Midnight Ceiling

So, last year I spent a month making a game about fishing in a flooded city. I tend to make games that force players to be stressed! Fast paced actiony games that ask for quick reactions and punish mistakes - and I like making those games. But I've been learning how to use new tools, and I want to push myself to learn new approaches to design as well, so I tried to make something slower paced and more, sort-of, artsy. 

The original version of this was a fishing game about collecting random fish to feed yourself and a collection of stranded animals, as well as fishing up objects which would have dark souls-esque descriptions which hint at the state of the world. It had day-night cycles, multiple stages, a big slow moving monster which chased you, and a win and lose state. Whilst I liked a lot of the elements, it was too bulky and weird and wasn't fun enough to warrant the repetitive nature, but wasn't interesting enough to warrant the low-fun. 

So I benched it. But recently I came back to it and realised that at the heart was a game about slowly exploring and fishing for scraps of text. With that as the core I scrapped most of the gamey-er elements like the day-night cycle, the enemy, survival stuff, even the title screen. I replaced the PS1 style pixelized graphics in favour of noir outlines, and refocused the game as a game about sending messages into the void. you can fish up messages sent by other players, and even respond, but that response just becomes another message in the pool. 

I don't know if this is a good mechanic, or a good game in general, but I like it, and am happy with where the game stands as of now.