Village Notes #2: Fishing without just waiting

Hello everyone.

I usually like the idea of fishing more than I like actually doing it.

Standing by the water should be one of the calm parts of a game. But often it becomes waiting for a small signal, reacting fast enough, and then doing a minigame that feels a little disconnected from everything else.

Eldervik still needs fishing. It is a small village. The water should feed people and it should make Signe a part of the village. And it should give a kid a perfectly valid reason to decide that today is fishing day.

So the question has not been: should Eldervik have fishing?

The question has been: what would make fishing feel like it belongs here?

The current system has a few parts. You cast the rod. You wait for a bite. When the fish bites, you need to hook it before it gets away. After that, the fishing duel starts. The fish has stamina and tension. Sometimes you reel in. Sometimes you give slack. Sometimes the right answer is to let go and keep the line steady. The goal is to tire the fish out without snapping the line.

That sounds simple enough, but the first version of the UI tried explain everything up front.

It looked like this:

There is nothing wrong with explaining a system, but this was too much too early. It stopped the game, gave the player several ideas at once, and asked them to understand the whole fishing duel before they had felt why any of it mattered.

My kid’s feedback was much more useful than any amount of me staring at the code.

The bite happened too fast. It was not clear what you were supposed to do.

The new version tries to teach inside the action instead of before it. The normal hook window is now 1500ms, but the first catches get a more generous 2500ms beginner window. The first cast also has a minimum bite delay, so the game does not immediately ask a new player to react before they have even settled into the moment.

The duel help changed too. Instead of bringing back a big row of controls as in the very first prototype, Eldervik now shows a compact hint chip above the fishing HUD during the beginner catches. It says the next useful action in the moment: reel, slack, or let go. After those first catches, the helper gets out of the way.

If a player wants that help permanently, there is now an “Always Show Fishing Hints” option in the gameplay settings.

None of this means fishing is finished, but the shape is better now.

It went from a system that explained too much to fast, to one that gives the player a little more time and a little more help, exactly when they need it.