This week at Mutant, we're thinking with portals and talking about story!

Weekly Dev Update #19
Week of August 24

This week at Mutant… we shifted some gears to talk about what the story means in Kaiju Fishing and how we can better use the environment to take advantage of the ultimate goal: catching and fighting big monsters and fish.

This will be a behind-the-development look at our story process and how Kaiju Fishing has changed and continues to evolve.

A BRIEF HISTORY
From the beginning, Kaiju Fishing has always been a story about the environment. We drew on many monster movie concepts that basically boil down to: humans treated the Earth badly and now monsters either want to live here or they want to save the world from humans. From Godzilla to Pacific Rim to even some other inspirations for this game like Disney’s Moana. Something in the world is out of balance, your adventure is to face these monsters and restore the world.

The first draft waaay back at the start was a very bleak take on the world - honestly. If you look back to the Kickstarter we ran for this concept a year ago, it was much more akin to Shadow of the Colossus (even in name, Shadow of the Leviathan) and had a much darker tone overall.

We’ve since abandoned that in favor of a lighter fishing adventure with more focus on fishing and less focus on brooding cinematics.

This new direction already opened the game up to being a more fun world. We laid out plans for fun characters, more wild concepts for fish (that could be slightly goofy too), and started fresh on a more vibrant art style. Runa got a pet, Skipper, and we got a lot of joy out of imagining the side characters that could populate the areas - like these round, lovable Seals.

I still love them.

And before you get worried about their fate, they’ll still be involved. Promise.

From there, the next narrative pitch was a much more narrative-focused game - with a lot of nods and inspiration from Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time. It was a direction that felt good to imagine because it was epic. The world was lively and the adventure’s scale was huge. That was, in truth, probably always a bit ambitious for us. We're only four people and we’d like to finish this game sometime in the next year, not the next decade. Someday maybe we’ll make an art-book out of the original story and release it. For now, it will likely stay mostly a secret as we shifted once more. Some of it will become "legend" in the new context and will be treated as history of the world, which is kind of nice from a lore-writing perspective.

A moment of clarity helped us here after I re-watched Ponyo for the millionth time. That combined with listening to the first Pacific Rim music gave us a breakthrough.

THINKING WITH PORTALS
The world of Kaiju Fishing in our minds has always been a magical place where spirits and mystery are plentiful. We wanted very much to elevate fishing into the “fantasy” category. The latest concept is a world where the past is flooded and these creatures roam through rifts/portals that are all around. The original concepts for the different villages will be there… but under the ocean.

We immediately jumped to this idea as a way to amplify fishing. We have always been chasing the question "How can we ramp up fishing to make it more epic and fantastic?" The first answer for us was obvious: make them bigger. Way bigger. Instead of reeling them in, they drag the boat. The next step is entirely about the context for where they come from and how we can push the limits on exploring for new fishing zones.

And so we ended up discussing portals to another dimension, like Pacific Rim. The fish come and go through them, they can be hooked through them, and more portals can be discovered or opened through small puzzles around the world. This direction gives us a lot of freedom with the world to really open it up with new things to discover. It also provides us with a clear way to encourage discovery and visually show where your next fishing spot might be. Whatever we would lose in the "epic" narrative, we would gain even more in the gameplay. And we don't lose out on most of the key characters we want to bring to life. In fact, we think this new context gives them a lot of shared interests in the world.

So that's where we're at now. The scope feels better and we get to really dig into what makes fishing in Kaiju Fishing so fantastic and magical.

DEMO UPDATES COMING SOON!?
In the coming weeks, we want to push an update to the Demo of Kaiju Fishing that includes a lot.

• We’ll be showcasing Medium sized fish for the first time, something we’re very excited about. These fish will test you with bigger attacks and more movement.
• Lots of bug-fixes and Quality of Life things.
• Our visuals will have received a decently big update.
• Crafting will be available in a small dose to create new baits.
• Mouse and Keyboard controls!
• And hopefully some narrative clues will find their way in.

Now… with that deadline in mind you might be thinking ‘That’s right about when the next Steam Festival will be!’ And you’d be right... BUT! We won’t be applying to be featured in the October Festival. We’re hoping to make a big splash with our Demo updates even without the Festival’s featuring and we’ll need a lot of help to do that. We’ll be sharing more on social media with ways that you (yes, you!) can help us by streaming and sharing your experience with the game. We’ll also be looking to set up our own streaming times for you to come say hi to us too!

No, we want to push for an even bigger reveal and we won’t be quite there in a month. Steam announced recently that games can only be featured in Festivals once per year going forward so we want to pick our moment carefully. For the Spring Festival however...

Let’s just say, we’re very much looking forward to that opportunity.

FOLLOW US FOR MORE
That's all for now. We have more in the works and will share more as it comes. Be sure to share the game with your friends to get the word out about KAIJU FISHING. As always, thanks for reading! Stay safe out there. <3

If you want to stay up to date with KAIJU FISHING, you can follow us on Twitter @MutantStudios and/or Wishlist the game on Steam. You can also join our Discord.