Townseek (Jam Version)
WISHLIST TOWNSEEK ON STEAM!
Born undersea, but with an appetite to soar the skies and explore the world! Now that you've got yourself a reliable airship, it's time to make those dreams come true! 🦈
Travel far and wide, discovering the exotic landmarks that the world has to offer! Meet the people from distant towns and engage in the old tradition of exchanging goods for money! Fish and mine to your heart's content!
The entire world is your sea now, so sail among the clouds and discover all of its marvels!
Originally Created for Global Game Jam 2021
- Get on your airship and fly wherever you want! The sky's the limit and you're already there!
- Discover picturesque towns and delightful landmarks! Tour the world at your own leisure!
- Make a profit by buying and selling at different towns, each with their own culture and goods!
- Fish from the comfort of your ship! Just get a fishing rod and find one of the popular fishing spots. Dozens of creatures to catch!
- The gold rush never ends! Grab a pickaxe and go on quick excavating expeditions! Tons of things to mine, including some cool artifacts!
- Try out the ship's experimental turbo! Get some space fuel by mining a particular object you may come across!
- Equip different balloon sails! Purchase a new one from each town, and theme your airship after your favourite place!
- Complete your collection log by trading away! Maybe there’s a special reward for completing it all?
If you have any comments, or any suggestions of how we can continue to further add to this world, we’d love to know over at our Discord Server!
Created, Developed & Presented by Whales and Games
Development Team
Download
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Development log
- Get Trading in Townseek during the Steam Capitalism and Economy Fest!Jan 09, 2024
- Fresh from Wholesome Direct, Townseek is coming to Steam in Early 2024!Jun 16, 2023
- Townseek on The MIX Spring Showcase with an exclusive look at a new town!Jun 16, 2023
- Play our Steam Next Fest Demo as Townseek joins Super Rare Originals!Feb 08, 2023
- Town Hubs, New Trading Experience, and Town Quests!Jul 29, 2022
- Explore a fresh new world and help us shape it in Townseek’s Early Demo!Jun 11, 2022
- Townseek Jam Version and Starsnap join the Super Rare Mixtape Vol. 2!Feb 18, 2022
- Remade Towns, Expanded Oceans and Indie X Stream!Dec 07, 2021
Comments
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10/10 game (my review is totally not affected by the snake guy)
Thanks! 🥰 Melissa is actually a snake women, but we can see where you're coming from. 👀
i know she is a snake woman, i just said guy because it was gender neutral lol (sorry for this freakishly late reply)
(and also because it makes it harder for people to realize I was talking about the snake lady)
I absolutely loved this game! from the art style to the shop owners having different personailites and preferences like how Melissa in Hissinburg adores fishes. However, i dont know whether its my problem or not but I wasn't able to download using itch, just said the game file was corrupted. All in all though, extremely solid relaxation game with incredibly cute art styles, nice character design and good sfx!!!
Thank you very much for the kind words! 😊 That's weird. What operative system did you try to run the game on? Sometimes Linux can be a bit stingy with getting executable files to run. 😅
If you liked the game and its art style, we think you're going to love the full version of the game that we've been working on! It's taken us a while, but it has an even more unique art style, much improved and refreshed character designs, and a lot of other things we're proud of that we think make it a proper whole game! ✨
1) Really enjoyed the game, and completed all collections!
2) I wish there is a purpose for the collected stars
3) I wish there is also an end-game. And give landmarks additional purpose.
*** To those who got stuck on the loading screen: Try CTRL+F5 refresh. When you see the loading screen, click on it. If this does not work, restart Chrome and retry the previous steps I mentioned.
Thank you for playing and for getting all of the collections! 🥰 The collected stars let you to turbo around the map after you mine them. You can press the F-key to get a boost of speed over the map while you have stardust! 🌠
As for the end game, we totally agree! Over the last two years we've been working on a new full version of the game that will be coming to Steam and Consoles that focus on expanding it even more, including implementing a proper story to follow and an end-game. It's been coming along pretty well, and we're aiming to release it early next year. Maybe it'll be of your interest? 👀
I'm in love with the art!
Thank you! It's our pride and joy for this game! 🐳 Hope you like how the full version's art is looking too. 👀
such a fun game! finished the collections but couldn't find the last two balloons sadly.
Thank you, glad you had fun! ✨ You can get the second-to-last balloon after opening a certain number of the crates that spawn around the world. The very last balloon is a completion reward, which you get after getting all of the collections and the other balloons, meaning you're only missing that very last one to complete everything! ✅
Hope you look forward to the upcoming new version on Steam! It's coming out early next year and has a whole ton of new towns, items and features! Cheers! 🐳
Is this ever coming to Steam?
Hey! 👋 Yes! We've been working on a new version of the game for several months now, and it'll be coming to both Steam and Consoles.
We will be having a more substantial update about our release window and what not in the upcoming Wholesome Direct on the 10th of June, and we'll hopefully make an update status post sometime around that as well. Hope you look forward to it! 🦈
what does avg even mean? I couldn't find a single damn civilization that would buy donutzza for 30 yen
Avg. stands for the average price of each item! It allows you to quickly compare if the item you're selling/buying is doing so for more or less than it's usual price over on towns. 😉
so, am I getting bad luck, or am i just missing something crucial about donutzza?
Stuck on loading page.... Sad 😢
Oof! Completely missed this comment earlier. Did you ever manage to get it to run? 😭
nope...
I played this when it first came out and loved it, but forgot the name. I'm so excited to play it again.
Glad that you loved it and welcome back! We hope that you're looking forward and excited for the full version as well! ✨
It's a simple fun game all about trading! Admittedly I did struggle a bit understanding what to do yet depsite all that it was pretty fun doing my best to figure out which item works best to which town/city. They're all so unique I had a lot of fun playing!
Thank you! On-boarding and the start of the game is something that we're definitely looking into improving and making clearer in the full version. If you have the time, we'd love to know your feedback on our new early demo too, since it adds some additional content too! 🐳
Just as I started making a price-per-town list, I realized that the prices change a little each visit. TT-TT There goes my super "Buy here, sell here" idea!
But I kind of like it, too. Feels more real.
Hah! Yes, the prices change slightly whenever you visit a town. If you have the opportunity to try out the early demo for the full version, that one actually shows the categories of each item and what each town prioritises in terms of you selling to them! We would love to know your feedback on that one! 🤗
This game is great and I'm very excited for the stuff you have planned on it. I noticed you were really warm about feedback so for one I wanted to say that you have a very lively and 'lived' in game world here. All the places feel super distinct and the landmarks are incredibly amusing. I appreciate the focus on ambience over strict market grinding as well, and the comic humor really works for me :p
I have some feedback on the fishing though, it's kind of too slow for what it actually is. The ores are a 1 button click to mine and I can get 3 of them in 3 seconds. The fish though take around half a minute or more to clean out in an area, this means on a per money basis mining and trading are just the more economically studious since they are more profitable and have less risk associated. Obviously, not everything in a trading game needs to actually be economically satisfying, but I really love a satisfying fishing game with feedback. So I don't know if this is already the case but if there was a way to make the catch of rarer quality or bigger based on when how soon you hit the button, personally that alone would add incredible charm to the fishing mechanic. Otherwise this a great demo and I'm really excited to try the full game whenever it comes out.
Hey there! Thanks a lot for the feedback! We're glad that you found the game as cosy as we intended! ✨
Right now we're currently working on the full-release version of the game, and it already has a lot of content planned for it! Of course, we're also thinking about how to re-balance and make the game more fun and interactive, and one of the first things we edited was the price of ores. Time-wise, fish now sell for more and ores sell for less, but we also want to experiment with upgrades later down the line to continue to make both activities, and others, more rewarding rather than just reducing their prices for them to be on par.
As for fishing, we'd like to further experiment with its mechanics too. One of our designers proposed some methods that let the player have more control over the rarity of the fish the player can catch, but we're yet to iterate on that. The game is growing in so many areas we'll take some time to go back to certain aspects to make them pop more! 👀
Thanks again for the feedback! And we're happy to hear that you like the environments and landmarks! We've got a lot more already on the works, and they really add plenty of charisma to the world. If you'd like, we'd very much invite you to join our Discord Server, since we'll be releasing an early demo for the new version fairly soon and would definitely love to have your feedback, either then or later down the road when the game releases! Cheers! 🐳
this looks like a awesome game but im trying to play on mac and it wont load, its just stuck on the opening loading screen
Hey! Thanks for reporting it! We're looking into what we can do try to make sure Mac actually runs properly going forward. We'll let you know when we have an update on it! 🐳
Hi, same here. Loading screen on mac.
I love this game, and the art style! It's amazing! I do wish you could customize your ship a little bit more, and I think it would be nice if you could choose what started as, like maybe instead of a shark I could be a slime person or be a snake person! (Sorry if those aren't the actual names for those guys I just assume that's what they are called) But, I do love this game, and thank you for making it!
This was a really heart warming comment to read! Thank you so much for the kind words and we're really glad that you loved the game! 🥰
More ship customization is actually something we want to add in the future! We've got several ideas between different ship shapes, colour palettes, flags, and even pets that follow you around, though it's still early to say just exactly what we'll be able to fit in! As for picking your race, it sounds pretty fun! But we'll likely keep you as a shark for now, because we've got something of a main story in our minds as well. 😉
Thank you so much for playing our game as well! We've recently released some new Discord channels for the game over at our server, and if anything else comes to mind, we'd love to see your suggestions there! Cheers! 🐳
I really like this, thanks for sharing! The art style is distinct and really works with the concept.
As you've asked for some feedback, some things I am noticing after playing for a while - the economy is unpredictable and takes some figuring out - ie the cultures don't seem to make much sense with the products they make, ie. the jazzy music didn't make much sense for the demand and production.
I noticed there are multiple currencies, but not much motivation to explore one once you have dealt with the other
Fishing was more lucrative than I thought, and at the same time took longer to do than expected. Suggestion - make a 3 stage timed action to make fishing more engaging while taking the same amount of time
Some things I'd like to see in a future sense:
All together I really enjoyed this!
Thank you for the very detailed feedback and all of the suggestions! We're really glad that you had an enjoyable time with the game! 🤗 We really want to improve how the trading works and make it more satisfying and understandable in future versions of the game, such as by making each item's categories more visible and important. We also have some more ideas for ship customisation, an overall narrative, quests and some other loose concepts that we're still sculpting together as we plan-out the future of the game. 👀
I'd like to ask though, can you give us some more detail about what you mean with the 3-stage timed action suggestion for fishing? 🎣
Lastly, if you'd like, you can always join our Discord Server if you'd like to talk about these suggestion more in-depth. We'll be opening dedicated Townseek channels in the near future, and it'd be nice to get more feedback and suggestions there when we do. Cheers! 🐳
Sounds like you have a good list of ideas to develop in the next version, awesome.
What I was thinking of when I said 3-stage timed action, was an action similar to in the lego games ehich is probably a "live action event". You could have a circle or some visual indicator that the player must press a button at the right time, and do it 3 times correctly to succeed in fishing.
Best wishes in your development!
Before my tangent below, I’d like to kindly ask: please put all, if not most, of your games on Switch:) I love the cute art style and I think a ton of folk would find your games intriguing..would like to play your games on a portable device or put them on Steam (if they’re not there’s already)?
Omg I *FINALLY* found you (the game and devs) again!! I stumbled upon this like 3.5 months ago but I forgot the game's title and you (devs) and since I couldn’t log in then, I couldn’t add to my collection; all i could remember was the awesome art style. I’ve spent months hoping I’d find you again and I just did, yay.
This is one of the most heart-warming comments we've received to date. 💖 Thank you so much for the kind words! At the moment we still don't have any games on neither the Switch or even Steam, but who knows what the future might bring. We've always got tons of ideas and plans in mind. 👀
And glad that you stumbled upon us again and thank you for the follow here as well! 🤗 If you do happen to use them, you can also follow us on Twitter or join us on our Discord Server respectively. We tend to post about the stuff that we are working on on those and It might also be easier to track us there than on the incredible yet immense collection of games that Itch has. 🐳
I love the art style and the dialogue throughout the game! Very unique and fun play!
Thank you! We're glad that you enjoyed it! 🦈 Is there anything you'd like to see in a future version of the game? 👀
Hello, your game is amazing! I like your drawings. They are literally awesome. I want to translate your game into Korean. Please replied me if you are interested. Thank you!
Thank you! We're really proud of how the game art ended up looking! 🥰
At the moment, we're not looking for translators for our projects. However, we're currently in the pre-production of some games that we might want to localize in the coming months. If you're interested, you can send us an email at contact@whalesandgames.com and we'll keep a note that you've contacted us!
Wow is amazing game! I wonder that you them you used for make the game. stardew valley?
Thank you, glad you like it! We don't fully understand your question, but we think you're asking if Stardew Valley was used as an inspiration? While not necessarily itself, Townseek was partially inspired by games like Stardew Valley, more or less. I hope that answers to your question! 🐳
For Mac users you might want to try this in Terminal to get the game to work:
https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216753558
Still an endless loading screen though when you get past this issue, looking forward to a fix!
Thank you for reporting the issue! We've now got someone in our community that can help us test Mac builds, so hopefully the process going forward with those builds will be a lot smoother going forward. We hope to have all the core Mac issues fixed by the time of the next big update! 🙏
Very cute and chill game. Love the art style and all the little jokes sprinkled throughout. Played through to the end till I unlocked my special ship. :)
Thank you! Glad you had a fantastic time with the game up to completing it!
Is there anything you'd like to see added to the world? 🦈
Hi! Hmm nothing comes to mind atm, other than more islands/fish to discover, or additional mini-games. I was at a loss on how to unlock the final ship (was circling the map repeatedly to check everything) till I noticed the hint under 'Features' on your main page - so maybe that could be added into the game itself (perhaps as a hint when hovering over the silhouette of the missing ship). All in all a great game. ^^
Oh, yeah, that's certainly good feedback. Since the game doesn't really have much to do, we added it as a "completionist reward", but were we to enhance the experience, it'd certainly be best to give hints or clues for stuff that is not immediately intuitive. We'll take that into consideration, thanks! 😊
ahhh cute! The art is wonderful
Some comments
- Moving via clicking would be nice
- White text is a little hard to read, maybe darken the outline color?
- It's not immediately intuitive what red/green prices mean, i assumed it was high (red)/low, but the color on my inventory items is different from the shop's - so i guess not?
Thank you! Really glad that you liked the art! 😊 And thank you for the suggestions/comments! We're still balancing what we can do for the upcoming 1.2 expansion, but we're taking notes for the long-term too.
As for the trading colours, green always represents when something is a better deal for you. Items in green in the Town's Inventory means that you're getting the item for bellow the average price, while in your inventory it means you're selling them for more than the average price. Red represents the opposite, meaning that the item is more expensive in town than the average, and that you're selling it for lower as well. 💰
Ahhhh thanks for the explanation! I’ve got a strong background in finance so I guess it’s hard to break my heuristic bias where red & green signal price increased and decreases xD
Good luck! Scoping is so hard xD
Lots of fun. I do wish there was a "sell all" button, but really that was all that was missing. Love the little critters in the background, and all the different fish you can catch. I found everything except one fish... really tempting to just keep playing till find it... hmmm
Hope that you found one last fish in the end! We will likely throw in a "Sell All" for the 1.2 expansion since it seems easy enough to add. 👀
The critters were really fun to add to the world to make it pop in colour that little bit more! Is there any kind of critter or animal you would like to see us add? 🐼
Do you plan to keep expanding upon this? Wonderful idea.
We have a some plans for the future and have been spreading a few teasers here and there in our Twitter. We're still in the talks about how and how much we would like to expand on it, but there's definitely more coming to the world of Townseek! 🦈
I haven't played the game yet but from the page itself and the video, it looks amazing. It's so cute, I love the art style. It's so cool. I will see how the gameplay goes. :)
Thank you! We really enjoy how the overall page along and we really like the effect of the clouds over the world's background.
Now that you've played the game (I saw you commented on the comment about the fishing bug), what did you think about it? Anything you'd like to see added to the world? Cheers! 🐳
Honestly, I don’t know what kind of game you intended to do but this game is quite simple and a bit fun since we can go around the map and discover many things with each 3... comments? It’s a fun trait. Not only you discover maps but also object and fishes which adds collection fun. 😎
Also, the first thing I ever discovered was the egg. Having played a lot of game where I expect an end, I thought the egg would hatch and ta-da! The end. XD
Anyway, the game was fun, I liked the art. It was very very nice.
Hah, we certainly didn't expect anyone overthinking the egg location, so we really hope that wasn't that big of an inconvenience. But we're glad that you had a good, chill experience with it! 😊
Loved the game but got caught in a bug while fishing and couldn't move after that. Will play again another time for the completion, would love to see this expand more in the future.
Thank you for playing and sorry about the bug! 🙇 We've already had the issue reported a few comments down and we're working on fixing it for the next version! Hope you do play it again some other time and get the completion!
How would you like to see the game expanded? Which kind of content/mechanics do you think would be nice to see? 🐳
The game saved so I managed to continue, thankfully! I actually think the game is too easy in a way which makes it not as satisfying as the game doesn't seem to progress as much, especially later on. Some restrictions on eg how much cargo you can load or fuel would be nice, or requirements to unlock new cities, or slight bonuses to the different airships that we get. Beautiful game though. As it is, the whole world is explored fully pretty early on, which decreases the sense of discovery. Maybe that's because I'm an Explorer though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types
We have a few ideas for the future about how we can make both exploration and trading more interesting in the long run, but we're still early in the talks about it. The idea of implementing cargo limits is one that has popped around ever so often, but the more we discuss it, the more we feel we enjoy the chill no-limits aspect to trading. Our vision is more to make it interesting to how many different things you have at one point rather than how much. 🤔
Explorers are the main taxonomy we're aiming at, so we definitely enjoy having players like you around. Thanks for having played the game! Cheers! 🐳
Was the bug obtaining a crate while fishing? Because I accidentally did that while trying to get a crate above a fishing spot.
It was indeed! Somehow got stuck and unable to move while waiting for a fish that did not exist.
I just played your neat little game - the music and sound effects are wonderful and the graphics are super lovely - I really enjoyed flying around that map and I also thought, that the trading rules are not that difficult to understand. I just didn't realize, that I still needed the shark balloon to complete the blimp-collection (I thought the default-one was from that shark-town - but I figured it out in the end, haha.) I hope you develop this game further: Maybe you could add more collectibles, more stories (the animations and characters are so cute as well) and also some small puzzles?
Sorry,it's a lot to ask, but it was just a nice and relaxing game, I'd like to spend more time in this world. I'd also be interested in behind the scenes/ making of material (how the world was developed, what's the story behind each island/ continent/ town, character design...). :3 But these are just ideas. I'm looking forward to see/ play more from you! :D
P.S.: I had no bugs or difficulties during the gameplay at all (I played on a PC with Windows 10).
Thank you so much for the super kind words! Really glad that you've enjoyed the world that we've created and the aesthetic we gave to it! We're really proud of how it came out and yes, our artist wanted to create a blimp in the style of Cpt. Jawline himself. 😛
We have some more plans for the game that we've been talking about and would like to share in the future! The comment right before yours shows a small teaser to what we're currently working on. We've been thinking of writing potential Developer Insights like we've done for some of our previous games for Townseek to showcase a bit of the behind-the-scenes of the game like you're asking. However, since we're currently busy with the game we haven't scheduled them yet!
Alternatively, we also sometimes share WIPs and other things in the #whales-chat room over at our Discord server in case you're curious to check it out! If you have more ideas of content (mechanics/town themes) you would like to see, do let us know!
Hope that you continue following the game, and we hope to have more to show in the future! Cheers! 🐳
You're welcome! Your plans for the "Developer Insights" sound great, I'll check out your Discord server as well. :) And yes, of course I saw your latest teaser pic - looks great! Maybe you could add a crew as well? Or it could be a goal, to persuade some crew mates from each town to join the air ship crew...
What I forgot to ask/ say: The burnt forest - the "burning tree" in the middle, that was a reference to Aku from Samurai Jack, right? If yes ---- I loved that SO much!!! :')
Hah! We're unsure about crews yet, but we've been brainstorming some ideas of how we can have character be more involved with towns and how you trade. 🦈 And yes, the burning forest is a reference to such-named shapeshifting master of darkness. 👀
Glad to have you around! Cheers! 🐳
Now, what might all of this be about? 🤔
Hypeee!!
💎⛏️
Cool! A map would be nice though- oh wait, there already is one!
Making a map with personality was our goal with this game, so we put all of our effort into making it shine! ✨
Yep, you did a good job!
Anything you'd like to see added to the map in the future? 🤔
I don't know, it's pretty amazing. And, although it's not that big, I feel like making it bigger wouldn't be the best idea because then it would be easy to get lost. What project(s) are you currently working on? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.
We've been working on adding few other mechanics to this game right now (which you can see in one of the comments above). However, we do have some still-not-revealed plans for beyond that we're discussing on hence the questions of what content you would like to see added. 👀
Other than that, we're also working on Bunny Splash Casino which is our primary main project right now, alongside other game jam participations we've got planned for the future. 🙌
i really like the art style. good job
Thank you! It's one of the art styles we're the most proud of in all of our games! 😊
good game, the mouse pointer is verry unique
Thank you! Shark fin supremacy! 🦈
really unique and fun!
Thank you! What aspect of it struck out the most to you? 👀
Looool how did you made cursor to look like thiss :D really cute !
If you mean the cursor on the page, we changed it with some CSS cursor magic. If you don't have custom CSS enabled in your game pages, you can ask itch.io for the permission. 🤔
Very relaxing!
Thank you! We thought folks would appreciate a more relaxing game in these trying times. 🤗
Short and cute game. Great sound design and graphics.
We're really proud of the graphics and sound design we've made for this game, so we're very pleased you liked them! 😊
Hey, loved your game! I made a quick review (quite literally like a minute long) giving a quick opinion and rating. Let me know what you think! This is my first video so still working on the ins and outs. Also need to get a profile pic and title going but that shouldn't be too hard.
Sounds about right for a bit-sized review! I think you've covered pretty much all of the different aspects of the game in a short but direct-to-the-point format!
As in regards to the game itself, we really wanted to experiment with the presentation of the game this time around, and I believe the results speak for themselves, and our artist did an incredible work on them!
As for the gameplay, I agree that it's not the game's strong suit, but we're researching into it. What do you think could potentially make the game more interesting? Would really like to know! 🤔
All things considered, thank you for the review, and here's the best wishes to getting your channel on-going! Looking forward for your future reviews. Cheers! 🐳
Super fun! I really enjoyed trading with these caracthers, Chill and fun :)
Creating characters is something we have a lot of fun making, and there's a lot of concepts that we left in the cutting room because of time constraints. Glad you had a great time with the game! 🤗
If you had to suggest a kind of character, what kind would you suggest though? 👀
Hm... How about.. A ghost town? That is interested in magical and old items like the books or the statues, but dont like more physical stuff, like food or more modern items like stocks and ifuns.
Maybe even making it that they dont accept items from the empire, since the demons that invaded them were their alies, but thats maybe too much...
We actually already have some ghost-people designs that we made but didn't get to implement yet. A ghost town is definitely something we want to do at some point. 👻 We've also had the idea of making it so certain towns only accept specific categories of items, but we haven't delved much more on it, though this comment did give us some ideas of things we could do!
Thank you so much for it, and we hope you follow the game for news we might have in the future! 😊
I'm glad I could help! good luck with this project! I cant wait to see what you have in store!
FUN,CUTE AND FUNNY, I LOVE IIIIIIIIIT
THANK YOU! THRILLED YOU LIKED IT! 👏
ME GUSTA
MUCHAS GRACIAS! 🙌
umm i have no idea how to use the fishing rod
Try clicking it when you get near or at a fishing spot, it should be working but it might be a bug.
Thank you for explaining it! In the current version that we're working on, we've added a tooltip to the fishing rod icon that appears in the corner explaining the fishing mechanics a little better (and we've also fixed the double-fishing bug). We hope that helps makes things clearer! 😄
ArtisticSnail explained it in their reply. To use the fishing rod, you need to look for Fishing Spots in the world, which will have different schools of fish around that you can interact with to fish. 🎣
In the current version we're working on, we've added a small explanation tooltip. Hopefully it will be more accessible then!