I’m feeling pretty great about announcing that game 2 of my 12 games in 12 months challenge is now ready! You can get Orbit Angler now on Itch.io https://tommusrhodus.itch.io/orbit-angler

It’s a game about launching a fish into orbit and trying to keep it there as long as possible, and it’s surprisingly moreish. This game though makes firm use of the crank, there’s no alternative control scheme, it’s also (at time of writing) needing a bunch more polish.

Development

Development went well for this one, learnt a bunch about offsetting graphics on the playdate to allow for screen scrolling, as well as more about maths and geometry than I ever did in high school.

The planet acts as an anchor point, all “physics” point right back to the middle, gravity is applied per frame to Angler, and a tiny TINY amount of friction is applied to ensure that the game actually has an end state. Without friction, it was possible to drift forever in space, which whilst a hilarious side-effect, was pretty boring overall.

Future Plans

The current build is completely free and needs some more polishing work. I’d like to add a credits screen in-game, a “how to play” section and some more graphical polish.

After that I’ll build in highscore tracking and sell that build for $2 like my previous game, Legally Distinct, Planetary Based, Suika Game Clone for Playdate. This time though, I’m thinking of hiring an illustrator to put together an intro comic for the game, I think there could be some fun there and would be worth the investment.