Project Overview

Fish Frenzy Mania was the first project at Storm8 on which I was involved from start to finish.

The game mechanics were relatively complex for a casual match-3 game. When players matched pieces, they would not all be cleared, but would combine into a single larger piece. (e.g. 3 size-1 pieces would combine into a size-3 piece.) When a piece reached size 8, it would explode, and grow all adjacent pieces by 1 size.

The game ended up being fish-themed, which was determined through user polling separately from the mechanics. A fish-themed game didn't really fit with a game based around making things grow and explode, (overfeeding goldfish notwithstanding,) so making it work was one of the big challenges we faced.

My responsibilities included:

  • Initial specs for core mechanics and features during pre-production.
  • Primary contact for gameplay iteration during extensive prototyping phase.
  • Playtesting, spec upkeep, and level creation during principal development.
  • Design and spec work for new obstacles and game modes.
  • Post-release level design and tuning.

    Platform

    iOS

    Where

    Storm8

    My Role

    Game Designer

    Timeline

    Mar 2014-Oct 2014

     
     

    Game Modes

    The game modes for Fish Frenzy Mania mostly stuck to tried and true modes for match-3 games in the app store. We didn't have many distinct modes, in fact, launching with just two:

    • Recipe Mode: The default game mode. Collect the game pieces, (a.k.a. "bubbles,") that are listed in the recipe panel at the top of the screen.
    • Treasure Mode: This game's version of a "digging" mode, a mode which was common across Storm8's other match-3 entries. This version had players digging through rocks and sand to collect sunken treasure. Sand could be cleared with an adjacent match, but rocks required players to make a bubble explode next to them.
     
     

    Post-launch, I wanted to create a new antagonist for our game to accompany a new game mode. Appropriately, considering I would later be hired by PopCap Games, I looked at Bejeweled 3's Ice Storm mode for inspiration.

    The result, which we called the Octopus Battle, required players to clear all of the octopus' tentacles from the screen. Every few turns they would grow longer, but by exploding bubbles next to them, players gradually forced them off the board. All tentacles would have to be removed within the move count allotted to win.

    I'll add that the Octopus Battle music, (which I didn't make, but I love enough to mention,) is a fantastic sea-shanty tune that perfectly fit the mood of these levels.

    Obstacles

    Obstacles in Fish Frenzy Mania started out pretty standard, sticking to mechanics that had worked in Storm8's other games.  Some of them you can see in the game mode pictures above:

    • Columns: These can't be moved, and block spaces on the board. They can be damaged by adjacent explosions.
    • Sand & Rocks: As mentioned, sand can be cleared with an adjacent match. Rocks require an adjacent explosion.
    • Sea Mines: These fall to fill space, and have a countdown timer. If the timer reaches zero, they explode, and the level immediately ends. They're a pretty nasty obstacle.

    In the above images, you can see some of the more original obstacles that we designed later on:

    • Seaweed: Bubbles that end a turn in green seaweed grow by one level.
    • Shrinkweed: The opposite of seaweed, red shrinkweed shrinks the bubble inside it by one level each turn.
    • Crabs: Crabs are nasty. They eat the largest bubble on the board that they can find each turn. You can stun them by matching next to them, though, and if you match next to a stunned crab, it disappears. We later had tougher variants of these guys:
      • Armored Crabs require you to explode a bubble next to them to knock their armor off before they can be stunned.
      • Squid act like crabs, but leave behind an ink blot whenever they move. Ink can be cleared like sand.
    • Anemones: Looking more like Mario's piranha plants, anemones eat the piece in front of them each turn. Conveniently, this includes crabs, so you can often lure one in front of an anemone to defeat the crab.
    • Chains & Anchors: Chains permanently block off sections of the board. Pieces cannot fall around or through them. Some chains have anchors attached; exploding a bubble next to the anchor destroys it and removes the attached chain from the board.
    • Clams: When a bubble explodes next to a clam, the clam spits out five pieces of its assigned color. Conveniently, clams can also be activated by anemones, as in the above-right image.

    As mentioned, the fish theme didn't really fit the core game mechanics, but we were proud of our ability to theme the obstacles to neatly fit the mechanics involved.