For Glass Gecko Games, the developers of fishing game Scale the Depths, blowing up wasn't all good news. After winning a game jam in 2024 the title became the victim of countless AI rip-offs. The official version released this May, and its creators say it may have to thank the clones after all.
The game's lead artist, Serpexnessie, took to Reddit and laid out the highs and lows of development. The story begins in an almost dream scenario for developers. Scale the Depths won the 2024 GMTK game jam. Serpexnessie explains that honor was probably because of the core gameplay loop, "It was incredibly addictive," they write, "and we pretty much hit gold with it." Following the jam, Glass Gecko Games made a browser based version of the game (this is important), saw two to three thousand views a week on itch.io, and surpassed 7000 wishlists by the end of the year.
