so that NOBODY is happy, the walkthrough will be first and then the postmortem will be at the bottom, because I'm evil. clearly.

Walkthrough:

1: Use the red lure for maximum efficiency and start fishing for perch and swordfish. The yellow lure can also be used for yellowfin tuna and flying fish instead if the red lure is too fast for you. You might want to avoid the blue lure if you're aiming for CGs because of the slow QTE ticker and low question values.

At this stage, only the best answer will be accompanied by a sprite change and hop animation for red lure and yellow lure fish. Use this to your advantage to start identifying the best answer to general questions. Since you won't be able to successfully date any fish at this point, ignore the DoT and take your time answering the questions.

Optimal stage 1 fish-specific answers:

• Perch: "Yeah.", "Eh.", "Yeah."
• Swordfish: "Give me a moment.", "Sideways?", "Hell yeah!"
• Flying Fish: "I don't mind them.", "Sure.", "That's ok."
• Yellowfin: "I'll give it my all!", "That's pretty cool.", "Hell yeah!"

2: Continue answering questions until a new option shows up, which indicates that you've reached stage 2 for experience. The new option is now the best option. Avoid immediately going on dates due to the 30 minute penalty, as time passes quickly when you're on a date. If you aren't interested in the CGs, make sure you can get your chosen fish up to around 70 or 75 percent full compatibility before going on a date for the best chance. Date success rates are directly based on compatibility.

3: If you are interested in the CGs, continue answering questions until yet another option shows up. That is now the best option. Answer around 7 to 8 more questions optimally before trying to date your chosen fish.

4: Switch over to your chosen fish and aim for as close to full as possible. This should get you the CG. Do this for each fish if you really want to for a total of 6 endings.

5. It turns out you actually like sharks and you've run out of time. Now the shark is coming to get you. After the shark challenges you to rock paper scissors, check the bottom right option. If it says "Please eat me", congratulations. You don't even have to play rock paper scissors. Just pick that option to easily get a date with the shark. Otherwise, you have a 1 in three chance of winning. After all, a tie isn't a win. Good luck. And that should get you the seventh ending.

Secrets and Fun Facts:

Did you know there are two NPC phone numbers you can randomly get from fishing with the other lures (blue and yellow)? There's even a super secret within one of those phone numbers...

By the way, besides the time of day changing the tint of the screen, these NPCs have different dialogue based on the time of day, so if you meet one, check back around sunset and dusk!

also i 3d modeled the yellow lure and the bobber because i thought it would be really funny but it was really just a waste of my time and the bobber doesn't even look as janky as i wanted to so i was really disappointed :(

The spinning fish-heart thing was originally meant to be a secret on the menu screen, where you would click on the logo and it would freeze everything to spin the prerendered 3D model on the screen. Why? I have no idea, I just thought of it randomly and decided to do it. Then I realized I didn't really know what to do for the date screen so I just slapped that on there like hell yeah I got nothing else :D

Post-Mortem:

The reason for the game having such a weird mismatched visual style was because I thought it would be really funny. Turns out, I saved some time on character sprites, only to throw it away trying to figure out how to use Blender 4.0... but also I've stared at this game for so long that the random 3D doesn't even look out of place anymore, so maybe by purposely making it weird, I've looped back to it being cohesive?

Something I probably shouldn't have done was give into my intrusive thoughts and add little touches here and there that probably weren't necessary.  Additional NPCs? Kinda extra. Screen tint? Very funny. A hold option? In all honesty... who's gonna use that? Dating the shark? I don't really regret it, but part of the reason that ending has potential to become unplayable is because of how I shoved that spaghetti in at the last moment. But hey, you can date a shark. That's worth something. I think. I actually wanted to make that an actual, proper boss fight, but I scaled it down to rock paper scissors for my sake. I also wanted to write more fish-specific questions but it turns out that I couldn't really find that much research on the behaviors of certain fish, so I capped it at three per fish. Another random idea I had was a translation patch feature, but it would just be me writing a lot of set statements. If I ever decide to add more fish, I'll probably just throw that feature in there. Honestly, I'll admit that I prioritized the random little features over the actual dating part of the game, since that was just structures and setting and parsing and all that other stuff that I wasn't really looking forward to, so I ended up implementing the actual main gameplay on day 4 or 5.

Near the end of development I was so burnt-out that all I wanted to do was lie down and do nothing but then I didn't really have anything else to do, so I just went back to working through the burn-out, which is ironic because early on in the week, I tried to go to bed early and wake up early to work on the game but instead I got hit with a good old dose of insomnia, so that sucks. The burn out is part of the reason why the music tracks in this game aren't that good in my opinion, and two of them are actually rearrangements of tracks for the other two fish-related games that I wanted to make in the past.

yeah that's right expect MORE FISH.

Hopefully the next time I decide to do a game jam, I won't overscope to the point where it actually impacts my health. But that's unlikely unless I randomly see a game jam with a theme that I like enough to throw everything aside for it.  Most likely, the next game will be something I've wanted to make for half a year now... finally... a horror game...

did I mention that Catching a Date isn't a horror game...?