"Vampire Survivor, but what if fish?" That sums up the basics of this game. A fishing simulator with a survivor style game mechanic. You steer your hook - or later, bait - around, automatically attacking fish, as you attempt to navigate to one of the larger prize fish. These fish get used as bait, so each one will have a default weapon, and usually a small bonus to one stat. It seems simple enough, and "simple" really is the best word to describe this. Because, there really is no depth beyond this.
Since I bought the game, I decided to go ahead and power through to try to complete it. Namely, getting every achievement (which does require obtaining every prize fish in the game, and then completing several other challenges). This only took me about 8 hours. And it could be completed much faster if I'd focused on just speed running it. I wanted to see if there would be any variety in the game, at any point. Sadly, there is almost none. Every level plays out the same. You have four weapon slots, so whatever weapon you pick as a default, and three more you collect via levels along the way. Out of a pool of 11. With a pool that limited, you generally can get your preferred four most runs. Every weapon has two types of upgrades, and it seems three levels per upgrade. For example, with the with the Spinner - a fish hook that rotates in a spiral outward from your bait - you can get +15% damage, or have the delay between shots be 15% shorter. Each weapon also has one other premium upgrade that is only available in semi-randomly placed chests. For example, the Scales doubles the amount of projectiles you fire off at once. And then you have a few stats that can level up... and then you run out.
The maps are mostly different - with a few sharing the same overall theme, such as gauntlets or 'wells', that are just a single deep path straight down. The gauntlets have you attempt to kill off usually 1000 of the specific fish to get its bait, the rest come in prizes. The prizes are marked with an arrow pointing them out when you start, and there is no requirement beyond that to find them. Which means you could take the bait that gives you Wave and move speed (Pomfret), and just rush any of the prizes. Some do have weapons that they fire back at you, but you can generally outlast them, even with the challenge stats set to max, if you have some of the higher DPS attacks - like Wave.
As for the challenge stats, there's a system in the game to 'enhance' the various fishing spots - only after you've got all the prizes once - that lets you adjust the difficulty to a limited degree. Increasing the fish's movement speed, health, damage, spawn rate, and chance to drop EXP. You want to use these to get a chance to catch a "shiny" version of the prize - simply a different colored version. Though the challenge in this game is so light that even with the stats maxed out, you can generally survive any encounter, either by rushing the prize and defeating it before the enemy mobs begin to swarm, or simply having enough AoE weapons - such as the Scales - leveled up that the enemy swarms can't reach you if you keep moving enough. The only loss I had in the game - partly to test what even would happen - was when I went after a fish that attacked back, with the challenge maxed out, while attempting to limit myself to one weapon (and not one of the better ones, as I'd already done this with several others) for the achievement to use a single weapon.
That's the big rub with this game. There is no difficulty curve. If you've played one level, you've played them all. The enemy graphics may change slightly, but you have two types of fish - those that swim toward you, and those that'll fire a handful of bubbles at you. The only escalation that happens in the map, if you wait long enough, is more enemies will spawn. They do increase the types of fish later in the waves, but they're still one of those two basic types.
There is also a permanent upgrade system that takes sand dollars to buy. These are obtained based on how many normal fish you defeat in the mission. So you're encouraged to take as long as possible for a few runs. But it only takes 3-4 long runs to buy everything. Turn the spawn rate all the way up, and use the AoE weapons, then wait until near the end and go defeat the prize (there is also an achievement for defeating the prize in the last minute, so this will help you get that.)
That is a lot of words explaining in depth a game that effectively offers no variety and no challenge. This game is a checklist, you go through the motions and get the achievements. It doesn't have the gameplay to keep someone interested past what the demo can offer. There are also some silly bugs or incongruities here and there, such as NPC dialog, which can appear out of order at times. Such as an NPC commenting that you impressed another NPC that you haven't met yet. But that's minor.
That being said, I'm not going to say this is a soulless game, or just a blatant cash grab/rip off. Mostly because the developer is actually in the comments, responding, and while this game is pretty newly released the developer is already planning on adding some QoL effects that people have asked for. Vampire Survivors didn't start with the bulk of content it has now. And while I do not expect this game to ever compete with that - nor does it need to - I think that there is plenty of room to grow here if the developer continues to work on it. I will be keeping this game installed, to keep an eye on updates, and if I think this actually does turn into something I can recommend as a full game I will happily do that. But this is also one that the developer could consider done, that there was no ambitions beyond the simplistic, casual checklist, and move on.
Just remember that the reason to compare this with Vampire Survivors isn't just that they share mechanics - they also share prices.
