Have you ever felt like you were choking from stress and anxiety while staring at an obstacle you know you cannot overcome?
That's what Loan Shark is about. You play as a professional angler in debt to the mob. During a night of work on your fishing boat, you catch a weird fish that can talk and offers its help to get you out of debt. The only problem is, help does not come cheap.
What kind of game is Loan Shark?
A short, dark psychological horror game about hopelessness, debt, and fishing. The sea is your mind, the boat is yourself, and you cannot go back until you've fished enough.
If you enjoy psychological horror games that deal with adult, contemporary themes like Mouthwashing, you will enjoy Loan Shark.
If you appreciate narrative games that merge gameplay and authored storytelling like Paratopic, you will appreciate Loan Shark.
If you like short, straight-to-the-point gaming experiences that you can play in one sitting, Loan Shark is perfect for you.
Wishlist the game and follow us if this is something you want to play. We want to hear from you as we get closer to the release date.
Who we are
Hello there! We are Luca and Nicola, the developers behind Loan Shark.
A couple of words about us: we are two game developers from Italy with previous experience in the local game industry. We met and became friends while working for a local game studio. Fast forward to October 2024: we had both left that studio and started collaborating together.
We released a small demo project for free on itch.io to test our collaboration. Along the way, we joined forces with Rumpelstiltskin, a friend of ours and a talented all-around artist. The three of us are now working hard on our first commercial game to be released here on Steam.
That game is, of course, Loan Shark.
What comes next
This post is the first in a series of dev logs focused on sharing the development process behind Loan Shark with the Steam community.
As indie developers, what we need to thrive is a community that enjoys our games and supports our work. We believe we have meaningful things to share and that we just need to find our audience.
These dev logs are a small step toward that goal! Part dev diary for us to reflect on the process, part desire to share our daily work and progress. We hope you will enjoy them and get to know the game and us a little better.
Thank you for reading!
Luca and Nicola