Summer may be long over, but fishing can be year round — at least on Roblox! In this spotlight, @WoozyNate, the creative mind and owner behind the popular new game Fisch, shares his journey and insights into game development. Fisch is a cozy fishing adventure game for players to collect tons of unique fish, complete quests, and explore with friends.
Fisch is a testament to the power of passion, creativity, and a good fishing rod! 
WoozyNate started playing Roblox in 2015 and toyed with development for some years before launching Fisch on his own as his first big Roblox project just this past October.
Why Fish Fisch? 
Let’s start with the name — “Fisch” actually has a dual meaning. If you didn’t know, “fisch” is the German word for “fish”, and that just seemed cooler to WoozyNate. It’s also a nod to his favorite actress on The Office Jenna Fischer, a.k.a Pam Beesly. 
WoozyNate has also been surrounded by fishing his entire life. As a Nova Scotia native, fishing has always been at the center of his community, and he wanted to make a game about that experience.
“I could make the Roblox fishing game,” was WoozyNate’s thought after playing twenty or so Roblox fishing games and not feeling very engaged. None of them had a fishing system similar to Stardew Valley’s, a big inspiration for Fisch. So, WoozyNate thought about making a Roblox game built off this system. In just four months, he scripted, modeled, and built Fisch from scratch. Initially, he didn’t intend to finish the game, but his passion motivated him to complete it.
Building a Cozy, Competitive World
The Core Loop: A Blend of Exploration and Competition 
Fisch revolves around fishing, exploring, and completing quests. Players can fish in various locations, each with its own unique set of fish. The game also features a variety of NPCs and quests, adding depth and variety to the gameplay.
WoozyNate designed the game to be open-ended with more than one “end goal”. He wanted players to figure out what they like about the game and follow their natural intrigue. Some players of Fisch want to collect all of the fish, others want to get the best stats, and many play for the competition. WoozyNate’s philosophy is that retention of players relies on the ability to play a game in multiple ways. They should always have a reason to come back.
WoozyNate emphasizes the importance of balancing gameplay. He strives to create an experience that is neither too easy nor too difficult, ensuring that players of all skill levels can enjoy the game. The fish have a stat inside of them called “Resilience”, which determines how fast or slow the fish bar moves in the minigame. Some fish are extremely easy to catch, while others are frustratingly challenging. To make a successful game, WoozyNate believes developers should design them “for everybody of every age in every place to have an enjoyable experience.”
From Studio to Sea: Creation the World of Fisch 
Every fish in Fisch feels unique, just like fish in the real world. To program so many fish as a solo developer, WoozyNate used Random to generate the various combinations of fish. His script would take the fish’s weight as a “seed” and create a mutation of the fish. The seed is procedurally ran through the fish model, changing the attributes of each part separately.
He also uses other procedural methods, such as changing the hue or tint of the fish. Fish can be shiny or sparkling, too, so this characteristic combined with varying weight creates a huge inventory of fish — each fish has about 25 mutations. For example, a player could find a Giant Sparkling Albino Sockeyed Salmon, while someone else could collect a Shiny Largemouth Bass.
There’s no definitive “best” rod in Fisch (don’t fall for those clickbait videos). WoozyNate crafted each rod to have its own use case and a special ability. For example, the Magma Rod is the primary rod used when fishing in a volcano. The Trident Rod, on the other hand, has a passive effect that randomly boosts your progression when catching fish. It also freezes the fish bar in place to make it easier to catch, making it a great pick for difficult catches.
Fisch features seven distinct islands and two hidden locations (with more to come!). WoozyNate wanted to encourage a sense of exploration through Fisch, so each island has its own unique vibe with varying fish, NPCs, and other fun surprises. Moosewood got its name from the striped maple trees (called “moosewood” because moose eat the trees’ twigs in the winter), and you can see the red maple trees dotted around the island. WoozyNate’s favorite location, Sunstone Island, is a warm, tropical quarry set on top of rock formations. Sunstone is loosely based on Bell Island in Canada, known for its raised rock structures poking out of the water.
WoozyNate’s Favorite Tools 
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Tag Editor: The Tag Editor is a tool in Roblox Studio that allows you to manage and edit tags for objects in your game.
- “I recommend everyone use this plugin. It has nothing to do with the visuals of the game, but is so useful backend-wise. It’s so helpful for organizing objects in an easy way without having to open up Explorer. That really sped up my workflow.”
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Color Adjust: This plugin allows you to change the hue, saturation, and luminance of multiple different colored parts at the same time.
- “I used this one to easily recolor some of the fish if I wanted to change up how they looked.”
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Moon Animator: This plugin assists you with animations.
- “It’s so helpful and beginner-friendly. If you find Blender difficult to use for animation, this plugin is much easier.”
The FischFright Event: A Spooky Success 
WoozyNate’s first event, FischFright, was a Halloween-themed extravaganza that added a new layer of excitement to the game. WoozyNate wasn’t originally planning to hold a seasonal event so soon after the initial launch of Fisch, but with so much buzz, it made sense to try one.
Incorporating LiveOps by running events and making updates is a great opportunity to give players something fresh to come back and play for. WoozyNate believes that events shouldn’t just be a cosmetic additive with only visual changes — an event should incorporate a new challenge, feature, or exclusive gift and add more lore to the game.
For example, in FischFright, WoozyNate added in new characters: a witch whose ingredients were stolen by a goblin. Every 30 minutes to an hour, you would have to go find her ingredients in random places. He also added special fish, including Nessie, ghoulfish, and zombiefish, that would only “arrive” during this time, creating a sense of urgency for players to join. WoozyNate got a lot of positive feedback on FischFright from his community, and majority of the fan art came from the event.
While most of the game’s growth has been organic, this event boosted Fisch’s visibility significantly. The event helped put Fisch on the front page of Roblox, and kept concurrent users steady, with tens of thousands players consistently. Since the event, WoozyNate has seen Fisch’s CCU peak at about 470,000 players and DAU skyrocket.
Tips for Solo Roblox Developers
WoozyNate has learned a lot from building, marketing, and maintaining a game that launched just over a month ago. His top three tips are:
- Every Roblox game needs a good trailer. WoozyNate believes that his indie game got so much organic traction from the trailer on his experience details page. Giving people a visual idea of the game without them needing to jump in and play can catch their attention in a sea of other games. And by amplifying the trailer on X and YouTube, more people are likely to find your game through social media.
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Get a moderation system set up early on. It can be overwhelming as a developer and owner of a game to also moderate the game, so he recommends setting up moderator applications and professional guidelines within Discord — even for small games. This can help the game grow in a safe way. He also gets his moderation team to look for patterns in bugs and share them with him so he can better prioritize players’ feedback.
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Focus on quality over quantity of updates. Assess how much time it will take to make larger, better updates and use that cadence, rather than focusing on making updates fast, without much care.
WoozyNate has exciting plans for the future of Fisch — this is just the beginning. He’s working on adding new content, including more seasonal events and additional islands, to keep players engaged and coming back for more.
Thank you @WoozyNate for speaking with us and sharing your story! Be sure to stay in the loop with him on Roblox and X.
