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!
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! 🐳
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! 🐳
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 Discordchannels 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:
ship customization, change colour or purchase new designs
campaign/story
more information on what something is before purchasing - ie. a separate section for upgrades and tools
Conflict - there is a notable absence of conflict, bandits are mentioned but don't show up
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 Serverif 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.
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 Twitteror join us on our Discord Serverrespectively. 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. 🐳
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.comand we'll keep a note that you've contacted us!
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! 🐳
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. :)
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! 😊
- 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
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? 🐼
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! 🐳
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. 👀
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. 🙌
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. 🤔
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! 🐳
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! 😊
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!
Oh gee! That doesn't sound good. We will have to see if we get some people to debug the Mac version further to see if we get to the root of the problem. Unfortunately, it seems that Mac builds tend to be a bit problematic for us since we handle everything from Windows. 👉👈
Thank you for the update. Had no idea it sometimes could not work in the itch app as well since we mostly use browsers to access the site ourselves. Glad you told everyone else about it though!
Also, an extended thanks for continuing to check our other catalogue of games lately. Here's hoping it's been a good time! 😊
Happy to try and work through any Mac debugging I can do, feel free to message me on the Discord (same name) if there's any Mac testing I can help with!
Thank you for including the game on the playlist! We were there live when you were showcasing the video and we're glad you had a relaxing fun time with the world we've created! 💛
If the game is losing web-based saves when you publish updates and you're using PlayerPrefs to store the save data, I came up with a solution to make it not lose data on updates. If you implement it in the next update then that update will still cause save data loss, but then it won't happen any more for any future updates. Feel free to use it, the source code and explanation of the underlying problem is here.
Thank you for the detailed post about it on Newgrounds! Other than for in-game settings (which is what PlayerPrefs was intended for), we're actually saving our save data to an actual .dat file to the /idbfs/ in a similar fashion to what you describe in the post.
However, what we don't do and it's likely the problem is that we don't specific a hard-coded /idbfs/ directory like you do in your script, and rather do it based on the directory that the browser specifies. Given that itch.io changes the URL for the html file everytime you upload, that's likely what's causing it to get scrambled. 🤔
In some of our previous games we have included Export/Import Save file options to help mitigate the issue (and also allow for players to switch from web to desktop at any time), though because of the short time it takes to play this game, we ended up not implementing it on this one. I do plan to implement it on a future version though!
I'll have to give a better through look at your explanation and script and making a few experiments, but what you share there seems to be about right! Thank you very much for sharing it and for the explanation. Cheers! 🐳
For a game like this, a short tutorial might help it a lot. Some parts took my some time and experimenting to figure out. Others are still not very clear. I did see someone suggest that the trade value be presented in numeric form instead of using colors, which I agree would be much easier to understand. (For my first game, I was *selling* red from inventory, and buying green from towns... Until I realized hat the inventory side was inverted, and you should always go for the green items on both buy and sell.) Also, how do towns change regarding inventory and prices? Is it done every time you interact with one, or over time whether or not you interact?
We're thinking of adding a few pointers to the tutorial screen (or when you open a town for the first time) in the next version to help explain the trading a little better! We've already got the clearer colours and tags underway, so we hope it helps making it a bit more clear! 😊
Inventory and prices change based on several factors. Each town has pre-set price fluctuations for different types of items. These prices are scrambled whenever you get some considerable distance away from the town (since we want to motivate players to trade with different towns). Inventory restocking is based on time and per item, and towns will progressively add stock back over time, up to their original quantity. Hope that provides some insight! 👌
What about adding some other motivation(s)? Like "Special Quests/Orders"? In my first play-through, I had already thought certain towns might value certain items more (for example, cats like fish burgers...) But found out that was not the case.
We've been thinking about some mechanics like that, yes! For example, we've been playing with the idea of towns having "on-demand items" over time-intervals that would increase the value of an item sold by a lot. 🤔
Items in the game right now do have internal categories, and towns will fluctuate their prices differently depending on those items' categories. Though with so many items, I guess it's not really easy to make the guess or notice the change. We will have to look into ways to make it more obvious!
Thank you so much for the suggestion though, and we do hope you keep up with future news we might have for the game! Cheers! 🐳
How about a simple indicator for items more valued? A '+' sign in front of items the town values more. Eventually you could even extend that more... '-' would indicate items they do not want. Even maybe eventually go with '+++', '++', '+' (or '-') to indicate how much the town values that item. (I.E., a first time player can most likely guess the meaning of '+' and '-'.)
Yep! Someone actually suggested something similar bellow, and we're already thinking on how we can implementing better queues so that trading becomes more readable! Still though, thank you for the suggestion! 🐳
If you collect every item on the normal collection log, alongside all of the balloons and find all the discoveries, you'll get a special balloon. 🌟 We didn't add anything for completing all of the fishing yet, but have some ideas if we get the chance to add new content to the game!
Hello! I downloaded the game on macOS Big Sure and the dmg throws the following error: "“Townseek” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.
Anyway the game is super cute and i'm so thrilled to try it :) Good luck
Hey! For some reason, unzipping issues with Mac seem to be fairly common and we're a bit unsure why they happen. We were convinced that we had fixed them, but apparently not. 😞
Could you try checking if this mirror works? If not, I'll look into more in-depth into the situation for sure! Thanks and sorry about that! 🙇
Ah right, I got pretty far and bought 5 different airships. I really loved the work put into every little interaction, and the simple but fun trading was great too. My favorite part is the art style. Egg.
Five of the ten airships is pretty good! 👏 Glad that the art style shines through. 😊 Anything you'd like to see added to the game at all? We would love to know! Egg.
Hey! Are you trying to load the Web or the desktop Mac version? 😰 In any case, I'd recommend closing it or reloading the page and staying on the page for a while. Changing tabs might stop the loading because Unity sometimes is weird like that!
This is very cool! I wish there was a plus or minus number in parentheses next to the price tag to tell you how much it changed from the base.
For examples, let's say the base price for something is $40, when an island/city wants to buy it for $45, it would show "$45 (+5)" Now you know your profit for each item is $5.
I say this because it's frustrating to go back and forth between the bag and the city shop.
Thank you for the suggestion! The green and red colouring on the price was meant to be a hint of the difference in-reference to the base price, but we think your idea sounds a lot more readable and user friendly.
We might do a hotfix to the game soon to fix one of the other bugs reported here, and would definitely include that change! Thanks for it! 🦈
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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!
On Mac OS 10.14 Mojave, cannot get either the web or Mac version to work.
With Mac version, just gets stuck endlessly loading no matter what I do.
With web version, get this error while loading:
abort({}) at Error
at jsStackTrace (itch-cave://game.itch/Build/townseek-web.framework.js:2:16334)
at stackTrace (itch-cave://game.itch/Build/townseek-web.framework.js:2:16505)
at abort (itch-cave://game.itch/Build/townseek-web.framework.js:2:748)
at itch-cave://game.itch/Build/townseek-web.framework.js:2:25399
Really want to play, so would love to see this fixed!
UPDATE:
Tried inside the browser (i.e. not the app-based HTML5 version) and it worked fine, so worth giving this a go, Mac users.
Seriously wonderful and relaxing game, I can't wait to see what happens next with this game!
oh thx very useful! im in mac and it happens to me too
Oh gee! Does it also not load the game, or is it a different issue - like not being able to open the app? 😥
is the same message error that fluffypetals says
Thanks! We'll look into it!
Oh gee! That doesn't sound good. We will have to see if we get some people to debug the Mac version further to see if we get to the root of the problem. Unfortunately, it seems that Mac builds tend to be a bit problematic for us since we handle everything from Windows. 👉👈
Thank you for the update. Had no idea it sometimes could not work in the itch app as well since we mostly use browsers to access the site ourselves. Glad you told everyone else about it though!
Also, an extended thanks for continuing to check our other catalogue of games lately. Here's hoping it's been a good time! 😊
Happy to try and work through any Mac debugging I can do, feel free to message me on the Discord (same name) if there's any Mac testing I can help with!
Hey Dev!
I Included your game on this week's Indie Game Playlist! It Premiers soon, Hope to see you there!
Thank you for including the game on the playlist! We were there live when you were showcasing the video and we're glad you had a relaxing fun time with the world we've created! 💛
If the game is losing web-based saves when you publish updates and you're using PlayerPrefs to store the save data, I came up with a solution to make it not lose data on updates. If you implement it in the next update then that update will still cause save data loss, but then it won't happen any more for any future updates. Feel free to use it, the source code and explanation of the underlying problem is here.
Thank you for the detailed post about it on Newgrounds! Other than for in-game settings (which is what PlayerPrefs was intended for), we're actually saving our save data to an actual .dat file to the /idbfs/ in a similar fashion to what you describe in the post.
However, what we don't do and it's likely the problem is that we don't specific a hard-coded /idbfs/ directory like you do in your script, and rather do it based on the directory that the browser specifies. Given that itch.io changes the URL for the html file everytime you upload, that's likely what's causing it to get scrambled. 🤔
In some of our previous games we have included Export/Import Save file options to help mitigate the issue (and also allow for players to switch from web to desktop at any time), though because of the short time it takes to play this game, we ended up not implementing it on this one. I do plan to implement it on a future version though!
I'll have to give a better through look at your explanation and script and making a few experiments, but what you share there seems to be about right! Thank you very much for sharing it and for the explanation. Cheers! 🐳
For a game like this, a short tutorial might help it a lot. Some parts took my some time and experimenting to figure out. Others are still not very clear. I did see someone suggest that the trade value be presented in numeric form instead of using colors, which I agree would be much easier to understand. (For my first game, I was *selling* red from inventory, and buying green from towns... Until I realized hat the inventory side was inverted, and you should always go for the green items on both buy and sell.) Also, how do towns change regarding inventory and prices? Is it done every time you interact with one, or over time whether or not you interact?
We're thinking of adding a few pointers to the tutorial screen (or when you open a town for the first time) in the next version to help explain the trading a little better! We've already got the clearer colours and tags underway, so we hope it helps making it a bit more clear! 😊
Inventory and prices change based on several factors. Each town has pre-set price fluctuations for different types of items. These prices are scrambled whenever you get some considerable distance away from the town (since we want to motivate players to trade with different towns). Inventory restocking is based on time and per item, and towns will progressively add stock back over time, up to their original quantity. Hope that provides some insight! 👌
What about adding some other motivation(s)? Like "Special Quests/Orders"? In my first play-through, I had already thought certain towns might value certain items more (for example, cats like fish burgers...) But found out that was not the case.
We've been thinking about some mechanics like that, yes! For example, we've been playing with the idea of towns having "on-demand items" over time-intervals that would increase the value of an item sold by a lot. 🤔
Items in the game right now do have internal categories, and towns will fluctuate their prices differently depending on those items' categories. Though with so many items, I guess it's not really easy to make the guess or notice the change. We will have to look into ways to make it more obvious!
Thank you so much for the suggestion though, and we do hope you keep up with future news we might have for the game! Cheers! 🐳
How about a simple indicator for items more valued? A '+' sign in front of items the town values more. Eventually you could even extend that more... '-' would indicate items they do not want. Even maybe eventually go with '+++', '++', '+' (or '-') to indicate how much the town values that item. (I.E., a first time player can most likely guess the meaning of '+' and '-'.)
Yep! Someone actually suggested something similar bellow, and we're already thinking on how we can implementing better queues so that trading becomes more readable! Still though, thank you for the suggestion! 🐳
can you add a endgame thing for collecting every thing?
If you collect every item on the normal collection log, alongside all of the balloons and find all the discoveries, you'll get a special balloon. 🌟 We didn't add anything for completing all of the fishing yet, but have some ideas if we get the chance to add new content to the game!
Anything specific you'd like to see? 👀
Hello! I downloaded the game on macOS Big Sure and the dmg throws the following error:
"“Townseek” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.
Anyway the game is super cute and i'm so thrilled to try it :) Good luck
Hey! For some reason, unzipping issues with Mac seem to be fairly common and we're a bit unsure why they happen. We were convinced that we had fixed them, but apparently not. 😞
Could you try checking if this mirror works? If not, I'll look into more in-depth into the situation for sure! Thanks and sorry about that! 🙇
Hello, it did not work :( I tried with firefox also just to be sure. <3 good luck
Same as the guy under me, but on firefox. Unity WebGL seems to be what you're using, doesn't always work.
Edit - Used Microsoft Edge, it worked.
Maintaining Unity WebGL is one messy adventure. We've even had the occasional report where the ocean looks purple rather than brown. 😅
Glad that Edge worked though! We would really like to know your opinion about the game when you're done with it! 🐳
Ah right, I got pretty far and bought 5 different airships. I really loved the work put into every little interaction, and the simple but fun trading was great too. My favorite part is the art style. Egg.
Five of the ten airships is pretty good! 👏 Glad that the art style shines through. 😊 Anything you'd like to see added to the game at all? We would love to know! Egg.
i'm on mac and the game doesn’t finish loading i have been waiting for over 2 hrs and it still isn’t done please help
Hey! Are you trying to load the Web or the desktop Mac version? 😰 In any case, I'd recommend closing it or reloading the page and staying on the page for a while. Changing tabs might stop the loading because Unity sometimes is weird like that!
If it ends up working, please let us know! 🦈
This is very cool! I wish there was a plus or minus number in parentheses next to the price tag to tell you how much it changed from the base.
For examples, let's say the base price for something is $40, when an island/city wants to buy it for $45, it would show "$45 (+5)" Now you know your profit for each item is $5.
I say this because it's frustrating to go back and forth between the bag and the city shop.
Thank you for the suggestion! The green and red colouring on the price was meant to be a hint of the difference in-reference to the base price, but we think your idea sounds a lot more readable and user friendly.
We might do a hotfix to the game soon to fix one of the other bugs reported here, and would definitely include that change! Thanks for it! 🦈