TLDR: Don't. Just get Vampire Survivors or Megabonk at full price.

I really genuinely don't like being the stand out review for a game, especially being the first negative review a game gets, but I can't really recommend this over a lot of the other games in this same branch of "Games that do what Vampire Survivors did but with a tweaked and therefore different gimmick".

The sprites are good, but they mostly come from an asset pack and none of it is original to the game itself. The music is passably fine but most of the tracks don't really seem like they fit for this kind of game, and is also probably from an asset pack and isn't original to this game either (I say probably, because I can't find the creator of it at all online from a cursory search). That's no big deal, tons of games use asset packs to save on dev time, I don't see that AI is being used in any of the art or music (GOD I HOPE NOT), so those aren't really considerable deal breakers. So how does it *play*?

It's boring. It's boring and slow and slow and boring and it's not hard to call it such. There's a variety of weapons available if you call 8 a variety and not a strangulation of mechanics. There's no passive items, so mechanic synergies aren't here. There's a currency system tied to the amount of kills you get, but the only thing you can use it for are permanent stat buffs which don't feel like they provide any sort of identifiable changes whatsoever. There's a variety of different Fish you can play with (which as an aside doesn't make any sense I'm fishing why am I using fish as bait to catch other fish in this fishing game), and by that I mean there's way too many fish that outside of giving you a different weapon and another a bonus stat buff (Which again, feel like they do absolutely nothing) all play the exact same way: Agonizingly slow.

The individual levels are split between going down, going down and to the side, or sitting in a box as enemy fish drift slowly towards you at varying rates of speed and occasionally try to hit you with one of 3 projectile types that they're allowed to have at seemingly complete random. It gets even worse in the "final" area of the game, the beach, where almost every single level is you holding down and only down as this is the point where the dev decided maps didn't have to be anything more than a tube or a box or a tube that has a split path, both of which diverge into more tube. Levels that get to indulge in a more complex level structure get to enjoy maps that are far too large for how small the sprites are, and since every single catch is marked with a red arrow, there's plenty of map that I'm just not exploring because I know where I have to go, and it's down and maybe a bit to the left or right.

You're given a very generous 15 minute timer (likely because every other Vampire Survivors-esque game has a timer so this one has to have it too), but once you get bored of going down or down and to the left or right in the majority of the game's levels you'll realize that since most of the final catches in this game pose absolutely no threat whatsoever you can just make a mad dash (more like an agonizingly slow crawl) to the boss, pick up a few upgrades mid fight, and beat a majority of the non arena levels in under 3 minutes. Every single time. Without fail. Enjoy doing that over and over again about 80 times if you want that sweet sweet 100% achievement marker that I have (You don't want it. It's a waste of your time.).

It's a shame because on a 5 second sit down I can come up with a few ways to make this better. Change the fish into unlockable trophies, where catching them gives you fish facts about that endemic sea creature. Give the currency more use by letting you buy different types of hooks that start with one of the weapons, and rather than the only other item you can get in a run being more weapons they can be passive items. Augments to make runs more interesting. You can cut the timer to 8 minutes, remove the markers showing where the boss fish are, make the fish spawn ramp up more and more, and only boot the player out when they've caught every single fish in a level rather than when they just catch one before they're pushed back out to the map. Maybe when you beat one, you get more time added to the clock, and the others get harder. Maybe you make the level designs more complex, the backgrounds more interesting to play in front of, give me more foreground objects like coral I can swim behind.

You can take this concept and make it really really really good and it's so disappointing because it feels like all the dev did was take a free Godot tutorial on how to make a Vampire Survivors-esque game, changed the sprites to a fish sprite asset pack they had to buy, made it so you had to hold down because when you fish the hook sinks in to the water so clearly every level should have you go down in it, and gave up in the last third because most people who play the game would realize the bit by then and would be too deep to be able to refund it. And then put it up on the storefront for the price they paid for the sprite pack because they'd at least have that investment covered for them after the first purchase.

I'm harsh because this is something you could do oddly really well. And I *want* to see this done really well. You can do something this absurd and crazy and make it really really good! I fully believe that! This has the potential to be a really weird, really specific game for a specific type of freak (Me) and instead it's a halfbaked clone of a better, more interesting, more fun game with more content being sold at the same price.

Really fun take on a survivorslike game. Can't go wrong for $5.

Hope there's more abilities than the ones I've seen so far. If not, hope the game gets updated to add more.

The ironic thing is I hate fishing games.