Keepin' it Reel Fishing

Hi there. 

My name’s C.J. I’m the head of Polyhedron Productions and the designer/audio-person on Keepin’ it Reel Fishing, the game our studio is developing for Playdate.

Keepin’ it Reel Fishing isn’t actually a fishing game. Well, okay… technically it is, but it’s also a post-apocalyptic comedy trash collection game. We’ll get deeper into what that means in a moment but first…

// Why Playdate?

If you haven’t played with the Playdate yet, it’s a retro-inspired handheld console made by Panic. Its standout quirks are the 1-bit screen and the crank input on the side. It’s small, colorful, and charming as heck. People tend to fall in love with it almost instantly. I sure did.

It’s also a fully featured devkit with robust SDK support, which means anyone can create new games for it, and a vibrant community has sprung up since its launch.

I didn’t get my hands on one until September 2023. I played through the 24 pre-installed games (Season 1) and loved seeing new stuff from industry friends and others.

And I really appreciate how the constraints of the hardware spark creativity. I’ve wanted to make something for it since the day it arrived.

// “Everybody comes up with fishing…”

In episode 2 of the Playdate podcast, Mark Lentz, the producer on the team that made the Season 1 game Whitewater Wipeout, dropped this gem:

“Everybody, as soon as they hold it… they’re immediately inspired to make something that maybe no one else had thought about. Except for fishing. Everybody comes up with fishing…”

(Source: https://podcast.play.date/episodes/s01e02)

Except fishing was not the first concept we came up with.

In an initial creative session, Sarah – the project’s art lead – and I pitched several ideas. Fishing was, like, fifth on the list (after a pencil sharpening sim). Maybe we’ll get a chance to return to those someday. But several things happened that pushed us toward making a fishing game.

We realized when everybody thinks somebody else is making a fishing game, nobody makes a fishing game.

This has since changed with the release of Reel-istic Fishing by ToadleyUnderControl and, arguably, Sweet Baby’s Reel Steal (or as I like to call it, Fishin’: Impossible). But the fact remains the platform with a crank has a paucity of fishing games.

We then asked ourselves, “Even if everyone else was making a fishing game, what is the fishing game nobody would make?”

The answer? One with no fish.

// “I know the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully.” (George W. Bush)

Okay, so if there aren’t any fish in this fishing game, what the hell will players catch?

If it’s not already obvious: garbage.

Many fishing mini-games have a few trash items for humor. We’ve all seen these – the empty tin can, the old boot, the spare tire. Disappointment is funny!

But they still have fish.

What if we kept rolling with the trash-only idea? What other sort of castoffs could we include? What if the debris got larger and more absurd? What if we made the unholy love-child of Get Bass and Trash Panic?

// A Quick Admission

I have a weird obsession with litter. And it turns out I’m not the only one.

Scuba diving “treasure hunters” were hitting the multi-million (!!) subscriber mark on YouTube years ago and magnet fishing seemed to blossom as a hobby during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Truth is, modern industry manufactures literal boatloads of stuff and we – as modern consumers – use, lose, or discard a lot of it, sometimes in the wrong places.

There’s a sense of excitement that comes from waiting and wondering what sort of flotsam might get pulled out of the weeds and waters next, a perverse joy in discovering and recovering detritus.

And when I’m not making video games, I’m usually out picking up empty beer cans from the side of the road; once I’ve gathered enough, I melt them down in a furnace and cast them into aluminum dodecahedrons.

Because if you’re going to start a company called “Polyhedron Productions” you’d better produce some, right?

(By the way, we’re in the process of making larger versions of these for eventual sale as studio merch. Livin’ that circular economy, baby!)

So, yeah, collecting junk felt like a natural fit. But it still wasn’t the top concept until one final piece fell into place, like a flaccid pink Tetris block.

// Do the Worm

Back to that brainstorming meeting. Sarah was doodling as we batted ideas back and forth. Trash fishing was mentioned and she quickly mocked up a logo.

We chuckled about it and moved on, until a few hours later I asked, “What if it was a worm on the hook instead of a shoe?”

Half a day later, she posted the character sketch that convinced us we couldn’t not make the fishing game first.

It took a while to settle on a name, but Wiggly P. Diggler was the perfect mascot for a game about pulling up post-consumer waste in a tranquil dystopia.

// Meet the Team

Once we knew roughly what we wanted to make, we recruited Scott as our lead programmer.

I’d worked with him before, on AAA shooters but also on joke game jam projects like Alien Falcon and Rainforest Stunt Dozer!!

Scott’s a damn good engineer, is creative with a slightly warped sense of humor, and was dabbling in Playdate dev on the side. He’s also a fan of the old Dreamcast fishing games and had a prototype up and running within days of my reaching out.

And Gwendell was a recent San Jose State grad who’d proven his project management chops on a short puzzle-platformer called Pliant, made as part of Gameheads Oakland’s Summer Accelerator Program.

PM and QA duties on this game would further hone that experience and provide another credit as he started his career as a professional developer.

// Next Steps

Now that we have the core team assembled and a fleshed out design spec (with help from Xalavier Nelson Jr., designer of Recommendation Dog), we’re working on a vertical slice. The goal is to get all the core gameplay features in and polish about 10% of the content to 90% of the desired final quality.

Using the built-in accelerometer, Scott put together a first-person perspective of the pole and line. 

Sarah has been illustrating assets for catch items and location backgrounds, and churning out key art for upcoming events where we’ll be doing our first public playtests. 

I’m padding out the first draft catch list and arranging music/SFX. 

And Gwendell is diligently testing builds and tracking the team’s progress.

It’s still early days in the project’s development, but we’re confident we’ll deliver something that captures that classic arcade fun, generates anticipation for every silly catch, and a compulsion to cast the line just one more time.

And, fingers crossed, it’ll also be a thought-provoking experience that still makes you laugh.

We’ll be posting more as the bits and pieces come online, but I’ll close out this post with the final part of Lentz’ podcast quote. He said:

“That doesn’t mean someone can’t make the best fishing game, because I’m sure there is a fishing game. I’m sure of it.”

Challenge accepted.

Keep on keepin' it reel, y'all.