🎣 Hello, fisher friends! 🎣

I’m thrilled to announce my latest idle fishing game: Bit-cremental: Fishistry!

Following in the footsteps of Pocket Idler: Fishing Pond, Fishistry is part of a new series called Bit-cremental—bite-sized, Gameboy-inspired incremental games with a nostalgic charm.

In this short and experimental idle game, you’ll operate a gashapon machine that rewards you with fish to grow and nurture. Once they mature, fisher people will arrive to reel them in, earning you some well-deserved coins!

Use your earnings to upgrade various aspects of the game for greater efficiency, unlock new backgrounds and color palettes, and collect 24 increasingly rare fish to complete your collection.

Bit-cremental: Fishistry launches on December 13th, so don’t forget to wishlist it today!



Hey everyone!

After the release of Pocket Idler: Fishing Pond, life threw some unexpected chaos my way, which disrupted my plans for updates.

To be honest, I’ve been rethinking how the ideas I had for new content might fit into the game. That said, I’m still committed to bringing you more fun, and I’m exploring the best way to deliver something exciting next year. I’ll share more details soon!

Thank you so much for playing and for your continued support. I can’t wait to see you again on December 13th for the release of Bit-cremental: Fishistry!

I'm really excited to bring you this update!

It introduces a more personal experience to you and your avatar and introduces the foundation for the end-game content.

You can now customize your character a bit, change their hair and its color, their clothes color, and purchase and equip hats! Or hide your hat and or hair, if they don't suit you.

Earn "Fish Tokens" when you go on a personal fishing trip to a secret fishing area in the woods, once you've unlocked it. I know we've all been jealous of our fisher people customers getting to reel in all of the fish, and now it's your turn!

As always, I will be playing all day, and waiting for your feedback to ensure the quality of this update is up to par with the rest of the game.

Thank you for all of your support!

• Customize your character to bring yourself into the game.
  
• Purchase new hats for your character.
  
• Go on personal fishing trips to a secret location in the woods.
  
• Earn Fish Tokens by catching fish on your personal fishing trips.
  
• 3 new achievements to earn.

After a bit more testing, I will begin to lean into the rest of the end-game content.

There will be new fishing spots with more variations, unique fish at the new spots, and even more hats.

Fish Chartering will allow you to bring your customers to new areas to fish and provide an entirely new gameplay experience once you've completed the base game as it currently is.

And who knows what else? I'd love to hear your feedback on the Discord server, perhaps you have a great addition!

Join the Discord[discord.gg]

While everyone loves positive reviews, negative ones openly reveal the flaws in a game, and I'd like to start by saying that I've heard you...and I'd like to thank everyone who has given feedback on Discord, and given positive reviews, as well!

This update addresses the game's slow start, makes it a bit more exciting with more fish and customers overall, and adds a more detailed way to manage your prices and customers.

New Features:

• Customer happiness value that can alter spawn rate.
  
• Visual representations of customer happiness and the spawn rate.
  
• Rod, Bait, and Pond Capacity upgrades now increase popularity a little bit to help boost the start of the game.

Adjustments:

• Higher customer spawn rate.
  
• Double pond capacity.
  
• Adjusted fish values to match the increase of above values.
  
• Popularity gain flows better with the increased customers and fish catches.
  
• First new fish unlocks, and upgrade purchases come a lot sooner at the start.
  
• Birds now give a small percentage of the pond's total fish value so, it keeps up with progress.

Bug Fixes:

• Disabled upgrade buttons when filling the pond, which would cause issues.
  
• Disabled the ability to open the pond when filling it.
  
• The fish display card when deleting will now be disabled when the pond auto-opens, if active.

The start of the game was too slow, and I've addressed this.

I started with the number of fish by increasing the max capacity upgrade levels, which has been doubled. To catch all these fish, the spawn rate of customers has also drastically increased.

These two elements combined make the game quite a bit more exciting to watch and provide a more satisfying experience.

It's important to keep in mind that this is still an idle game, so it does still start off slower and increase in rate as the game progresses, but I hope this helps make things less boring.

Keeping the game running in the background can also cause popularity to increase at a higher rate than money and upgrade purchases due to not actively adjusting the ticket prices and markup, and using the new, more expensive fish.


I've gotten a lot of really good feedback from players in the Discord - seriously, it's been just amazing to have you all be so involved and helpful, thank you!

One of the elements that have come up there, and from other players I've talked to, is the expectation of adjusting the ticket/markup prices to alter the rate at which customers will want to visit.

I've increased the value of tickets to a max of $1,000 and the markup to 300%, and now it can be used to go beyond the popularity threshold to help slow down spawn rates if your ponds capacity is currently too small and keeps emptying too early.

The best part is the addition of a happiness meter and a visible customer spawn rate to show how your adjustments will be utilized.


While the game is an idler, it just started way too slow. The first fish unlock seemed to take forever, and once things got going, it was a bit better with progressing through them.

I've addressed this in a few ways. The rod, bait, and capacity upgrades now increase popularity a little bit each level to give a small boost throughout the game and get to the first few fish much faster.

The game is now more smoothed out overall, but there will still be a bit of adjusting as things go on, because there will be more content coming, and the game needs to be ready for this.

There are a few items I still want to get to from the current to-do list, but some new, big items have been added.

The major one is working in a Prestige mechanic to extend gameplay. While I have a few more details to figure out before implementing this, I know that it will introduce new pond locations with their own shop designs, decorations, and some new fish unique to the locations.

Character customization and a hat shop will be added. Hats can be equipped to your character and will also randomly show up on customers once purchased.

There will be a new mechanic that will allow you to fish your ponds instead of open them up to customers. Doing this will either earn you unique currency that is used to purchase hats in the hat shop, but there is no ticket cost, so there won't be any money earned on these days.

Beyond this, I will continue to playtest and utilize feedback to improve the games experience even further.

Thank you all for your support and for reading this far. I look forward to the next update!

I had a pleasant surprise while searching for Pocket Idler: Fishing Pond on Youtube, just to see if there were any videos, and boy was there!

Content creator InterndotGif put together a little gameplay video, and honestly made it so entertaining to watch that I felt like I got to experience the game anew.

Go check it out if you'd like to get a glimpse of the game:

InterndotGif - "I Created a FISHING POND to Make PROFIT"

Tonight's update is a little smaller than the last but brings some new features to improve your experience.


There is now a button at the bottom of the Stocking Menu labeled "Fill Pond" that will allow you quickly fill the pond with any fish that have been toggled to Auto-Stock. It won't open the pond once the stocking has finished, since that could cause inconvenience if you wanted to upgrade, but otherwise behaves like standard Auto-Stocking.


When the game is in "manual" mode (when Auto-Stocking is disabled) and the day has ended, a small bell will chime. This signals that it's time to manage the pond, should the game be running in the background.


You can now join the new Discord server for the game should you want to participate a bit more in the development of the game.

It's mostly for gameplay suggestions and bugs, but there is also a topic where we can discuss potential end-game mechanics to help extend the game once you've maxed everything out.

Pocket Idler: Fishing Pond Discord [discord.gg]


I was able to fix an issue with the Stocking Menu that would cause fish to immediately appear in the pond when the scroll had the desired fish's card below the menu when auto-stocking instead of dropping down. The menu will now automatically move around to ensure the cards are visible before dropping.


I still have a few more mechanics to cover on my to-do list, but first I want to spend a little more time testing the game to 100% ensure that the new changes are working. Everything certainly appears fine, but I like to triple-check, and get feedback at the same time.

Up next will be the ability to toggle muting when the game is minimized, true resizing of the window, and a minigame.

Once this is all in, and the game feels solid, then End-Game content will be explored to extend gameplay.

This is a really exciting update, for me, and hopefully for you!

Shout out to user "Randy Marsh" for the feedback and suggestions that encompass most of this update.


First, I've really spent time getting the balancing and flow of gameplay feeling better. The hotfix yesterday was meant to keep the game from reaching 100% popularity at only half-way through the upgrades...but I do feel it made the start of the game a little more boring, and was still just not polished enough.

It's still a little slow at the start, but that's intentional. The popularity-to-customer spawn rate has a much smoother increase, now.

My new goal today is to play and complete the game, and ensure that popularity doesn't hit 100% before the final upgrades.


This is what really makes this update fun and satisfying.

A couple feedback items for the game have been that it just wasn't truly an Idle game because there was actually a required time of active gameplay while stocking the pond.

To remedy this Auto-Stocking was introduced. This allows you to select fish you wish to be auto-stocked when the nighttime comes. Stocking will happen from the most expensive to the least. Once all possible fish have been stocked, the pond will then automatically open for the next day.

This effectively allows you to put the game to the side, and just let it run until you are ready to upgrade, at which point you can simply disable the "Auto" toggle during the day, and it will behave like normal with no auto-stocking.

• Fish Highlighting - Fish are now highlighted if you mouse over their button in the stocking menu while they are currently in your pond.
  
• Fish Labels - Hovering over fish in the pond when deleting will now display a similar panel from the stocking menu to show you their icon and their cost, making it easier to manage the ponds stock.
  
• "Open Pond" Button Relocation - There have been a few issues with the "Open Pond" button covering up fish, so it now has been moved over your character/shop.

As I stated at the top, my most immediate goal is to complete the game to ensure that the new balancing will allow you to purchase upgrades in-line with the popularity increasing.

Ideally, you will need to get all upgrades to effectively get 100%, and you should have them purchased around 90%...now it will differ a bit player-to-player, but on average, this is the goal.

Once this is feeling really nice (maybe it's already there), there are a couple more QoL improvements I'd like to make, and then finally I want to bring a mini-game that will take place in the empty space under your shop while the pond is open.

I should be able to work this in within a few days, and at that point I feel the game will be beyond my original expectations.

Thanks again to everyone supporting me, and my development efforts by purchasing and playing the game. I hope to bring you the highest quality with this game and future releases, and it's because of you all that I am on my way to doing that.

Happy Fishing!

Hi all!

First, thank you everyone who has supported the game so far. I really hope everyone has been enjoying playing the game.

I have had a couple feedback items that relate the gain of popularity being too fast so that by the time you get 100% popularity only half of the decorations/shop upgrades have been purchased. This can really take away from the feeling of progress and creates a wall of playability for some.

• Customer Popularity Gains - Originally I had the popularity gains much lower as customers upvoted your pond, but before launch felt it was too slow and so I increased it prematurely. It has been returned now.
  
• Shop and Decoration Popularity - The combined popularity from building/upgrading the decorations and shops would result in a 100% popularity once fully unlocked. This was intended to make it so once all was upgraded the player was ensured max popularity, but this seems to make popularity progress to quick. The total has been reduced to 50% once all are unlocked, making it so the popularity from fisher peoples needs to make up the other 50%.

I will be doing a full playtest today to ensure that these new values improve the progress of the game, and any tweaks needed will likely be updated later today.

This next update will hopefully also include a variety of quality adjustments provided from early feedback as well, and a new mini-game assuming I can work out the details of how to implement it.

Thanks again for all of your support, please let me know all feedback you have so that I can keep improving the game for everyone playing now and in the future!