HTHRFLWRS #10 - The Moneysworth Phase

Hi y’all! To start off, I want to let you know about a Kickstarter that’s near and dear to my heart: Crucible of Aether! It’s an extremely crunchy Morrowind-inspired TTRPG about, among other things, a Victorian society built upon an eldritch landscape of living metal; a group of people trying to end death by removing people's souls; and Roman werewolves doing WWE opera. It’s already over 200% funded, and the next stretch goal is a short story written by Cohost’s own Jess Levine!

Check it out, it’s sick as hell!

Progress has been going well in FISH FEAR ME! Last week, I implemented the final boss of the game, and now I’ve entered a phase of development I’m calling “the moneysworth phase” — in short, the part where I put enough stuff in the game that people feel they got their money’s worth. (God forbid a five dollar game primarily made by one person only have ten hours of content. I digress.) This phase includes answering all the big questions the game sets forth: what happens when you finally kill the Leviathan? Who are you paying your life debt to? And wouldn’t it be sick if each boat had a golden variant that you unlocked by beating the final boss with it? To which I answer: it would be extremely sick.

The development roadmap from here is, essentially:

• Continue the moneysworth phase: round out the post-game content, give a satisfying narrative payoff, add a bunch of little things to do along the way. Eight more boats, fifteen more items, ten more lures, sixteen more fish.

• Raise the early-game skill floor some, via an actual tutorial and some more UX improvements. The game is already much more approachable than the beta, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement here.

• Smooth out some of the harsher knowledge grinds via gameplay challenges

Something mildly disappointing to me, looking at this list, is nearly everything on it makes the game better as a product. I’m doing my best to hold on to what makes it good as an art piece — the parts of it that are intentionally inscrutable, ugly, and weird, all in pursuit of an aesthetic experience of a slow delve into the true unknown — but I do find myself being forced to sand off a beloved rough edge now and then. My ideal version of this game is inscrutable and difficult from the get-go, but it turns out that “being forced to stumble through the dark from the very start” isn’t generally enjoyed by players. C’est la vie.

Besides, we do still get there in the end! The final area has no map, is full of inscrutable mechanics, and forces the player to learn five entirely new systems at the same time or die. Have you read all the lure descriptions fully? You’d better check them again, because it’s the only way through the BONE MAZE! This is the kind of sicko shit I adore making, and I’m already planning out post-launch content that leans even further in this direction.

Question of the week: What game do you appreciate for being abrasive? What game do you wish were more inscrutable? Reply to this email and let me know!

That’s all for this time! Thanks for reading!

— Heather Flowers

Want to respond to the discussion questions? Email me at heatherflowersbusiness@gmail.com!