Cat Goes Fishing

Pros

• Tons of fish with their own personalities
• Unique and appealing minimalist graphics
• Great sense of progression

Cons

• Relatively simplistic gameplay
• Not especially challenging

Cat Goes Fishing is a whimsical fishing game that trades out the in depth physics, licensing deals, and graphics of more serious fishing games in lieu of a more serene and meditative experience. At first blush, the concept is exactly what it seems. You play as a cat who goes fishing, but there's a surprising amount of meat lingering beneath the surface of the water. Things start off pretty simple. A basic but functional physics system makes it easy to cast your line and reel in fish after a bite, and there's a steady progression curve as each fish can be sold for money or cast back into the water.

But the real layers of depth come not from the act of throwing the line but instead behind the strategy of what fish to target. Larger fish have a tendency to yield bigger rewards, but there's a surprisingly in depth ecosystem here. There are three different sizes of fish, and they all respond in a relatively naturalistic way. Larger fish will eat smaller ones, but there's a variety of different species, and getting better at the game means learning their habits and determining the best path of action to get money rolling in as quickly as possible. Throwing a smaller fish back in the water allows you to use them as bait, compounding your reward at the risk of losing everything. The complexity of these behaviors makes you feel like you're part of a living and breathing world.

Whether you're playing strategically or simply wiling away an afternoon with some simple fishing, you'll gradually start acquiring more cash, and that's where the sense of progression comes in. Initially players will just be using money to buy better pieces of bait so they can reel in larger and larger fish, but you'll progressively find yourself investing in a lot more kit. You can purchase a variety of different rods. Each have their own characteristics, ensuring that there's no one size fits all best solution, and swapping them out depending on your environment can have a big effect on your success. You can also find hats in the water that will lend your cat a variety of special abilities when worn. And as you venture further into the game, you'll eventually find yourself in possession of different boats that allow you to journey deeper out onto the water.

Adding an extra layer of structure to the game is a quest system. It's smartly designed, creating goals that aren't too intimidating but do provide incentive to push yourself further. These quests tend to offer great rewards, but there's enough flexibility to ignore them if you prefer. Cat Goes Fishing also offers two modes: a casual mode for players just looking to waste some time and a more difficult realism mode.

Pros

• Tons of fish with their own personalities
• Unique and appealing minimalist graphics
• Great sense of progression

Cons

• Relatively simplistic gameplay
• Not especially challenging