Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish
๐ Controls ๐
| Keyboard | GB | Action |
|---|---|---|
| WASD/โโโโ | D-pad | Move |
| Z | A | Interact/confirm |
| X | B | Cancel |
| Enter | Start | View inventory and Fish Power |
| Shift | Select | View completed puzzle albums |
๐ Description ๐
Welcome to Fishcross Island! Explore the land and water, meet weird characters, and solve nonogram puzzles for items and progress. Will you gain the Power of 7 Fish and meet Chad face-to-face in the Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish?
๐ Features ๐
- Play on GB, GBC, SGB, Analogue Pocket, and emulator
- Discover and solve 200 nonogram puzzles
- Enjoy 6-8 hours of puzzles and exploration, plus post-game content
- Save and load your game so you can play at your own pace
๐ Credits ๐
Art & Design: objetdiscret
Tools & QA: Columbrine
QA Testing: AriMaeda, RyuSeishin, Hiraishinsenna, Aviyah, and omniflas
Special Thanks: DionOfSpice, GB Studio, GB dev community, SolidusSnake, and friends/family (particularly Carolyn, Betsy, Barb, Kat, and Dan)
๐ Extras ๐
- The TaiFab soundtrack is available for listening and creative projects!
- Thanks to LaytonLoztew, there is a set of TaiFab RetroAchievements!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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This is the first picross game I've really played and I'm loving it. What a fun little world to explore.
Thanks so much! I'm honored that TaiFab is your first nonogram game! If you want recommendations for other nonogram games, just let me know. ๐
I would love that! I'm pretty much covered for platforms other than Xbox so fire away :)
My favorite is Picross DS for the original Nintendo DS, which just has a bunch of great puzzles to solve. If you have Switch Online, you can get the SNES app and play Mario's Super Picross, which also has a lot of good puzzles.
If you want something that mixes nonograms with other gameplay, I heard Murder by Numbers is fun (but I haven't played it myself). I like Luna Story on mobile, and I'm recently playing Konami's Pixel Puzzle Collection, which has been alright.
Thank you!! Picross DS has a retroachievements set so I'll probably start there
So cool to see a picross retro game created like this!
Curious if there are any functional differences between the different platforms if one is planning to use an emulator? For example, does GBC have more colors, higher quality music, etc. by virtue of the superior hardware?
The GBC version runs slicker than the GB version--I actually had to make changes to the puzzle controls based on whether the game is played on GB or GBC! Both versions of the game have four colors, but the GBC version has a nice blue palette (which can be seen in the screenshots). ๐ Columbrine says the framerate is better on the GBC version as well. One nice thing about the GB version is that is has a special border in the Super GB (which you can also see in one of the screenshots).
Thanks very much for your kind comment! I'm always happy to meet a fellow nonogram fan. ๐
I appreciate the detailed reply! I ended up playing the GBC version on my DS Lite using an emulator. Other than an initial hiccup with configuring the emulator to actually write save files, it ran just fine.
I love the aesthetic of the game, with the light blue palette, pixel art, and the chiptune music. The puzzles are a decent difficulty, and the fact that they don't have timers makes the whole thing very laid back. The fish theme is cool, and you two clearly had a lot of fun with it, especially the zany descriptions.
The only time I got stuck was when I couldn't find the developer house because I thought the signpost was referring to the museum building when saying "North: ???", and I didn't think to look behind it.
Anyway, I finished the game with all 202 puzzles. Thanks for creating the game and sharing it with us!! :)
I appreciate your kind feedback, and I'm so pleased that you enjoyed the game! I am excitedly working on the sequel now. ๐
Had a great time completing 202%, looking forward to the sequel!
I'm finishing up RetroAchievements integration as well, thankfully I read the comment about the debug room ๐
Thanks so much for your comment! Really glad you enjoyed the game!
Hey, I'm excited to see RetroAchievements coming! If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know.
If you could check the RetroAchievements page (add ?f=5 to url to view unpublished achievements) and make sure I'm not missing any game secrets, that would be great! I'm in final testing so if all is good I can publish soon
Oh, I love it! It all looks great to me! I think Columbrine might drop you a note about a proposed achievement. ๐
I love it, thanks for your hard work!
I would personally add two achievements for what I think are the most missed puzzles:
Stay hydrated (Complete the 8*8 Water Drop puzzle)
BEHIND the counter (Complete the 8*8 Skull puzzle)
I also personally would prefer [Annoyed burbling] for acquiring the Crab's Fish Power, but that's a matter of taste.
I personally found the 12 * 12 Grapes puzzle to be the hardest puzzle in the game, if there was an achievement for them specifically, I'd name it 'OF WRATH'
In any case, good job putting these in!
Thanks, I made some changes. Considering another for the dream puzzles but I don't want too much overlap
I'm busy playing through it on the DSi at the moment. It's my first time playing nonogram puzzles. It's such a cool idea. I'm not that far into the game yet but so far I've really enjoyed it.
Thanks for saying so! I hope the rest of the game treats you well
I finally beat the game and start chipping away at the post game, then suddenly my progress resets? Why must you do this to me?
Are you playing in your browser? Depending on your settings, your browser may automatically clear your cookies, and in doing so delete your saved game. If you download the game ROM you can play in your Game Boy environment of choice, and have direct access to your saved games. Regardless, check your browser settings regarding temporary files and cookies if you intend on playing GB games in a web browser
Check out Columbrine's response. I'm really sorry to hear that you lost your progress! I definitely recommend playing a downloaded copy of the game.
202/202!!!! I love this game so much, it's so cute, and it's obvious you put a lot of work into it. I enjoyed all the different quests and parts of the game, I was surprised by how much game time there was. Definitely one of my favourite games from itch.io!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the game! Thank you so much for your kind comment! I'm making a sequel right now. ๐
Hi! We played your game on stream and really enjoyed it!
Thanks so much! I'll look forward to checking out your stream! ๐
Ioved the transcript on this one
i will miss playing this after work each day. so fun!
Thank you for your comment! I'm so pleased that you enjoyed the game! I'm working on a sequel now. ๐
Ov3rall rating = 4.2/10
Ok, I must be missing something obvious, but I have yet to find or solve the last row of five Large puzzles, and cannot figure out what I could possibly have overlooked. I'm at 196/202 so if there's anything that needed to be unlocked to get there, I'm pretty sure I've unlocked it...
Nvm, figured it out. Apparently I just needed to sleep on it. Again. But in a different place than before.
Really enjoyed the game btw, thanks for making it!
Thank you so much for your kind words, and I'm glad you found your missing puzzles!
This is wonderful! I love nonograms / picross so much ^_^ So happy to see more pop up for GB! I want to make a picross game someday also but I couldn't figure it out in gbstudio yet
Thank you so much for your kind comment! I'm happy to meet a fellow nonogram fan and GB dev. ๐
This project was a really helpful starting place for me to make a nonogram game in GB Studio: https://dionofspice.itch.io/gb-picross (You can see DionOfSpice in the Special Thanks section in my credits because of that. ๐) Maybe it will help give you some ideas too!
Through the course of building TaiFab, I learned a lot about GB Studio, and I'm already building a bigger and (hopefully) better puzzle architecture for my next game. ๐
Nice!! Looking forward to more games from you for sure :D
I was trying to figure it out from that project to but I think I gave up too easily lol >.< But I'll try another crack at it soon! I always start too many side projects
Thanks, and also, big mood! I'll look forward to your projects as well. ๐
for sure :D
I am still playing this. I love the cute aspect of it but also enjoy that it helps wake up my brain some. Thank you for making this. I know I still have a long, long way to go.
If you'd like to see, I did stream playing this a few times already, so I'll share the latest stream of me playing. (I apologize ahead if the audio isn't the best.)
I did this one at about 2:08:00
Thanks for your kind comment! I'm glad you're enjoying the game, and I'll be sure to check out your video. ๐
finish 202%๏ผEach fish is sooooo cute. I am so happy to help complete the celebration ceremony of Chad. Looking forward to your new game๏ผ๏ผ
Thank you so much!! You're very kind, and I'm really happy that you enjoyed the game!
202 puzzles complete. Really enjoyed this. I am eagerly awaiting your next game.
Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm excited to bring my next game to the world, and I was working on it today. ๐
I seriously can't find the last fish power :(
I have walked at least 3 laps around the whole map and haven't found it and I've solved 90 puzzles so far.
...I just forgot to talk to the angler after completing their puzzles
Oh dang, glad you found it! Sorry I didn't see this message until now. I hope you were able to enjoy the game despite that devious anglerfish. ๐
Yes I am definitely enjoying the game! Nonogram puzzles have always been really fun to me, so seeing a game that mixes nonograms with more gameplay is really exciting, Iโll definitely post when I finish the game too :)
I am always happy to meet a fellow nonogram fan! I'm so glad you're enjoying the game, and I really appreciate your kind comment. ๐
please add "press start" on the start screen
Why would this be needed? Even major Game Boy titles eventually dropped this as a standard, see Pokemon Red and Blue for example.
Additionally, TaiFab's splash and menu screens can be progressed with the A button in addition to the Start button, so having a hold at 'Press Start' seems a little misleading.
What would having a 'Press Start' on the splash screen accomplish. pray tell?
I play in browser so it would tell me I haven't started the game yet and need to click the screen or something.
I'm probably not going to make any further changes to this game unless someone finds a bug that I need to fix. However, I'll keep your feedback in mind on my next development project. I hope you were able to figure out how to start the game even without that text. ๐ Thanks for your comment!
how do you load your saved game?
Normally, if you saved by talking to the floppy disk at the Looong Gallery, the title screen has a 'continue' option.
I'm not sure if you're playing in the browser or with a downloaded copy. If the browser didn't save your game, you might have some browser setting that is clearing your cookies.
I really recommend downloading the game and playing on your own emulator. I'm sorry to hear if you lost some saved progress.
I found out that it's because I wasn't signed into my itch acc at the time
Oh, I'm glad you found out what happened! I'm still sorry that you lost some progress. Thanks for letting me know, and I hope you can still enjoy the game. ๐
I speedran and got the progress back and more B)
This game is so exciting. But in the browser, I came across the fact that after going through 200 puzzles, I can't find the last one in any way. As it turned out, after completing the 8x8 skull puzzle, it did not count and there was no way to replay it, as well as get 201 puzzle scores. What's going on behind the last bubble?
Oh my, that's a new one! If you still have that save, can you send me a screenshot of your completed puzzle albums and the dialogue from the innkeeper? I will take a look at the code for the innkeeper's puzzle when I have time later.
The last bubble has one final 12x12 puzzle. If you need, I can send you a screenshot of it. ๐ Thanks so much for your kind comment, and I'm sorry that you ran into an issue!
Thanks! Can you show me a screenshot of what happens when you talk to the innkeeper behind the counter? ๐
Edit: I didn't need the other screenshot, so I deleted the other post. Thanks for sending it. ๐
Hello! I am having the same issue with the water droplet. Here is a screenshot :)
Thanks for getting in touch! Here's a hint: Do you remember talking to anyone who was thirsty? ๐
I have the same issue with the skull puzzle and the inkeeper just tells me which room I'm in and whether I want to try the soup.
Thanks for your comment! Have you tried talking to the innkeeper behind the counter? ๐ There's different dialogue if you talk to her in front of the counter and behind the counter.
Sorry for the trouble! I was trying to reward players for being extra curious, but it ended up causing some confusion. (In the past, I played some games in which a shopkeeper has different dialogue behind the counter, and I thought that was funny, so I used it as an opportunity to hide a puzzle.)
This game is amazing and I cannot stop playing.
Thanks so much! Glad you're having fun!
Anyone get Sanji vibes?
Hmm, like Sanji from One Piece, or a different one?
great game! had a blast 202% it.
wish there was more!
Thanks so much, I'm really glad you enjoyed my game! There may be more in the future. ๐
202% completion finished, peak game, a suggestion, it would be nice if on larger puzzles, the centre line was a darker colour so it would be easier on the eyes to determine where you need to mark.
Thanks so much for your kind comment! I also wanted to provide some darkened dividing lines, but I was having a tough time managing the tile constraints of GB Studio. ๐ I wish I had deeper knowledge of the hardware and knew how to do this stuff efficiently! At any rate, thanks for your feedback, and I'm really glad you enjoyed the game.
I'm having so much fun playing this! I'm just a little stuck rn :( I have completed all of the nanograms I can find, and I have 1 fish power rn but all of the fish say i can't swim well enough to get them, does anyone know what i'm missing?
I was stuck in (I assume) the same place. I just figured it out. It's non-obvious, but sometimes you _really_ want to read the signs again after you finish the nonograms. (for example, if you "read" the money bag again after solving it, you actually get the money). In particular, there's one in the museum that gives you the item in the display, and it will help you get to things in "deep" water (like lakes, ponds and soup pots...)
Thanks for helping out a fellow player! Good on you for figuring it out, and sorry if it was a pain to find.
I tried to signal the location of the item with a couple of cues: it has the most complex puzzle in the area, and the outline of the sprite on the wall is the darkest color in the palette, unlike the rest of the display items. (In fact, I use the darkest color in the palette throughout the game to signal interactivity, except in underwater areas, where I use the lightest color in the palette.)
That clearly hasn't been obvious to everybody, and I will absolutely keep that in mind on my current development project. Thanks so much for the helpful feedback!
I think what might have worked against it was the rest of the similar "placards". There's a number of them around he game, and of course lots of them in the museum, and every one of those when you read them after solving, they just give you a bit of info about the thing that you just solved. So by the time I got to that last one in the museum, and spent a while solving it to see something fairly obvious on the wall, I never even considered that looking at the placard again would provide anything beyond "It's a diving mask", and maybe some commentary.
To be honest, I didn't even think to interact with the money bag the first time after I solved that puzzle because no solved puzzle I'd interacted with up to that point, with the exception of the teleport leaf (which I hit by chance), and the chest (which was obvious) had done anything beyond just providing some flavour text (and I don't even remember if the chest needed a second interaction, or if I got the shovel immediately upon solving it now - which means if I did need to interact with it a second time, that being a game mechanic didn't actually stick in my mind)
That's legit. ๐ Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I'm really glad you're enjoying the game! clansing has got the answer: you should definitely read signs after you solve puzzles, especially one sign in the museum. ๐ Thank you so much for your comment, and let me know if you need any more hints!
Had a great time with it! As soon as I started playing, I couldn't stop.
I didn't find everything, but i'm satisfied for tonight. This was cute and fun and made me laugh a few times! Great work!
My progress (SPOILERS BELOW) Will update if i get further!
- Missed 4 ducks, but did find their area
- Skipped the lucid area for now
- Skipped the postgame area for now
- Missed one of the 8x8 tiles
- Missed two rows of larger tiles tho maybe that's covered by what I skipped
Let me know if you have trouble finding anything--I am happy to give hints! ๐ I am so glad you're enjoying the game and I really appreciate your comment!
Thanks so much!
Do you mind giving me a hint for the single 8x8 tile I am missing? It is 4th from the left, 3rd from the top. I have searched everywhere I can think of!
Sure! Do you remember meeting anyone who was thirsty? ๐
That's exactly what I needed! Thank you!
Great game! I'd never seen a nonogram puzzle before this, but I got hooked. It was a fun and funny game and I enjoyed your pixel art -- it's a real skill to make so many items within the limits of a b&w 12x12 grid. Loved the style of the ending sequence/credits, too. Thank you for making it!
Wow, I'm excited that TaiFab got to be your introduction to nonogram games! If you want to play other nonogram/picross games, I can happily recommend some. ๐ Thanks so much for your kind comment!
Yes, recommendations for a few of your favorites would be awesome, thank you
My favorite nonogram game is Picross DS, which just has a bunch of puzzles to solve. If you want something that mixes nonograms with other gameplay, I heard that Murder by Numbers is good (but I haven't played it myself). I also enjoy Luna Story on mobile. ๐
The graphics are 10/10 within your chosen style! The gameplay pace takes some patience, but also has a relaxing effect.
Thanks for your kind comment! I hope you enjoyed your time with the game.
Usman from our team was not able to hold back and had to write an article for BrewOtaku #005 :) As we are still busy with #004, will still take a bunch of weeks before we release #005. We will inform you, when the time has come.
Hey, thanks so much to Usman and all of you! I'll look forward to reading your thoughts on the game! ๐
hii thank u for this game, it was so cute and cozy !! i've completed it already but would i be able to get some guidance on where to find the rest of the ducks? i've found 4/8
I'm really glad you had a good time, and thank you so much for commenting! As for the ducks, have you visited the Looong Gallery after you beat the game? ๐
Just wanted you to know you made a fantastic game. Absolutely loved my time with it.
Thank you so much! Your comment means a lot to me and I'm so pleased that you enjoyed the game.
this game is really cute!! i'm kind of stuck getting the last fish power though. i'm missing the 5th one (or the first one on the second row) in the menu... i have the first 3 items on the first row and all the items on the second row. what am i missing? can't wait to get all the ducks to explore the bathtub...
ah, the opening to the north wasn't clear to me... i did see the sign saying "North: ???" but wasn't sure how to get there. got it, been enjoying the game <3 will post when i finish
Thanks so much for your kind comments! Sorry I didn't see them until now. Please let me know if you need help with anything else, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the game! ๐
Loved the game.
Managed to get to 200/202 puzzles, but I can't find this 8x8
Any hints?
Thanks so much for your kind comment; I'm so glad you enjoyed the game! As for the puzzle, have you tried talking to the innkeeper behind the counter? ๐
Well now I feel silly for not trying that. I must have talked to everyone else in the game *except* the innkeeper.
What was the deal with the hammer and spanner in the Northern area? I spent a long time trying to interact with those... ๐
You don't have to feel silly! Another person on Mastodon showed me more or less the same screenshot and asked the same question. ๐ Sometimes in RPGs, if you go behind a counter and talk to a shopkeeper, they'll have some extra dialogue like, "Can you talk to me in front of the counter? There's no room back here." I just thought it would be fun to reward players who try stuff like that, but you are clearly an upstanding player who respects the innkeeper's personal space. ๐
Sorry about that tool pile! There's just some random construction junk laying around the Dev House because the Dev is not an especially organized person, lol. I tried to make the interactables use the darkest color in the palette to make them pop out more, but maybe that's too hard to see. I will certainly keep your comment in mind on my next development project!
Nonograms should be in more games with structures of play beyond just... loading up and solving nonograms! This looks great, so I've loaded it onto my Miyoo Mini+ and cobbled together a 250x350 OnionOS cover image so it'll look nice in the menus, like so:
https://bsky.app/profile/xeneth.bsky.social/post/3l5ya4j6a3y2v
That looks great! Hope it works well in your interface, and I hope you're enjoying the game! I'm planning to work on another nonogram exploration game in the future. ๐ I'm so glad other folks have similar tastes as me!
Now that I've solved 202 puzzles, wanted to drop by and communicate what an absolute joy it's been to pick my way through TFMoF slowly over the last month or so!
Since you mentioned you'll be working on a similar project in the future, wanted to sneak in a feature request, assuming the limitations of GBstudio empower you to consider it:
When holding down the Fill or X button and holding a direction to quickly mark a row or column, if the starting space was blank, consider not allowing it to overwrite existing fills or crosses on spaces the player has already marked. (this is especially effective when other info has already Filled the required clues in a row or column, as it lets you quickly X off all the remaining blanks without disrupting Fills!)
Thinking deeply about my preference for "efficiency" behaviors like the one above, and given my relative disdain for some of the more advanced "helper" features that modern mobile nonograms tend to have, (like highlighting clues to tell you which ones are being fulfilled) it occurs to me that almost all such requests are matters of preference that might cause a designer to have to implement tricky options menus and toggles; it's impossible to please everyone! So FWIW, I appreciated the old school functionality of TFMoF, (taking me all the way back to Mario's Picross on the Game Boy!) much MORE than I happened to be frustrated by held fills blizting across my previous deductions.
GG on completing all the puzzles, and I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed it! ๐
I totally hear you about having the cursor not overwrite existing fills/Xs! It's a feature that I really appreciate in a nonogram game, and I can clearly envision the programming logic for it, but I'm worried about how I would implement it in a resource-efficient way. Sometimes there were things I thought would be really straightforward but ended up taxing the engine, and maybe now I'm kinda wary, lol. (For example, in the first TaiFab, I used to use a while loop to set up all the squares in the puzzle area, but it ended up being a bit slow to load puzzle scenes. I unraveled that loop, and the puzzle scenes loaded almost twice as fast!)
Surely, if I were writing these games in C and ASM, I would happily be able to fulfill your request. Maybe someday I'll get good enough to dig into the guts of the GB Studio engine and optimize it for my particular games' needs. ๐ (I have definitely made improvements to puzzle architecture in the second game, but most of that is useful for me as the developer. The major QOL update for players is larger puzzle sizes and the ability to cross out numbers.) At any rate, I really appreciate your feedback and thoughts. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for playing my game!
That looks neat. We have to try!
Thanks, I really hope you have a good time with the game!
I've been having fun with it so far and it's very charming. There are two things I wish were possible though: Running and Saving at any time.
Thanks so much for your kind words and your helpful feedback!
I definitely learned a lot about GB Studio over the course of this development and I think I know how I could implement a save-anywhere system now. Maybe I can take a look at that soon when I'm a little less swamped!
As for running, I can help with that right now! At the dock at the beginning of the game, go to the large rock on the right side of the beach. Hold B and press A while facing the rock, and its collision will disappear. Walk through the rock into the Debug Room and you can pick up a pair of "Deboots" (Debug Boots) that allow you to hold B to run. I was afraid to put that feature in the full game because it makes the sprites jitter a lot, but if you don't mind that, you can totally use it!
Oh neat, thanks! I'm curious about the other things I saw but I think I'll ignore those for my own sake.