Bit-Cremental: Fishistry

Idle game to the maximum degree. Actively playing this game results in 0 progress. The only way to truly progress from it is to walk away from it for a few hours. Some might argue "erm...it's an IDLE game, of course it's not active" but without the GAME part of Idle Game, this is just something to bump your electricity bill up by a few pennies this month for no reason at all. Not worth.

Very simple idle game para pasar el rato. Los gráficos imitan a la GameBoy clasica -con el DLC trae la paleta pastel de la GameBoy Color aunque no consigue el mismo efecto retro- y con un sonido simple que termina cansando al cabo de media hora.

A would-be Gameboy Color-era vibes-clicker throwback that sees you randomly stocking a fishing pond for profit and the thrill of catchin’ em all. Simple gameplay loop: click to place food in the pond, click to release a tadpole, and save and spend through a rather tame assortment of linear improvements all towards increasing your profits. Speaking of which, it’s certainly all completely non-sensical (are the visiting fishers paying you based on what they lure in? Are they your employees?), and amounts to a somewhat chill single-screen slot machine. If your interest is piqued, you’re ultimately in BCF for the pixel art (and you’re not wrong): the fish germinations are really lovingly crafted sprites. But this game just doesn’t quite work; there’s at least a handful of fairly obvious gameplay and design choices that would lift this above “fidget spinner” interactivity. Most egregiously, what seems to market itself as a bit of an idler is very manual—progress will halt to a crawl without hand-on-mouse, even if you’re “optimized”. As it stands, this incremental pond sim is lower stakes than a Tamagotchi and about as fun stocking lure. [b]Pet peeve[/b] [list] [*] Fish pathing and movement are identical across species! [*] No life-of-game stats (that is, total catches) [/list] [b]Pros[/b] [list] [*] Faithful GB visuals, nice sprite work on your hatchlings [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*] One background music track? C’mon man [*] Visual upgrades don’t affect gameplay—and some do not work with character designs [*] CRT filter is an afterthought [*] Idling not feasible, player choices not meaningful—progress is linear with no optimization [/list] [b]Overall: 1.5/5[/b]

This is the slowest most boring idler i've played. Progression is slow, musics are overly repetitive, automation is almost worthless...

chill

I have a love-hate relationship with idle games. In many ways, it's difficult to call them games at all. Often they're more like interactive screensavers. I would say Bit-cremental Fishistry (BCF) certainly falls under this category. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Idle games fill that niche where you find yourself too busy or preoccupied to actively engage in an experience but still yearn for that lizard-brain dopamine hit of "making progress". Having said that, I don't think BCF truly scratches that itch for me. It's a bit too superficial, a bit too repetitive, and a bit too simple. It felt like a developer's first game. Which surprised me further, when I realized that Inner Realm Studios has been making games for over 5+ years. In such a scenario, it may as well have been a free experience. The moment you introduce pricing is the moment that this game now opens itself up to parallel comparisons with other idle games in a similar range. For instance, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3454590/Cornerpond/]Cornerpond[/url], developed by foolsroom, is also priced the same as BCF. In fact, it also shares the same fishing theme. But the detail and features are worlds apart. [spoiler]For instance, the fish are actually visually distinguishable in Cornerpond.[/spoiler] To be fair, even at a Free to Play price point, there is already plenty of polished and expansive games competing for your limited time as a consumer. As such, I can't in good conscience recommend BCF.

This is a pretty slow-paced surface level idler without much going on. It's got a good aesthetic, but unfortunately the retro presentation isn't much to go on by itself. The sound and music becomes grating too, so I don't think there's much worth getting this for and I wouldn't recommend it.

Too simple and repetitive even for an idle game.

I personally don't like the pacing of this game. I feel the beginning of it is very slow and once you're able to passively generate income, it still doesn't pick up all that much. It's not until you start getting to really late in the game when things start feeling like they go really fast. By no means is it a bad game, I just feel like it would have been better if it was a 1hr - 2hr experience instead of a 5hr -10hr. Really enjoy the art style and overall Gameboy Color aesthetic to it. It invokes a real nostalgic feel that I haven't felt in decades and I wish more games went for this kind of feel for their old school pixel art.

If you want an idle game that hijacks your dopamine and gives you a ton of things to work toward for dozens of hours, this isn't that. If you want something more akin to a cute desktop distraction that you check in on here and there for a few hours, this fits the bill. The progress is pretty slow feeling until the endgame and it didn't often hit a very satisfying balance for me, but for a few bucks the cute aesthetic was pleasant enough to carry me through catching all of the fish. It's a light recommend from me, but by no means is it bad.