Gone Fishing Review (PC)

As dawn turns to dusk, the subtlety of the lake’s fickle waters turns sour. Amongst countless reeds and glum tides, a monster lurks beneath the surface, relentlessly praying that we, two poor souls with makeshift fishing poles, will fill the belly of the beast before darkness cloaks the shoreline. It’s hungry—it yearns to be fed anything that dares trespass within its boundaries. But, it won’t indulge on its own accord; it will forever rely on two civilians to do its bidding and cure its insatiable hunger. And if we don’t make ends meet, much less fill the ravenous pockets of the lake, it’ll turn its tide on us before midnight.

In the evening, we’ll fish till our eyes turn red and the hairs on our necks have settled. Beyond sleepless days and terrifying nights there’s a goal—a simple, albeit mentally and physically taxing goal, at that—for us to achieve: feed the lake, or die trying. Herein lies the hook for Gone Fishing, a co-op survival horror game based on the uncertainty of a world where gluttony and fear parade among tides. Like those of sacrificial heritage that have come before, Gone Fishing’s scaly population is the source of your income. Here, though, you don’t necessarily eat the fish to survive, but sacrifice them to a grumbling lake in which a devious creature resides. And if you don’t satisfy its appetite, well — revert back to the comment about it being a survival-horror. But more on that later.

If you’re interested in hearing more about those nautical escapades and the Loch Ness Monster stories that orbited the nine-to-five in Gone Fishing, then pull up a camp chair and join us at the dock.

Hook, Line and Sinker

Gone Fishing is anything but relaxing. On the surface, it initially strikes you as therapeutic, as a game about fishing naturally would do. Yet, with time being of utmost concern and an entire ocean of threats looming over your greatest failures, the bitter truth is that there is absolutely nothing peaceful about this endeavor. The only minor comfort, perhaps, is that you don’t have to spend the evenings alone, with thanks to the game’s chosen co-op format. But that doesn’t change the fact that the gameplay itself is still pretty demanding, nor does the addition of something as simple as companionship lighten the load on your shoulder, for that matter.

The good news is that Gone Fishing isn’t all doom and gloom. Granted, the nighttime drama—the act of catching, feeding, and oftentimes defending the lake, for instance—is a whole different ballgame. But there are several helping hands stitched into the game that make an otherwise unsalvageable victory all the more reachable. For example, catching a fish presents you with two options, with the first option being to feed the monster who lurks below, and the second option being to exchange the fish for various upgrades and defensive totems. And that, really, is where the biggest obstacle in the game comes in: learning how to juggle the increasingly high demands of the creature, and the lack of protective measures that can aid your survival.

What Lurks Below

The act of catching a fish isn’t difficult; in fact, it’s as simple as scouring the landscape for different types of bait, heading to the water, waiting for a bite, and then executing a swift prompt at the correct time to secure the catch. Similar to most fishing games, the bigger the bait you use, the bigger the fish you’ll catch. Moreover, with a staggeringly high number of fish to find, with each of them possessing different qualities, sizes, and shapes, there is the case of having to decide which ones to sacrifice to quell the lake’s huger, and which ones to slot into a passing vendor’s basket—someone who, rather inconveniently, only appears at midday—for the sake of boosting your chances of surviving the night.

Speaking of the night, Gone Fishing does indeed have some distressing moments, more so when you fail to meet the expectations of the creature. In moments like these, your only option is to utilize the tools that you have at your disposal, and keep feeding the lake whilst its inhabitant hunts you down. That’s another problem: the fact that you cannot run, or use your cabin to fend off whatever the creature has rolled up its sleeve. It’s an incredibly stressful job, yet one that I actually quite enjoyed under the circumstances. Sure, it was all rather hectic, and the constant beaming of lightning bolts and a tediously opaque atmosphere didn’t exactly make the situation any less chaotic, either. But, weirdly, those were the sections that I remembered the most.

Smells Fishy

If it wasn’t for the sizable catalog of obtainable fish, upgradable totems and a good old-fashioned global leaderboard to ignite that competitive spirit of mine, I might have struggled to squeeze enough hours out of Gone Fishing to warrant the purchase. Thankfully, it had everything I expected a fishing-centric survival-horror would have, right down to that familiar yet integral inventory system, precision-based mini-game, and all the thematic elements of a traditional first-person indie, warts and all.

While the mechanics aren’t overly bothersome here, the audiovisual elements are slightly undercooked, true to the nature of independent programming, no doubt. And while it isn’t appalling to look at, it doesn’t bring anything truly memorable to the table, either, with the world design being a little barebones and textureless. Perhaps that’s just me nitpicking, though. Mechanically, it just about gets the job done, with little to no major setbacks in its respective fields. Again, while it isn’t perfect, it does at least combine all of the fundamentals together to produce a wheel that turns on its own axis. Could it still do with a few extra tweaks? Perhaps, though I’m convinced that there is still a sturdy product to be proud of here, all things considered. That counts for a lot, even with vast quantities of imperfections.

Verdict

Gone Fishing doesn’t get everything right, though it does make a commendable effort to raise the stakes in an otherwise therapeutic pastime with its own pocket of oddly frightening encounters and time-based jobs. Likewise, the focal point being a co-op experience is a naturally good choice here, even though it does often dampen the sense of being isolated and defenseless with all odds stacked firmly against you. To say that it’s a comedy would be an insult to the work that its developers went through to create it. That said, point me in the direction of a multiplayer horror game that didn’t involve two people beating one another with a stick.

While you could argue that Gone Fishing still has one or two screws loose, and that it doesn’t really boast the greatest endgame material in the pond, I’m still willing to give credit where it’s due and call it for what it is: a weirdly gripping survival horror that, although not quite the catch of the day, still has a lot of meat on its bones to help balance the scales. To that end, if you’re looking to partner up with a friend to tackle some new and unchartered waters, then you could certainly do a whole lot worse than Gone Fishing.