The game is out for all to play! Here's some of my thoughts now the dust has settled...

How do I feel?

Well, pretty pleased, actually. I think the visuals are great, and the music & sound effects are perfect. For a small scope project, I think it turned out pretty well. 

The game is far from perfect, of course. It has its bugs, and there are gameplay features I wish I had spent a bit more time refining, but perfection is an impossible goal that, frankly, is not worth chasing if you actually want to get anything done. I finished a game. Honestly that is the best bit - one less project cluttering the To Do pile.

Thanks again to everyone who helped along the way with playtesting, ideas, and feedback - it was really helpful!

What was the reception?

I made the mistake that every small-time indie developer makes and I did not share or market the game anywhere near enough leading up to release. So nobody really knows it exists, so nobody can play it.

Granted, Trout Priest is a free, small game, but it was intended practice for bigger projects down the line. Unfortunately, through a combination of poor planning, lack of confidence on my part, and a fair amount of life stuff going on in the background, I just didn't spend the extra time to promote the game. I was hoping for a little more attention, but granted, I was also not active on social media in general in the months before release, so I'm sure my meager posts slipped away from a lot of peoples' feeds. It's a shame, but lesson learned.

The game was played by a handful of people in the first week. And partly I think the problem was relying on a downloadable Windows build, rather than a webGL build that anyone can play. I just struggled to get code to work in webGL on time. Making people have to download something, especially on itch.io, is an easy excuse for someone to just not play. Unlike steam, most people do not have itch.io installed. 

I'm paraphrasing from a talk I saw about mobile games many years ago, but in general, every choice someone has will give them a chance to change their mind, and you lose ~1/3 of people each step. It's why mobile games in particular are so quick to onboard you, even relying on "idiot arrows" to drag you through the tutorial to the point where you can play the game (and spend money).

I'm still really pleased with the reactions from people I know who saw and played the game, and that meant a lot to me.

How long did it take?

According to a very handy tracking tool I use called Toggl, I spent 93 hours on Trout Priest in 2024. And this year, 2025, I spent 33 hours.

So in total, if you include a few untracked hours here and there, I spent a total of ~130 hours working on Trout Priest. Not bad, I think. If that was a job, it would have taken me 18 days. So I made Trout Priest "in a month" - just spread over a year and a half. The game definitely would not have been as good if I had made it all at once - spreading the development out allowed time to think, and have a break. It was only the looming deadline of another  Festive Season that gave me the kick I needed to finally get this game out.

130 hours is much more than the original 80 I had planned.  Games grow in scope, unfortunately. I don't think I have ever worked on a project that didn't need a little bit of an extension. Games are like a living thing, and as they grow they take a new unexpected shape.

What would I add for an update / sequel?

I toyed with an Endless Mode - just something to play as long as you like, but it soon became a Nice To Have feature, and then just got abandoned all together. It might make a return though.

What I would really love is to expand the gameplay a bit - lean a bit more into the fishy Bloodborne Tower-Defence idea. While Wallace shouldn't be dodgerolling and parrying necessarily, a bit more depth to the combat wouldn't go amiss. But what would be really cool is more defences - maybe the Altars are something Wallace builds, repairs and upgrades - rather than just something he dings occasionally. Constructable walls, breakable bridges, traps etc. 

More enemy types too - it became apparent early in development that I simply would not have time to add enemy variety. Some crawling fishheads that explode into shards of bone, or large conglomerates of trout that shed smaller fish as scales when hit. So many horrible ways to make a fish unsettling. Finally, I would like to add a bit more story - not loads, but definitely something to help fill out the world a little.

That's it! Thanks for reading, now go play Trout Priest please :)