Skulker

It is an interesting game which has some fun aspects to it. Rolling dice to get to a new fishing spot and being able to permanently upgrade spots are interesting mechanics. It has a bit of a board game vibe to it. Unfortunately, the act of catching fish just isn't fun. You play a random mini game every time you cast your line out, and the games are tedious and extremely basic. I honestly think it would be an improvement to just have a dice roll over the current mini game situation. An in-depth fishing/reeling mechanic would be best, but would probably be much harder to develop.

I tried to play as long as I could to see if the game got better or more fun, but the mini games wore down my resolve after about an hour. They are just too tedious, and you have to play dozens, or hundreds of these moments out over time as you catch fish, which is the main way you pass the time in this game. When a game is about fishing, you want the fishing part to be better than that. There seemed to be some deeper features like equipment unlocking and other things to collect, but the main game play wasn't fun enough to justify keeping the game. I opted for the refund. I'll keep an eye on this one and check back to see if anything changes over time.

The game features a story, but it mainly serves to provide context for your actions. You play as a space fisherman who, after a head injury, forgets his original plan to combine relaxation with work. Fortunately, your robotic assistant is there to remind you: your mission is to fish and catalog every chemical compound in the known universe, conveniently found within the fish themselves.

Currently, the game features a single planet, with a second one planned for the full release. This planet is divided into nine distinct regions. However, you can’t explore them all right away; only the starting region is accessible at first. To unlock the others, you’ll need to catch specific rare items. Each region offers different types of fish and collectibles, though the core gameplay, reminiscent of board games, remains consistent across them.

Each region is structured like a board, with multiple fishing spots grouped into several rarity levels, plus occasional special event spots. Movement across the board is determined by rolling three dice. Each die produces a number that represents the number of steps you can take, and you can combine the dice in various ways to land on your desired spot.

Once at a spot, you’ll engage in one of several fishing mini-games. These vary randomly and might involve timed button presses, symbol-matching, or other quick-reaction challenges. If these are too tough, you can switch to “casual” mode to make them easier.

Each mini-game is timed, and most spots only allow one or two fishing attempts. Failing doesn’t carry serious consequences. You can’t lose, only waste time or miss out on a rare fish encounter. Fortunately, the board loops endlessly, letting you play as long as you want. Once other regions are unlocked, you can move between them freely.

Fishing spots can also be upgraded to catch multiple fish at once, using a special resource called Sand of Strings. This material is typically earned by catching duplicate fish, which are automatically converted, or through card event spots. In these spots, you pick one of three random cards, each offering a reward.

Other event spaces add variety. Glass spots obscure your vision but give you a chance to catch two fish at once. Ban spots are essentially skipped turns where no fishing is allowed. Heart spots, on the other hand, grant you a random fish automatically.

All caught fish are stored in your spaceship’s database and can be displayed in an aquarium that doubles as a desktop screensaver. You can also decorate the aquarium with various plants for added flair. But the fun doesn’t stop at fish. There are also numerous other collectibles, including different fishing rods, baits, outfits for both you and your assistant, and quests that reward you with unique gear.

It has a few things that are fun and it could be a great game with some work, but there are so many problems with the current state that just make it not enjoyable, especially not for the price.

Firstly, it is a Chinese game with an English translation. They made an effort with the dialogue, tutorials, and quests to keep everything clean, and i would never have noticed based on these things that it was a translation. However, item names and descriptions are very bad. Some of them are just transliterated, so for example i caught an item with the description "Cing Ming Si Zit Jyu Fan Fan, Lou Seung Hang Yan Juk Dyun Wan". The items that are translated are pretty hit or miss. Some are perfectly fine, but some are gibberish. Here is an example description, the typos are present in the game text not added by me. "odd numbers reversers, even numvers remains, plus or minus depends on the quadrant." The fish names are sometimes wrong as well, with a jellyfish being named "cuttlefish".

On to the gameplay itself, the baseline systems are actually really cool with dice rolls to determine fishing spots, a large number of fish to collect, and an "elemental purity" system to allow later goals even after finishing catching all fish. The ability to spend currency to permanently upgrade tiles is really nice too. Unfortunately this all falls apart really fast. Every single catch requires you to play a minigame, ranging from about 5 seconds to 1 minute. None of them are fun past the first few plays. You have to do these minigames even for duplicate fish catches, so these boring minigames will be about 90% of what you are actually doing in this game.

A few more minor issues that could easily be fixed. The "find the different chinese character" minigame does not show the full grid of characters in maximized windowed mode, forcing you to frantically resize it to try and see all of the characters before the timer runs out. The dialogue is rather slow, but instead of making the clicking speed up the text or display the full sentence, it just skips it entirely and goes to the next sentence. Sometimes when you are fishing, the fishing bobber goes into the land instead of the water and catches a fish from the land. Opening the settings instead takes you to the main menu. The characters are not voiced despite the volume menu claiming there are character voices, and instead it plays annoying noises when someone is talking, forcing you to mute characters in the volume menu to save your ears. The achievements are currently bad. There is an achievement for launching the game, then the rest are for fully completing each of the collections which basically means you do not get your second achievement until you are 99% done with the game.

This game should be early access, and is not worth more than 1 or 2 USD.