Out There

How my Twitter typo served as the inspiration for an indie Android game

Fishy business

How my Twitter typo served as the inspiration for an indie Android game
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| Fish Puncher!

It all started with an innocent (albeit unintentionally hilarious) typo.

I was discussing PC gaming with a friend on Twitter last week when 'it' happened. I was attempting to introduce Fist Puncher, a side-scrolling indie beat-'em-up for PC, into the conversation.

I accidentally typed out the words 'Fish Puncher', though.

"Fish Puncher sounds like a brilliant game!" someone replied. "We'd prefer Fish Puncher too, but it's too late to back out now," Team2Bit, the team working on Fist Puncher, said.

Others joked about actually turning Fish Puncher into a real game. Well, most were joking, anyway. As it turns out, you see, one commenter was being deadly serious.

Ready, set, punch

"It took about three days to make," Fish Puncher! developer Zayne Black told Pocket Gamer.

"Because I enter a lot of game jams, I'm pretty used to getting something 'finished' in a short space of time, so I managed to get from 'working idea' to release-ready game pretty quickly."

Fish Puncher! itself stars a school of demon fish who have enslaved humanity, and a lone fighter who decides to take the fish on and punch them into oblivion.

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You're given two minutes to punch the incoming fish right in the face. Your score combo rises if you don't let any of the fish slip by. Your high score after the two-minute run is then saved.

In terms of controls, you tap on the left-hand side of the screen to change the fighter's position. You tap on the right-hand side to punch.

In a jam

Black's aim is to release one game for Android every single week. Fish Puncher! represents this week's gift to the 'droid masses, then.

"I thought I'd start playing around with different business models while simultaneously getting a sort-of 'jump start' on my mobile career," he explains.

"Being a frequent entrant in game jams, I thought I'd try and turn my rapid productivity into something useful for once."

Zed is NOT dead, baby

Black's plan is to release 12 games over the next three months under the project name Zedcade. You can follow Black's progress on this here website.

As for the typo inspiration, Black reckons that it's more than likely that a few more of his games will be based on similar completely off-the-cuff 'conversations' and observations.

"The content of some of my games is usually pretty offbeat and weird," he says.

"I made something called Please Ignore The Dancing Llama for the last Ludum Dare competition, and previous titles for games have included Intense Staring Simulator and Giant Doll Velcro Technicolour Sticky Show."

Nope, neither of those game names contains a typo. Honest.

Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.