Thanks for reading my ramble <3
If you wanna test the waters for yourself, you can buy it, play the free demo, or wishlist it now on steam! s.team/a/3143190

(10/10)

Since the game has 5 worlds, the shader lets me easily swap out the water's color palette to make each one stand out.

I'm super happy with how world 2's sun reflection turned out, which makes very heavy use of procedural dithering. (9/10)

This shader gives me a ton of room for other neat effects. For example, in the final product you'll notice there's a nice splash effect. This is just a simple particle system, but since it goes through the same shader, it blends with the water perfectly. (8/10)

I wanted the water to have a shallow color and a deeper color, which I achieved by checking if there's still water several pixels above the current pixel. (To make it look more natural, this depth test is very subtly randomized based on the pixel's position)
(7/10)

Finally: polishing up the visuals.
To greatly improve the look of the water, I put the whole thing through a shader. I gave the water a pixel-perfect outline by checking if the adjacent pixels are also water. (6/10)

Now, whenever the player enters or exits the water, I apply an impulse to the nearest point, and that's enough for some fairly convincing water :D
(5/10)

Next step: adding interaction.
I model each of the polygon's points as a spring. Based on their distance from the resting height, I pull it back according to Hooke's law. To make it one connected body of water, each point gives a bit of its velocity to nearby points. (4/10)

First, our starting point: just a translucent Polygon2D with several points at the top. Unlike some more complicated fluid simulations, I won't be simulating tons of water particles throughout the body of water. I only care about the curve that makes up the top of the ocean. (3/10)

I always love dynamic pixel art effects, so with my game being highly fish-centric, I spent a lot of time making the water look just right. (2/10)