screen, which appears when booting up the game and sends the players into the game when the ‘START’ button is pressed. I also implemented a death screen, which appears when the player dies in the game and allows the players to send themselves to the main menu screen if they press the space bar.

After this, sprites and sounds were added to give the game more appeal. Sounds were added for shooting bullets, bullets hitting an enemy, an enemy dying, and the player getting hit. I also added background music for the death screen and gameplay. Sprites were introduced for the player, the gun, enemies (all types), bullets, healthpacks, game background, crosshair, title screen, and game over screen. What resulted was a far more appealing game appearance and feel.

Lastly, after an assessment of issues following user testing, I noticed that players would often find it hard to figure out the controls. My way around this was to add a sprite which sticks to the game’s floor that shows the control layout. After this, my game was pretty much finished.

I have had so much fun working on this game, I would love to work on it further. I have plenty ideas for what I might do for it, such as an enemy wave system, more challenges, high scores with a leaderboard, and a boss fight.

Thank you for reading all that, enjoy some pretty Weird Fishes.

You can also try the original as well. Key word on try.