The game isnât called Ordinary Fishing, after all. It isnât called By-The-Books Fishing, either. No, itâs called Ridiculous Fishing. So it stands to reason that if you download this game, you will be expecting to do some fishing, and for it to be ridiculous. Good news: Thatâs exactly what youâll get.
Ridiculous Fishing: A Tale of Redemption, which launches today for iOS devices, is a long-in-development collaboration between indie all-stars Vlambeer (Super Crate Box) and Spelltower developer Zach Gage. Ridiculous Fishing is weird and wonderful, a joy to play, and regularly hilarious.
It is, more or less, an iteration on Vlambeerâs browser game Radical Fishing, but significantly fleshed out and optimized for smartphone controls.
It lives on its three-part-structure. You play as Billy, a fisherman⊠on a quest for redemption. First, you drop your line into the ocean and tilt your phone to sneak it around as many fish as possible: The goal here is to dodge the fish. Then, once you reach the end of your line or a fish snags your hook, you reel the line back up, and the game flips: The goal here is to catch the fish.
Finally comes the coup de grace: Upon hitting the surface, every fish on your hook is flung into the air, and you whip out a gun and start shooting: The goal here is to blow the fish away
Itâs in the careful balancing of these three components that Ridiculous Fishing becomes such a joy to play. Itâs the sort of pure tension-and-release that the best mobile games strive for, and it makes for a gameplay loop thatâs as enjoyable as it is compulsive. Each time through takes under a minute, but each time youâll run a mini emotional gamut: The caution and focus required during the descent immediately flips to giddy anticipation as you begin the return trip, and it all culminates in an orgy of finger-tapping and laughter as you blast fish out of the air.
Far more so than the average iOS game, Ridiculous Fishing feels like it was made with great care. Tilting the phone to control the gameâs fishing hook is snappy and responsive. Snagging fish on the way back up feels precise. Blasting fish out of the air feels really good.
The artwork, by Greg Wohlwend, is a strange and winning mix of pixelated retro-style and regular olâ abstract squares, and each new underwater setting is loaded with all manner of goofy, colorful fish. The gameâs soundtrack, by Eirik Suhrke, is a kick, and perfectly conjures the different energies of the gameâs three phases.
Ridiculous Fishing also features some great writing, believe it or not, through which it manages to convey a warped, redneck/literary world. Billyâs wooden iPhone-like-device contains all manner of information about the various fish heâs catching (some of it is actually quite useful), as well as an often-hilarious Twitter-like app called âByrdrâ where the inhabitants of his world chat about fishing and sound off on whatever gear Billy picked up from the store.
Which brings us to the last, possibly most interesting aspect of Ridiculous Fishingâthe in-game store. Here, you can go to buy upgrades for your fishing-line, lure, and gun. Itâs precisely the sort of place where, in almost any other iOS game, youâd expect to be shaken down for a few micro-transactions, but Ridiculous Fishing refuses to do so. Itâs odd to see this game and the similar Little Inferno as exceptions the microtransaction rule. Itâs enough to make me feel like an old codger, telling kids about how in my day, all games were like this.
The change here is a welcome one: To buy things in the store, you have only to play the game. (What a concept!) Every time you cast your line, even if you screw up and only snag a few fish, youâll make some money, and be that much closer to buying that lure-chainsaw or shotgun you had your eye on. But when it comes down to it, the rewards and prizes serve mainly to shake things up as you progress. The game itself is a pleasure to play from the outset.
The spectre of another game looms over the launch of Ridiculous Fishing: Gamenautsâ Ninja Fishing, which flagrantly cloned Radical Fishing and beat Vlambeer to iOS, where it found success. It would be easy to mistakenly think that Ninja Fishing came firstâsee one of the gameâs developers correcting one of our commenters, who mentioned the similarity but got it backwards. Thereâs a fair amount of satisfaction in Ridiculous Fishingâs obvious superiority, and itâs hard not to root for the game to bury its imitator and in so doing demonstrate that this time, craft and care won out over crass cloning.
Ridiculous Fishing
Genre: Fishing/Shooting
Developer: Vlambeer
Platform: iOS
Price: $2.99
