FISHING ENGINE OVERHAUL

The fishing system in Project Void supports over 559 BILLION unique fish combinations. That is not an exaggeration. That is the actual math.

To put that into perspective: if we released one zone per month with 10 fish of every rarity in it, it would take 776,483,725 years to release all of them. That is longer than the entire history of fish on Earth.

Here is how it works.

Every fish in the game is hand-crafted by a developer through the Developer Panel. When making a fish, the dev sets its name, rarity, and the fun part: its Fish Behavior. Fish Behavior is a trait system with 60 unique traits split evenly across three categories:

- Zone Shape (20 traits) - controls how the catch zone itself moves and morphs while you're reeling. Things like splitting apart, pulsing, squeezing inward from both sides, warping, or shattering.

- Movement (20 traits) - controls how the cursor drifts and fights you. Erratic zigzagging, orbital patterns, sine waves, teleporting, chasing, spiraling.

- Special (20 traits) - wild modifiers like going invisible, spawning decoys, reversing your controls, cursing your line, blacking out the screen, or even mimicking other fish.

Each fish can have up to 10 of those 60 traits stacked together, and every fish exists at one of 6 rarity tiers: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, or Mythic. When you factor in all trait combinations across all rarities, that comes out to 559,068,282,288 possible unique fish. On top of that, every fish has 10 individually tuned core stats that control the base feel of the reel. No two fish have to play the same way.

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📋 EXAMPLE FISH

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🟣 EPIC - Voidtail Eel

"A long, pale eel that pulses with cold light from the deep. It doesn't swim so much as it loops, darting between positions with no warning."

CORE STATS

Zone Width: 26% - narrower than the epic default, a tighter target to stay inside

Zone Speed: 0.56 - moves faster than a typical epic fish

Cursor Drift: 0.90 - strong pull away from the zone at all times

Cursor Push: 0.93 - zone pushes your cursor when it makes contact

Tension Rate: 0.26 - line tension builds at a moderate pace

Tension Recover: 0.19 - tension drops slowly when you ease off

Catch Rate: 0.19 - catch fills at a steady but unforgiving pace

Catch Decay: 0.11 - falling out of the zone punishes you quickly

Bite Time: 8,000ms min / 22,000ms max - long wait before the eel decides to bite

TRAITS

PULSE - the catch zone width breathes in and out rhythmically throughout the reel. At its widest it feels almost manageable. At its narrowest the window barely exists. You have to feel the rhythm and commit to it.

ORBIT - instead of bouncing wall to wall, the zone traces a looping orbital path across the bar. It curves rather than reflects, making it hard to predict purely from the last direction it came from.

DASH - every few seconds the zone freezes and shakes as a warning, then teleports to a completely different position on the bar. While you're inside the zone orbiting comfortably, a dash can throw you to the opposite side with almost no time to react.

🟠 LEGENDARY - The Mirrorscale

"A flat, reflective fish said to show the caster their own reflection mid-reel. Nobody who has caught one can agree on what color it actually is."

CORE STATS

Zone Width: 18% - extremely narrow, one of the tightest catch windows in the game

Zone Speed: 0.65 - moves briskly with no slow phases

Cursor Drift: 0.70 - constant drift pressure in one direction

Cursor Push: 0.70 - zone contact knocks the cursor more aggressively than usual

Tension Rate: 0.60 - line tension builds very fast, punishing any mistake

Tension Recover: 0.35 - tension drops slowly, giving you little margin to breathe

Catch Rate: 0.38 - catch fills quickly when you are on it

Catch Decay: 0.14 - drains fast when you are off it

Bite Time: 12,000ms min / 30,000ms max - extremely long wait, rare bite window

TRAITS

TWIN PULSE - two narrow zones pulse in alternating rhythm. Only one is fully live at any given moment and you have to anticipate which one is about to become active before it happens. Being on the wrong one fills nothing.

MIRROR - instead of bouncing off walls the zone reflects off the opposite wall, crossing through itself and creating unexpected diagonal patterns. The zone effectively changes direction without warning because the logic is inverted.

REVERSAL - at set intervals the entire catch bar inverts. Filling catch now requires being OUTSIDE the zone rather than inside it. The inversion lasts a few seconds and then flips back. If you do not realize it has happened you are actively working against yourself.

HESITATE - the zone pauses briefly every time it hits a wall or changes direction. This creates a false rhythm where you think you know where it is going, then it stalls before committing. Catching it during a hesitation feels clean, but timing the reversal out of it is where people lose track.

🔴 MYTHIC - The Siren's Catch

"No one agrees on what this fish actually looks like. Descriptions from players who claim to have caught one vary wildly and none of them match."

CORE STATS

Zone Width: 15% - the narrowest catch window available

Zone Speed: 0.72 - moves fast at all times

Cursor Drift: 0.72 - heavy constant drift fighting your input

Cursor Push: 0.64 - violent knock when the zone makes contact

Tension Rate: 0.72 - tension climbs extremely fast, one slip can end the reel

Tension Recover: 0.28 - barely recovers, gives you almost no buffer

Catch Rate: 0.42 - fills at a decent rate but only while perfectly on the zone

Catch Decay: 0.16 - drains aggressively the moment you lose it

Bite Time: 15,000ms min / 45,000ms max - the longest possible wait, may not bite for most of your time in the zone

TRAITS

BLACKOUT - the entire catch bar goes dark periodically. While blacked out the zone keeps moving and you have to track its position entirely from memory. A faint pulse is the only hint.

WARP ZONE - the zone stretches and compresses at random, creating unpredictable width windows. At its widest it briefly looks catchable. At its narrowest it is nearly a single pixel. The shape never settles.

DECOY - a false ghost zone appears alongside the real one and moves at a slightly different speed. Staying on the decoy drains your catch progress instead of filling it. Both look almost identical.

SIREN - the zone emits a visual pulse that pulls your cursor toward it. This sounds helpful but the cursor being dragged into the zone means the push on contact sends it flying out the other side. Fighting the pull is the only way to control your position.

OVERLOAD - filling catch too quickly triggers a discharge and your catch briefly drains back down to a threshold. Rushing is actively punished. You have to build catch slowly and steadily or the fish resets part of your progress.

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Fishing content is actively being developed. Every fish you catch was built from scratch. The harder it is to reel in, the more thought went into it. Keep exploring, and let us know what you find.