Alright, I'd like to start by saying I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, so I can’t vouch for that part of the game, and yes, I’m aware it was more aimed towards multiplayer. But as an ambivert, I sometimes lean extremely to introvertism and don’t want to play with random strangers. And I don’t mean this in a bad way, at all. Sometimes, I don’t even feel like playing with (close) friends. So, my review is entirely based on my solo experience. Therefore, this one had me a little in doubt; the line for me between the thumbs up or down was relatively thin. And I admit that playing a fair share of clicker, idle, and screen-bottom games may have made me snarkier about how things go versus how I would have liked them to go. But I digress.
When you go in for the first time, you can collect a rusted coin, sell a few, and gradually build up enough funds to purchase your first freshwater fish seed species. You keep building up your funds to buy other types all the way up to the most expensive fantasy creature seed.
These five species comprise a total of 253 fish to collect. I’m currently at 147. I came across some fun ones in terms of design and/or name. Some really gave me a giggle. That absolutely made it more fun trying to collect them all; it keeps that curiosity of 'oh, what else is there going to be.' Very appealing to the collect-a-thon lover inside me. You can also collect different cursors, decorations, and backgrounds. I’m going to be honest: There was another tab, but I forgot what it was or what was in there, and since it doesn’t provide a name or description, I've already bought everything in it… Sorry o_o
Yet, along my—must collect’em all—journey, I felt myself faced with some issues and frustrations. The biggest problem was that it required too much clicking and not enough idle time for me. I don’t mind a clicking grind, but it did bother me that I can’t leave the game idle for a while; it constantly requires some attention. One of the reasons is that you have a small queue you can buy open—I wonder if that was the tab I forgot about—but it only increases by five extra slots. But your queue breaks if you destroy a fish because moving with the net to the pound is tedious and slow. It won’t spawn the next one, and you have to buy one in the shop again to make it work again, assuming you don’t destroy that fish either.
There is a cute auto-click cat that you can activate with a few coins or a prize from the ticket machine, but it’s prolonged, and you can’t upgrade it or stack the click time. Nor can you upgrade your own clicker; no matter how far in you are, your click will always only be 1xp, and the game will forever go at the same speed. It felt a bit boring not being able to grow in any way, shape, or form. I low-key always expect late game in clicker/idle games.
I also found the ticket machine somewhat useless; the idea is fun, but the execution fell short of my expectations due to issues with the items. The coins where meaningless to me as I didn't benefit from them at all and even more so late game, getting a lousy rng of 5 credits free retry thingy was just bleh, I collected all 4 of the fridgit cat paw and I have no idea why it isn’t giving it to me or how to collect that reward and wost of all the encyclopedia that promis you a fish you don’t have yet stopped working for god knows what reason. It's a bit annoying if you need one more fish in a specific tab so you can move on to another one and work on collecting all of them.
Another thing I noticed is that the game occasionally glitches, and a double card can appear in your main water area. This area can become incredibly laggy if you spend hours there non-stop. Most likely due to the catch of the day area.
A few things I think could benefit this game in terms of gameplay are the option to lock the decorations in the fish pond. The number of times I accidentally dragged one around while trying to click a fish made my eyes roll backwards so badly that I was worried they would get stuck.
Maybe a lock for the pond fish isn’t a bad idea either, so you don’t accidently sell any you would like to keep
Along with optimizing the net by simply clicking on it to transport your fish to the pond area, an extra button has been added to the fish card, allowing you to convert it directly to tickets instead of deleting it.
The one I find most important is a ‘redeem all’ button to convert fish into tickets faster. It’s incredibly tedious to do it individually, especially when you have an extensive collection and are trying to complete it obsessively.
So yeah, it’s absolutely not perfect and may be a bit slow, which could be due to playing solo. Occasionally frustrating. So, in the end, after a long debate with myself, I still felt like a thumbs up was in place for this one. It was laid-back, sometimes even a little silly—it’s solid enough and doesn’t have ridiculous pricing. Despite the abovementioned issues, I must admit I can’t hate it enough to downvote it. It’s like one of those 5.5/10 games—barely passed, but still a pass. At some point, I might jump back in to complete my index or when I spot a few delicious updates. But we’ll see. I’ll keep an eye on this one.
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Started to decorate my pond VS one of the quirky names and designs
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3456442124
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3456442559
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I would be super grateful if you could consider giving a follow over at the following places for more first looks, reviews, recommendations, etc:
[list]
[*]|[url= https://www.youtube.com/@Tchii] My first looks [/url]| ~My YouTube channel.
[*]|[url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/TchiiMadeYaLook/curation] Tchii made ya look [/url]| ~My curator
[*]|[url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Indie_Gems/curation] IndieGems [/url]| ~Wonderful Indie curator
[*]|[url=https://www.youtube.com/@IndieGems2] IndieGems Gameplay [/url]| ~IndieGem's YouTube channel.
[*]|[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26279617/] Calm [/url]| ~Curator for the Dutch-speaking folks out here.
[*]|[url=https://www.youtube.com/@yoshiruless] Calm's first looks [/url]| ~Calm's YouTube channel.
[/list]
Thank you!
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