By Bait or By Bullet

By Bait or By Bullet is a bombastic 2D fishing rogue-lite adventure with both story-rich top-down exploration and action-packed platforming combat, made with Unity and available on Windows and through WebGL!

The Rock Beyond Reality
- Converse with the curious collection of characters who have been dragged beyond reality as you gear up for your next tentacular tussle. These odd bedfellows have stories aplenty, and more importantly, they’re willing to part with some valuable gear in the hope that you’ll be the one to defeat the sea beast once and for all.
Fishing Dock
- Play a fishing minigame to buoy your battling power and collect fish from the strangest ocean this side of nonexistence. Time your casts and reels with the mouse to maximize your menagerie of munitions!
Maelstrom
- Dive into battle against 3 fearsome limbs of a great interdimensional octopus! Use your mouse and keyboard to give Contra and Cuphead a run for their quarters in frenetic 2D run n’ gun boss battle mania as you jump and dash your way to victory (or usually, defeat).

By Bait or By Bullet does not feature any controls/input configuration.

HUB
WASD to move around, and press E to interact with NPCs and buy items.

FISHING
Use the left mouse button to select your bait on the BAIT LOADOUT screen.

You can also click on bait you've already chosen to get rid of it.

On the FISHING screen, press the left mouse button to cast your line.

To reel your line in, press the left mouse button when the reel prompt appears.

To get a better catch, reel in your line when the circle shrinks into the green!

COMBAT
Use the mouse position to aim your gun, and the left mouse button to fire.

Use A and D to move left and right, and LEFT SHIFT to dash left or right.

Use the space bar to jump; hold the space bar down to jump higher.

If you have multiple weapons, use TAB to switch between them.

AUDIO
Music and SFX volume sliders

DIFFICULTY
In Options -> Gameplay there is an assist mode heading that includes
Invincibility: Toggle this on and take no damage when hit.

+1000 shells button: Shells are the currency used to buy permanent upgrades. Press this each time you want a 1000 shell boost to your buying balance. You can use this to buy upgrades a little earlier, get practically infinite shells, or anything in between.

In the Hub/The Rock Beyond Reality right before the dock:
Press E to pick up Skipper: Skipper will float around close to the player and constantly shoot at the boss, damaging it. Press E in the same spot if you'd like to disable this feature.

Press E to pick up the alternate bobber: The bobber makes the fishing section more lenient. It lengthens the "Perfect!" window of the reeling/caught portion, and it widens the optimal landing area for the bobber. The probability of getting junk is also passively lowered. Practically, this means more shells and more useful items in combat. Press E in the same spot if you'd like to disable this feature.

VIDEO
Gameplay brightness + saturation sliders (Disclaimer: These features were not fully implemented. We did not remove it in hopes that this limited version can still help those who need/prefer it. These settings don't apply to UI elements.)

There are, to our knowledge, currently no actions the player can take that crash the game.
You can enter combat without a weapon equipped, making it impossible to deal damage. In the full game, the current plan is to force the player to take the starter gun (Rotten Salmon) with them every time they fight.