I’ve been working on a game called Off the Hook for the past few weeks. It combines fishing and boxing mechanics: players catch fish, then fight them in a boxing match to keep them. I eventually want to add multiplayer features, such as challenging other players using fish you’ve collected, trading, and physical shops on a beach area.
The main issue is that, as shown in the video, each player’s raft acts as their personal boxing ring and fishing area. So I’m not sure how I should structure the game once I add multiplayer and areas outside the raft.
My current idea is a Bloxburg-style plot system where joining the game gives each player their own raft in the water. Players could teleport between the beach, where upgrades and shops are located, and their raft, where they fish and fight. Players wouldn’t normally be able to access other players’ rafts. However, I’d also like to eventually add the ability to fight fish alongside a teammate, which makes the raft/plot system a little more complicated.
My main goal here is: how can I make this game multiplayer? Does anyone have any ideas to help? Should I just keep the game single player? Any help is appreciated.
You could just add an invite mechanic to other players’ rafts.
One thing I suggest doing is having the invite system have settings so you can set it to whether you want public invites, friend invites, or just none; that way, people can’t spam it.
You can also make a personal aquarium that people have, so when they catch fish, they don’t have to sell it, but they can showcase it (Might wanna also add an index to show all the types of fish players have caught. If you want to go further, you could also add mutants of fish. Small, Normal, or even Large. Gives the game a bit of flair
With the areas thing? Instead of like plots or anything, it’d be fun that the player could move their raft to warmer, maybe even colder areas for different types of fish. Maybe they can even go to deeper waters or get a submarine.
One last thing that might be fun is having this giant pirate ship in the middle of the plots and then have it be a boxing ring, so people can fight eachother for fish. So when you die, you lose all your fish and it’s given to the player that defeated you, and when you defeat another player, you take all their fish (But just a heads-up… you could also limit the amount of fish they get, so then it’s not too overpowered)