Andrew Parkinson
A Mobile, Tower Defense Game
Project Description
Fishy Business is a tower-defense game where you attempt to catch fish to turn a profit. As fish swim down stream, you must catch as many as you can before they make it past. If too many fish pass by your fishermen, your profits are too low and you will go out of business. When you catch fish, you can sell those fish to earn money and use this money to hire more fishermen or upgrade your existing fishermen.
The game contains 3 levels and 6 unique fishermen to hire with different abilities and behaviors. Each level has a unique environment and gets progressively harder as you play. As you progress through a level, more fish spawn, the fish move faster and there are several different fish that will appear throughout a level that get more difficult as time goes on.
The game uses waves to determine how to increase the difficulty in-level and changes the difficulty increment based on the level that is selected. Certain fish can also only be caught by specific fishermen; for example, the catfish (since it is a bottom-feeding fish) can only be caught by the bottom fisher and spear fisher, unless you upgrade your fishermen to fish on the bottom as well.
Mobile
Tower-Defense
Technical Implementation
Key Features:
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6 Unique fishermen with different behaviors/abilities
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Fly Fisher - Basic fisherman
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Bottom Fisher - Can catch bottom-feeding fish, slower attack speed
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Net Fisher - Large area of attack, can hit multiple fish at once
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Shore Fisher - Has multiple lines that can be added by upgrades
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Shark Fisher - Low attack speed, high damage
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Spear Fisher - Throws spear projectile, can hit multiple fish at once, high damage
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Each fisherman can be upgraded with different abilities that are unique to each of them.
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3 Unique fish with different health and speed
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Sheepshead - Basic, low health fish
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Catfish - Bottom-feeding, mid-health
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Eel - High speed, high-health
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3 Unique levels with ramping difficulty
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Uses fish spawning system to determine number of fish to spawn, fish speed, and delay between spawns. This is based on wave number and level selected.
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Based on assignment guidelines, we added a shop system with cosmetics that the player could purchase using a currency (pearls) that the player pays for with USD. This system is not functional, but was set up as a concept for the assignment guidelines.
Challenges:
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Making a 2D game in Unreal is a challenge in itself, so that was our very first hurdle. The PaperZD plugin worked well, just had to adjust to using it.
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Figuring out a good setup for the spawner for the fish was a challenge, just to find a good way to get them to spawn and read the difficulty. I was able to overcome this and I feel that it turned out well.
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We had several issues with GitHub, but nothing that was too dire. I was usually the member of the team that fixed the GitHub problems.
Role: Lead Programmer / Co-Producer
Software used: Unreal Engine (with PaperZD Plugin), GitHub
Language: UE5 Blueprints
Duration: 20-30 Minutes
Target Platform: Android, PC
Genre: Tower defense
Year made: 2025
Published: Yes
Development Reflection
What I have learned:
Throughout this project, I learned much of the process for shipping a mobile game. I also began to learn the basics of creating enemy spawner systems and basic patrol patterns. This was also where I started to experiment with project management, taking on the role of co-producer.
What I would do differently:
I think that the struggle to adapt Unreal to create a 2D game was not worth it, and I would likely use Unity in the future for mobile development. However, this still built upon my skills in Unreal and I believe that I learned a lot from the process.
Future Development Ideas:
Although I do not plan to develop this game further due to my focus on other projects, I did have ideas for the possible future of the game. I would like to make the shop system functional and/or add in-game ads that are entirely skippable for our profit strategy. I would also like to add unique fish for each level based on the environment, we even had the art for the fish made, but this feature was cut due to time constraints of the project. Finally, I would like to add additional fishermen and refine the systems that are already in place.
Official Trailer
Gameplay Showcase
Full Release Screenshots
Code Screenshots
