Coming into this game, I was mostly just looking for a time waster, but hopefully something that would keep my attention for more than a few days like the AdVenture Capitalist’s of the Play Store always seem to do. What attracted me to this game were 3 primary reasons.
One being the artstyle, that being a cute kawaii art style you’ll see a good amount of mobile idle games have these days, although I gravitated more towards this because it felt much more expressive than others.
Secondly was the ratings, that being 4.9 Stars on the Play Store. I see most mid-tier mobile games hover around the 4 star mark, but rarely is it ever this high, especially if it doesn’t have some good qualities.
And finally, as I read a couple reviews, I kept reading how there were no forced ads, and that they were only really for in-game rewards. Understandably, I think everybody loves when companies do this, as not only are we actually going to enjoy the game itself more because there isn’t a 15 second video being shoved down our throat constantly, but when we do watch the ads, it’s always guaranteed we’ll get some type of reward to make it feel somewhat worth it.
So, not thinking too much more about it, I decided to just give it a go and see what it’s about. Immediately after opening it, I start giggling at the dialogue. We open to a cat fishing, annoyed because we interrupted him. I was given the dialogue options of “I wanna fish too!” or “That sounds dumb” and figured I’d choose the second option just to see what would happen. What I got was a simple “You sound dumb” and “Anyways tap the ocean to throw the hook”. Wonderful. So stupid yet silly and works perfectly. This speaking style stays throughout the game, which is definitely a good thing, as I would tend to think a game making me smile is good.
I’ll try not to detail the plot too much, not because it’s super important and I’m trying not to spoil it or anything, but for a mobile game, I’d prefer for this not to be a ridiculously long review. Long story short, we fished out a burger, the burger hated us for fishing him out, we tried fishing out another burger to give him a friend, he ate said burger and gave us money, and thus, we are introduced to our gameplay loop. Fish for burger, cannibalism, profit. We can upgrade our stats, such as how many foods we can have on our hook, and how deep we can fish. As we fish deeper we find new fruit for more profit, the next of which being a dragon fruit, which gives us double.
Upgrading my depth level to 3, I go to fish again, and pull up a whole ass Cafe. This cafe gives us drinks to consume, and they give us more money on top of the foods we give to the foods. The drinks replenish by themselves, even when the app is closed, which is neat. Doesn’t tell me how often I can get these drinks however, so I guess we just have to wait and find out. The fishing continues!
Now obviously the fishing is quite repetitive as it is the core game mechanic, but I can’t lie, they make it fun. Pulling those foods out of the water, and having the foods eat the foods all in one bite, they make that feel impactful. Like DAMN. I FEEL POWERFUL. I like it.
After playing for a bit, it is pretty obvious the ad upgrades are definitely worth it, but most of the time it’s only 15 seconds, so not really a slog to sit through. I was pretty happily fishing for about 30-40 minutes without getting fatigued over it, so that should tell you something.
After a bit of fishing, you will eventually discover enough food types to unlock the farm area, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Your foods are harvesting other foods, you can upgrade the harvesting foods and after a bit unlock new foods to harvest, and you can tap the screen for faster profits, as that grows the foods faster. It’s pretty standard so I wasn’t too interested in it, however it was pretty satisfying to see the +(AMOUNT) spammed all over the screen from all the different harvests I had going at once. It doesn’t seem to keep generating currency in the background though, so that kind of sucks.
Merge area is next and to be honest, this one really isn’t that fun. It idle fishes for you, and you have to buy/merge foods of the same type together to upgrade. You can tap the cats for increased profits, so that’s obviously the meta here. Multiple things you can tap on will come on by as well, such has double profit potions or getting another cat to fish with for a limited time, but the problem here is that every one of these abilities requires an ad watch. So altogether you can get like 6x the profit, but you have to watch however many ads to not only get it, but keep it to, since it’s for a limited time. It’s pretty easy to get sucked into this, as I actually am at this current moment writing this part of the review, only typing between the ads, and while it does work in my very specific case, it can get extremely distracting if for example you just want a few minutes break between doing something. On top of that, it really feels a bit more like a chore than satisfying, since I’m constantly having to watch ads and do something else. Not feeling too good about this area, but obviously there are plenty others, so it gets a pass this time.
That being said, that's practically the whole game, and at this point, the grinding starts. I'll probably update this review later on as I keep playing, but for now I'll get on with the actual rating.
As this is one of those mobile games where you just do the same thing over and over and over again for hours, I can comfortably say the 5 star and maybe even 4 star ratings are off the table. I think for a game like this to possibly achieve a 4 star rating, it would have to be absolutely perfect in every aspect. While I do find these types of games to at times be rather high quality overall, the mere lack of substance, variety and story that they fundamentally all lack strip it away from possibly hitting close to that Masterpiece title. While I do believe what I've said, I also believe that this is one of the best games pertaining to this subgenre that I've played yet. It's artstyle, while falling into the kawaii style, is also rather expressive and humorous, straying away from the traditional style without hesitation, and not "playing it safe" as other games of this style often do in my opinion. The mechanics overall are perfectly fine, and they work well for sessions where you can just turn your brain off and wait for whatever you're waiting for to finish. I would say one of the most convenient parts is the no forced ads feature of this game, which I think is always a great decision for developers to make for reasons I have listed earlier. Although, because of this, the ad upgrades are pretty obviously so, so much better than if you were to play the game adless, making it so otherwise, production and upgrades feel really sluggish. I would say overall, this game is cute, fun, and charming, and works perfectly well in what it sets out to do. The ad upgrades are obviously overpowered, making it so if you’re trying to go for max efficiency, you are going to be watching a lot of them. However, it is also completely optional, so I will give it that. The general fishing mechanic is rather fun, but I’m not too fond of the merge or farm areas. There is also a Tower area, but as of writing this, I’m not too sure as to what it does. Because of this mixture between flaws, charm, and good design sprinkled throughout, I’m thinking between 2.5 stars and 3 stars is most fair for this game’s conditions. Since I feel nice, I’ll give it 3 stars.