A chill fishing RPG to escape the world for a time.
Game Geeks News is proud to bring you another great gaming project currently running on Kickstarter. Connor Moran is a CNU graduate with a degree in Computer Science who loves stories, games, DND and coding. He, along with Kellen Kincaid (Chief Programmer) and Emma Rosen (Media Manager) have recently launched their very own Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds to bring this exciting game to Steam.
Welcome to Old Whale Tale, a game of relaxing and escaping the world for a time. In this pixel RPG, you will play as an old retired fishing captain living in his small island home in the South Pacific, surviving off the fish you catch and sell. Whether you go fishing on your boat, prepare meals from ingredients you collect, relax on your island, or seek the old tales of the fisherman’s past, is up to you.
Alone in your rickety house at night, you prepare for the evening. The house is nothing special. A rectangle of dark wood and old steel nails with an attic raised 5 feet off the ground sitting near the middle of an islet about twice the size of the house itself. Inside, a bathroom smelling of salt and soap, with a barely functional mirror. A plain bedroom. The best clothes are kept in the drawer, the working clothes under the bed. Memories hang on the walls, and my father’s old swing arm lamp sits on the bed stand, as reliable as old salt. A kitchen, though methodically cleaned after every meal, will never lose the stench of fish. The sink.. always leaking as a food bowl sits on the floor next to the cupboards and cutting board. He enjoys the less savoury scraps left after the preparation of any meal.
A living room consisting of the best reclining chair this world has to offer, a radio, a coffee table with a pipe stand, and a pointless guest couch. The fireplace sits on the east wall, facing the recliner, and a window with the best view of the ocean on the south wall. And an office, connected to the living room, contains my life’s work. Charts and bills, sketches and maps, ledgers, stamps, letters, contracts, ink and paper. All are neatly organized in the drawers of the office desk. Books of fishing and old tales from childhood sit on the bookshelves of the north wall.
The generator under the house jolts to life with a whir and a few good clangs. The couple lamps in the kitchen and living room flicker on, emanating their trademark buzz. The clock on the wall indicates 8 o’clock. Outside, it starts to gently rain, the drops clicking against the salt-crusted windows and shingled roof. Thunder rumbles in the distance. This night will be cooler than most nights, so you light up a fire in the fireplace using some dried driftwood and sit back in the greatest reclining chair the world has ever seen. You sip on a mug of Cava and read yesterday’s newspaper as the radio relays the rugby game in between periods of music and news. You slowly drift to sleep thinking of all the fish you’ll catch tomorrow.
In Old Whale Tale, you will be living on a small islet in an old raised wooden beach house somewhere in the South Pacific. There are a few essential things to remember and maintain if your peaceful existence is to continue, the first of which is your health. Health is divided into 3 pillars, Hydration, Nutrition, and Mentality. Should one of these pillars start to wane, performance will deteriorate, actions become slower and harder, and letting a pillar completely crumble will have more.. permanent consequences.
For the Nutrition Pillar, whether you buy food or catch it from the seas, you must eat every now and then. The body slows on an empty stomach, and going long periods without food can be dangerous. Luckily for you, creating meals in your kitchen is easy and can slow the inevitable. You can create meals by combining ingredients stored in your fridge and cabinets to make authentic island cuisine, or more.. experimental dish options. In a pinch, you can even cook fish on your boat, so there’s no excuse not to eat!
Hydration is the next pillar and is even more important than eating. A day without food is nothing compared to a day without water. To keep your hydration in check, and stave off the deleterious effects of dehydration, you’ll be able to collect rainwater in buckets outside and add them to your house’s water tanks. Just remember to collect the buckets after it rains.
Alternatively, drinks can be bought from your good old pal Brunt who comes by every so often to check in on you and sell goods from the nearby town. You can even sell your fish.
The last pillar that must be maintained is your Mentality. Doing long labour intensive work, eating old food, bathing in saltwater or standing out in the rain can be detrimental to your mental well-being. Bad things happen to those with a poor outlook on life. So relax, eat good food, listen to music and sit in that world-class reclining chair. You wouldn’t want your past creeping up on you at a moment of mental instability..
Island Maintenance
In addition to maintaining your health, the islet home needs to be maintained as well. The old generator powering your house may break down every now and then, requiring you to fix it. The salt and freshwater tanks need periodic refilling to provide water for cooking, bathing and drinking.
Fishing
Once the necessities are taken care of, you can consider going on a fishing expedition. Fishing is the core of everything. The self-sustaining loop of life. Fishing can help reduce stress, and the fish you catch can be eaten or sold for money. Continue long enough, and eventually, you can expand your endeavours to catch much.. much bigger fish.
You start off with the basics: a simple medium action rod, some lures and a good line. Fish care about the kind of bait you use and how you use it. Reel in bursts to attract different fish, and use larger rigs to potentially attract larger fish. Once a fish bites, you have to set the hook, and then the fish fight commences with the fish trying to burst away, throw the hook, or otherwise snap the line. Reel only when tension is low, and let the line’s drag setting do the rest. Eventually, any fish will tire out.
When you catch a fish, you’ll be able to view that fish in detail in your ever-expanding fish encyclopedia. This will keep a record of all the different fish you’ve caught, the biggest of that type you’ve caught, a detailed sketch of the fish, and the properties you’ve learned about it like where it lives, what it eats, and how to catch it. You might even be able to sell this information..
Many different rods, lines, baits and lures will be available for purchase to upgrade your fishing experience. Stronger lines prevent snapping, leaders can protect against the line snapping from fish with sharp teeth, different rods can provide greater casting distance and strength, different lures and bait provide greater versatility in fish enticement, and upgrades to the boat can be bought like a fish cooler to store more fish on your ventures.
The fish you bring back from your fishing expeditions can be stored in the fridge or freezer, and you can decide to eat them or save them for selling to good ol’ Brunt. The money you make from selling fish will sustain your continued existence on the islet.
Sailing
Speaking of fishing, to get to those juicy fishing spots, you’ll be able to sail around open-world style on your always-reliable Arno Day fishing boat. Navigate using nothing more than a sextant and compass, along with your map of the massive Atoll and surrounding waters. Different locations will have varying fish populations.
The largest of fish will live around the drop-off and open water while smaller more colourful fish will be around shallow reefs. Be wary though, getting caught in a large storm while out to sea is very risky. Also, you must ensure you’ll have enough water and fuel to get back home, or you may need to radio in for help.
Town
In addition to discovering juicy fishing spots, you’ll be able to sail to other islands, exploring them for interesting trinkets, people and lore. You can even sail to the main island home to [redacted] Town, the economic and political heart of the Atoll. It’s here you can sell fish at a premium, visit the various shops for food, island upgrades, fishing equipment, and get fishing contracts to catch a number of fish of a specific type before the given deadline to receive even more money. You’ll have to come to the main island at least once a month to pay the mortgage on your islet house.
The core focus of the game is to relax in your islet home, go fishing and escape the world for a time. To capture that feeling of being on your own, in your small house by the fireplace listening to the radio while it rains outside. It can last infinitely, as long as you want. But for those not satisfied with the quiet peaceful existence of island life, for those that want more, there is an.. alternative. A dark and dangerous path to look back into the fishers past. Strange things can happen at odd times. Reveal the secrets buried with time, and you can reach an end. To get started, just watch the time go by.
By the end of the planned 9-10month development, Connor and the team would launch the game on STEAM for Windows and Mac users.
The first 4.5 -5 months were all planning and research, with only serious programming beginning around December. Over 160 fish have been researched and compiled for use in the project, including information like fish names, scientific name, max size, subfamily, diet, descriptions, depth ranges, human use, weight, and active hours. Furniture, appliances, and other items are accurate to the time period. All the major systems have been planned out, acting as a quasi blueprint. The team had cite plans drawn up, fishing techniques and atoll formation researched, and the story timeline planned out.
Much of the programming done in the latter half of the cycle was building the building blocks of the game. The core systems like the weather, fishing, moving from room to room, information systems, pathing/walking, saving/loading, inventories, health state/ management, cameras, bills, Items, debugging, house rooms, an island scene, and more are all implemented. However, a lot of the front end (sprites, menu imagery, sound) tied to these systems are in their infancy. They made the bone, but the meat was too expensive or took longer to build than expected.
Risks and challenges
Old Tales LLC have never released a game on steam, nor publicly raised funds to make a game. This whole experience is completely new, and all the risks associated with developing a game for the first time will apply — The biggest risk, however, is time. It’s always hard to judge when a game will be complete, especially for a new crew. If funds dry up before the game is complete, development could slow to a crawl, and the release date could be delayed even further. With all that being said, they can guarantee that if the campaign we’re funded, there will be a complete game. They’re optimistic that in 9 months’ time the game will be complete and released on steam.
For more information, and to back this project. Visit their Kickstarter page. Pledges start from as little as a few dollars, which will get your name in the credits, but to get your very own copy of Old Whale Tale will set you back just $25. Other rewards are available which include naming a town character or naming a tortoise, so be sure to check out their rewards.
