Too Long; Didn't Play: Cat Goes Fishing

Sponsored By: A doting father's desire to share video games with his kids

Time Fished: 2 hours

Smelt it review

I have never been happier to pay six dollars for what could have been a free Flash game.

Dealt it review

I like cats. As a child I adopted – or perhaps I should say was adopted by – a grey tomcat named Smudge, for the patch of white fur that grew on his nose. He had some quirks (a purr that rattled dishes three rooms away, and an IQ that did not favorably compare with a box of saltines), but I loved him dearly.

Maybe that's what lured me to the store page for Cat Goes Fishing, a delightfully simple game whose austerity belies an incredible amount of depth.

Incidentally, you know you are a consummate punner when you crank out something like that last sentence without even meaning to. I won't say it was unintentional, because it's the sort of thing I would have done deliberately if I'd thought of it.

In Cat Goes Fishing you play as an international confidence artist named Catherine deFraude who sends misleading emails in the hopes of bilking incautious people out of their life savings.

Haha. No. Actually you play as a cat ... who goes fishing. I know I have previously busted the chops of games with unimaginative titles, but those games weren't very good and therefore didn't earn the privilege of having a minimalist title. It's like Smucker's: If you're going to give your product a terrible name, it better be a good product.

The whole game feels like an exceptionally well crafted Flash game, which is not a knock. I have paid good money for things that were literally exceptional Flash games (Windosill and Samarost 2, if you must know) and have not regretted the purchase. Like old Atari games, the hardware limits imposed by the medium force an economy of design that boils any concept down to its purest form. A good idea, well executed with minimal resources, can be simultaneously the most addictive and satisfying experience in the world.

So it is with Cat Goes Fishing. To play, you need one button. That button casts the line and reels the lure in. Later they add left and right arrows to move your boat closer to or further away from shore, but the core gameplay still centers on that one button.

The easiest way to explain how this game works is to describe casting and catching a fish, because I like tautologies. Your first press of the action button draws the rod back, and continuing to hold it will see the rod lash forward. When the rod reaches a point in its trajectory that you like, release the mouse button and the lure will cast forward. Once it hits the water, the lure will sink, tracing a radius centered on the tip of your rod.

"Ye gods!" You exclaim. "It's almost like a fishing game!"

The camera follows the lure all the way down. As it sinks, you may click the action button to reel it back in. Releasing the button stops reeling, and lets the lure sink again. That allows you to maneuver your lure around the various fish as you search for one you want to catch. Since this is your first cast, you have the smallest bait available, and therefore may only catch the smallest fish available. If a medium or larger fish takes the bait at this point, it simply steals the bait and your rod automatically reels the lure back in.

If you manage to catch a small fish, you must now reel it in. It's especially important now to evade the larger fish, as they will attack your hooked fish and take bites out of it of you let them get too close. Damaged fish are worth less money and don't count toward whatever quest objective you have active.

Once you have reeled the small fish out of the water, you have three options. You can click the sell button and get whatever money that captured fish is worth. You may also can click the action button and release it when the fish is behind you, tossing the fish into a pile behind you (this is useful for when you upgrade to a fishing boat and cannot sell the fish right off your line). Finally, you may use the small fish as bait to catch a fish the next size up. Since larger fish are worth more money, chances are you'll be doing this a lot. If you catch a medium fish, you can use it for bait again to catch a large fish. Large fish cannot be used for bait and must be sold or added to the pile once they leave the water.

Now, if he game were just that, it would be a fun but short-lived time-waster. The developer knew this too, so some additional features were bolted on. The most prevalent is the quest log. The quest log gives you an objective to meet, usually something like "catch 5 of this kind of fish." Quests remain active until completed, but you must opt-in to start a new one, so remember to click the quest button before you cast your line. The quest log adds some nice variety and strategy to a game that would otherwise just be about grinding for cash to buy upgrades.

Which is my artful segue into talking about the store. No game is complete these days without character progression, so when Cat isn't going fishing, Cat goes shopping. You can buy new, improved rods, or rod upgrades, or consumables, all of which are geared toward helping your cat cast the lure farther and help it sink deeper. My favorite upgrade so far is the one that prevents small fish from taking bait that was meant to catch larger fish, but each rod has five slots to fill, so you don't have to be too choosy at first. Eventually you'll earn enough money to buy a boat, which lets you move away from the shoreline and cast your lures farther and catch more valuable fish.

There are two consumables that I've seen so far: rockets and bombs. The rocket boosts your casting range for one turn, provided you can make a good cast. If your timing is off, you can very easily waste a rocket. The bomb is one of those things that sounds like a bad idea at first blush. When a fish bites the bomb, it explodes and scares away any fish in the vicinity. Believe it or not, that actually comes in handy when you need a particular fish that is hiding directly under a school of some other fish that you don't want. There's quite a lot of strategy there, if you're willing to think about it. If you're not, well, it's still a cute time-waster.

In an industry where game promoters compare lists of features like game promoters comparing lists of features, playing a game that does one thing is a novelty. Finding a game that does one thing exceptionally well is an event worth rewarding. Cat Goes Fishing is such a game.

Cast another line?

My kids adore it, so I expect I'll be seeing a lot of it. Fortunately I like playing it too, so the hard part for me will actually be not burning out on it by playing it without them.

At full price, Cat Goes Fishing is around six bucks. I'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to pass by it for that.

Is that blood in the water attracting sharks?

On the surface, it would be almost impossible to conceive of a game that is less like Bloodborne than Cat Goes Fishing. However, the game's simplicity hides a surprising amount of challenge. The quests get difficult later on, requiring you to capture fish that are surrounded by faster, more aggressive fish. How you approach that is up to you. You may try to guide your lure through the maze of fish, or to simply spend the in-game currency on a bomb and let the more aggressive fish learn their harsh lesson. However you choose to do it, Cat will be ready for you, reel in paw and possibly wearing an amusing hat.

Comments

I think you need to become a Steam curator.

Edit: Behold! It has come to pass!