How Indie Puzzle Game About Little Fish Evolved Over 8 Months

The developers of the upcoming puzzle platformer Barely Breathing shared their progress on the game's development achieved in 8 months, showing how the project's visuals improved over time. The game is being created by an indie team named Compiling Shaders Games using Unity.

The graphics have become more detailed, the animations – smoother, and the camera movement also became more fluid. Apart from this, the water VFX make the gameplay more immersive and detailed.

We first featured the game back in January, and since then, it has received many improvements, along with a playable demo on Steam.

Before, the team showcased even earlier WIP compared to the current process, and the change is dramatic:

Barely Breathing is a cute 3D platformer with detailed physics, where players take on the role of Sheen, a goldfish trying to escape the house and follow all the water spots along their way in the living room and beyond – aquariums, pots, bottles, water spills, and more. Surely, the result is inevitable chaos, but this is the fun part.

The game features puzzle games, which are difficult for the little creature as it literally has a memory of a goldfish.

Recently, the developers added swinging pots to Sheen's path:

Polishing a game is not an easy task. Game Developer and UX Designer André Cardoso shared tips and three demos on how to improve gameplay feel at the final stages of development, pointing out that subtle elements, such as VFX, varied camera movements, hit feedback, smooth rotation, and UI feedback, change the perception of the gameplay experience: