
On The Line
A fishing horror game for a 10 day Game Jam with Figerox.
I spent approximately 100 hours on this project - it tested all my creativity, understanding of game design, 2D stop motion animation implementation, and gruelling back to back image creation.
It is one of my proudest achievements to date that we finished 2nd in creativity in the jam.
The Story
A fisherman has parked up in the arctic circle, keen to get started. However, they are immediately captured by an ice tribal community. This tribe have been feeding fish to this monster to prevent them getting eaten themselves. However, the fish have slowly been corrupting, becoming armed with teeth and increasingly aggressive and dangerous. Having lost too many of their own tribes people to the corrupt fish, they decided to make the fisherman fish instead.
If you stop fishing, the tribe will kill you.
If you let free untainted fish, the monster/boss will lose his patience and eat you.
If you reel in a tainted fish, you will be killed.
There’s no winning in this game - only delaying the inevitable!
Initial concept for the gameplay screen
Polished gameplay screen. We decluttered what was already a visually complex screen, and swapped the boss to the other side so he was the main threat.
Trible leader design
Mutant boss design
Untainted crab
Tainted crab
Crab jumpscare screen
Untainted fish
Tainted fish development
Final tainted fish - The design involved combining a seahorse, angler fish and jerboa legs concept into something that would hold the ice from underneath.
Tainted fish jumpscare
Untainted squid
Tainted squid development
Tainted squid final - this design involved combining a chicken arm and a dinosaur style spine. The eye is from a ghost shark, and the squid beak extends out.
Squid jumpscare development
Tainted squid jumpscare
Logo/ main menu drafts
Main menu screen final - this design was placed into the tainted fish design (take a look at the tail)
We had a stats screen at the end to show your success (or failure).
How to play instructions screen
Final death screen - this was created to work with all the characters, but primarily with the boss. The lore is that the boss used to be a fisherman himself (he is wearing the same outfits as the main player), hence the appearance of a uvula which is not found in fish.
Bubble anomaly which implies a secretly tainted fish - which needs to be spotted by the player
Horn anomaly example - the anomalies appear randomly in various locations on the fish to make it harder.
A poisoned looking scratch anomaly