Game Concept

[erlend-sh]

While I'm the one kicking off this project and guiding its initial design, I'd like to note upfront that I am not very opinionated when it comes to racing games. In fact, I'm not a general racing game enthusiast, but I do love a good arcade racer! There's a natural fit for a Mario Kart -ish game in the Fish Folk universe, powercharged by our expertise in moddability and multiplayer, so that's the initial prompt we're setting out to explore in this game prototype.

As a true racing game afficionado, I will defer to @nateplays95 on all design decisions relating to game feel and really anything else he wants to take ownership of in this design. I'm just providing a fish-shaped skeleton to start us off with. What I care most about is scope, so that we can actually produce something fun within a reasonable timeline.

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Bumpy jetski brawler ⁉️

As a point of reference to get us started, I've been thinking of an old classic I had a lot of fun with way back in the day, called 1Xtreme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EselwQ50DM

This game mixes racing with a bit of brawling, which fits in with the combative nature of our other fish games.
here's a little origins storyboard we made for Jumpy.

1Xtreme was a response to a similar title that preceded it, called Road Rash:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHKEiPvayKI

Another contemporary of the era was the rocket-fueled Wipeout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6CeNHK_cvU

Other classics in a similar vein include F-Zero X (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0yu6cD5PM) and Hydro Thunder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ2f6g_yqZ4).
What I'm imagining here is an underwater game, with our fish people racing with little water scooters roughly the size of bikes, so that they have room to kick/punch each other whilst on the move.

Road Rash + Wipeout, with fish people

🏍️ 🚤 🎏

The game would still be played along a virtual road and have car-like physics, just like Wipeout does it. But the alien environment of an underwater world would free us from having to make the game feel perfectly car-like.

p.s. there's one more detail to add regarding our overall strategy here, but I'll come back to that after we've had a bit of time to process this initial spark of an idea.

[erlend-sh]

World of Fish Folk

Another important aspect of our design is that this game takes place in the Fish Folk universe.

Fish Folk is an ever-expanding virtual arcade of goofy multiplayer games for friends and family.

We are edging ever closer to a mini-metaverse wherein a bunch of fish-people play together in any manner of interactive experiences. The one thing all players in this space have in common is that they will inhabit the persona of some delightful fish-person.

we want to realize the following experience:

Some friends are visiting and we wanna give ourselves a break from civilized conversing.

“Let’s play some video games? I’ve got just the thing: Fish Folk!”

Fish Folk isn’t a game, it’s a whole bunch of games. What these games have in common is that

1. they are all in the same universe; whacky fish in the style of Nintendofied Spongebob;
2. they’re all really easy to play; no prior gaming experience required;
3. and they’re best played in groups of 2-4 people, locally or online.

This kart racing game will be the second addition to the 3D lineup of Fish Folk. The first is Folly:

Folly and Karty (Drifty?) are expected to cross-pollinate. They will have many art assets in common, and will also openly exchange game mechanics, story ideas etc.