Reviews

Review by Bananalazer all reviews by Bananalazer

It's a very quick and short game, but it has some good ideas. I maybe would have changed the main mechanic a bit. I like the fact that you have a limited amount of eating, but combined with the time limit it makes going for high scores really random. Maybe it would have been fun to not end the game immediately when 4 fish are eaten, but have a timer on each fish you eat. So when you eat a fish, a certain amount of time passes before you can eat the next one. (and if you eat one while still full you lose) This would make the game more interesting and would play into avoiding some low scoring fish while eating high scoring ones.

I think this is one of the better genre implementations because it's tied to a fable quite well.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 5

Review by Nabio all reviews by Nabio

Overall: 3/5

The game is a bird that needs to eat all fish in a limited time. Contrary to the story's bird, which didn't eat any fish. It reminded me of "feeding frenzy" with a simpler mechanic. Keeping that in mind, this game was also arcade style and current implementation of this game has potential to implement complexer mechanic, or rewards to build on the idea. However at this implementation, there is not much to do, which gets a score of 3 in sense that it can be improved and it managed to implement all the elements, considering the limitted time of the game jam.

Artistical: 2/5

Although it has the fable style and a rainbow colored snail, there doesn't seem that enough is paid attention on other element of the game. Like the bird and fish don't have transparent background. The snail can be (and mostly be skipped), so one rule of the game wont be visible unless you fail the game.

Technical:2/5

The game doesn't invent or try a new mechanic. The current mechanic is simple however can be expanded and worked on.
The chart at the end is also a good implementation of the rules of the game jam. Although not enough time is let for the player to eat fish, to get a meaningful chart result.

Genre: 3/5

The game is arcady and I can see, if developed it can become a good time killing game, that requires skill. If deployed on a mobile device it can be a nice way to kill a few minutes while waiting in a queue.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 2 Technical 2 Genre 3

Review by victorwss all reviews by victorwss

1. Rules implementation

1.1. Animals:
The game is essentially a fishing game as its core concept. The player is the Heron, a vulture or bat or something like that.

1.2. Fable:
It is a game of animals, but this don't make it a fable. There is some idea about ending up being hungry for being too picky. The submissions comments tell what is the fable, but it isn't really all in the game as it should be.

1.3. Iridiscence:
There is a snail flashing colors when you finish a level with zero points. However, this is definitely not a core game concept and flashing colors is not the same as being iridiscent.

1.4. Speech Balloons:
Some speech balloons when you finish the game, but they are completely dispensable and don't tell anything really useful.

1.5. Chart:
There is a chart about which fishes you took while playing. However, with so few data to present there, it becomes almost irrelevant.

1.6. 2-players:
Not implemented.

2. Game concept and idea

The idea is in principle good, but it needs a lot of work to turn into something reasonable.

You only have a few seconds to fish, and with so few time to react, think, plan or anything, it is much more a luck game giving a random score for having the player fly around randomly than anything else.

3. Technical and code

The highscores are a lie. If you exit the game, they'll be resetted. Also, what does having a highscore really mean here?

If you are moving when the time runs out, you could accidentally skip the dialog and the bar chart screens.

The code is much more complicated than it needed to be.

3. Graphics

Sorry for being sincere, but the graphics are... well... The 14th in the ranking in my opinion.

I understand that pixelated games have some charm, but this charm doesn't bears fruit here, it severely degrades the game instead. It would be much better if the graphics were not so heavily pixelated even if the sprites were crudely hand-drawn.

Also, the fact that the sprites aren't transparent, either by accident or on purpose, only contributes for the uglyness of the game.

4. Audio

No audio.

5. Fun

The game is not fun. Could be with some small changes, like having more time to catch more and better pray.

6. Suggestions for improvements

* Improve the graphical resolution and abandon the pixelation or at least increase the resolution.

* Make the sprites have transparent areas.

* Redraw all the sprites. Even having hand-drawn sprites made by some kid would be better than this.

* More time to do more stuff. This way it would be much less than a luck 11-second game about the player just trying to catch anything at all and would be instead a game where the player should at least minimally elaborate some sort of meaningful winning play strategy and have time to enjoy it.

* In your submission text, you tell people to change some #define's to experiment playing with more time or more pray. Don't do that. Provide options inside the game instead of this. People aren't expected to have to change the source code or recompile it if they want a different playing experience, they are expected to change some values in some config menu instead.

* Properly save and load the high-scores in order to make them not a lie.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 2

Review by KillerWasp all reviews by KillerWasp

Errors in your codes. I can't compile it.
You must fix it.

In the last i must fix all. I Add 'extern' for arrays in two files of headers, send a direct 'game.cfg' string and change the real path for the font, all for run the game.

Somewhat disappointing, it doesn't feel like you're playing an old video game console, more like a gaming experiment full of glitches.

fish suddenly appear randomly on either side of the screen, and if they appear on the edge, bye-bye fish. There are no animations, and the heron looks like a moving sticker. The rendering seems to fail because the numbers blink, and depending on how I grab it, you can delete them with other windows, fail for change the keys. There is no delay after the game and you never get to see the result on the bar graph.

at least it has collisions for the fish and the heron can't get off the screen. The scoring and bar graph system works well. Collisions between the heron and the fish seem to fail, or only work with the upper wing.
You have to improve the AI so that they don't get stuck, show the score even if you don't enter High Scores, save High Scores to disk, and be able to eat more than 8 fish so that the bar graph has any meaning, same for the design of maps.

There is no music or audio. There is no dialogue or iridescence.
There is no relationship with the fables, they are only animals, they don't even speak.

Finally, you had said something about a snail, I never saw them. The action button does not work or does not work.

the game has not been attractive in any way.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 1 Technical 4 Genre 2

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

The Heron and the Fish is short, it's to the point, and it makes me a little hungry. Am always a fan of games about eating. This game is art made with old hardware nostalgia at heart, which makes it a bit before my time. Still, I can see and feel the appeal of it.

I like that it is a game of patience - a rarity. You have to wait for the high-value fish to appear and keep yourself from gorging on small-fry. The problem is that I can't guess the value of different fish just by looking at them, and even thought that I was meant to avoid the pointed fish with dangerous-looking triangle shaped mouths. A list of fish and their point values would have been a great reference in game.

I also wish that I could have eaten 40 fish instead of 4, even if that would have defeated the point of the game. This would have given the graph at the end a bit more statistical significance.

In the end, there wasn't much challenge except for that which the player imposes on themselves. Personally, I'm the kind of heron who would get its fill of the small fish and call it a night. Still, a stylistically attractive piece worth playing.

"So full!"

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None