Announcement: Fingeance, our very first game, will be shown at GlitchCon! Look for us at our booth in Minnecade on Sunday (Complete Schedule).

Hi everybody!

My name is Lane Davis. I write code for Fingeance, which means that I spend my afternoons doing the following:

• Teaching fish to pilot submarines.
• Teaching dolphins to hatch sinister schemes.
• Teaching lasers to make a mess out of everything.

I’ll also be spending Fridays writing about this little game of ours. On Monday, you’ll meet Stephen McGregor, who will take you through the design of Fingeance weapons and enemies. On Wednesday, Charles McGregor will begin his dive into Fingeance art and music. For now, though, it’s my pleasure to introduce the game itself, its story, and our design philosophy. Let’s get going!

It all begins with dolphins in an operating room.

Of all the creatures, none is as ambitious as the dolphin. We’re talking about a relentless search for power. Not since the Utahraptor has any species been this sour over being second-fiddle. As our story begins, these sinister cetaceans have discovered a lost power beneath the waves. In their darkest heart of hearts, the dolphins want to seize this power, to make themselves masters of land and sea.

You might well ask yourself, ‘how?’ After all, dolphins are as well known for their blowholes as they are for their playful[1] nature. On the one hand, they’re looking at an antediluvian power source that could re-shape the world. On the other, they’ve got to re-visit the surface every 5-7 minutes, or die. How can they make their schemes into reality?

You wouldn’t be alone in asking this. For years, top dolphin scientists have been mulling this very question. As our story begins, they’ve finally found their answer: the fish.

[1] – Allegedly.

Fingeance follows the story of four goldfish named Finn, Bubbles, Gil, and Dorsa. One moment, they were happily eating plankton. The next, they’d woken up in a dolphin medical facility – dazed, confused, and lacking the ability to breathe underwater. The fish had only a moment to panic before they were dumped unceremoniously back into the sea, never to be seen again…

…Or so the dolphins thought.

How will they survive?

What happens next?

Why did losing the ability to breathe underwater conveniently bestow the ability to breathe above water, against all common sense?

Join me next week and find out.