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Lured In

Lured In

by Big Boy Games · Published by 2 Left Thumbs

★ 86%
Price N/A
Avg Players 63
Reviews 135
Released 2026
BuildingCapitalismCasualClicker
Prestige loop Offline progress

Media

Video
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Build and manage your own aquarium by traveling to diverse fishing spots, capturing species, and either letting them generate passive income or selling them for quick cash. Progress through research unlocks and prestige mechanics that unlock permanent bonuses, while customization options let you personalize your setup. It's ideal for players who enjoy gentle collection games with light progression systems and the satisfaction of watching an idle operation grow.

About this game

What players are saying

▲ Recommended 9 hrs
I think its important to keep the Price and Dev scale in mind of this game.
I feel this game is fine for it's price point, and I'm not looking to be overly critical, but as a point of feedback for the dev's future games, and for people interested in trying it, I just wanted to give my experience and perspective of some issues I had with the game. :)


Ultimately, if you're buying this game because you enjoy fishing I feel it's a bit shallow?
There's a handful of Mini games, it feels as if the mini game is selected at random when you catch a fish. They don't scale in difficulty over the course of the game. The Minigame you play in the first 5 minutes of the game are the same you play at the end of the game.

On top of this, if you enjoy fishing from the perspective of Completing a Catalogue, this game has that... but I think again, it just is kind of lacking. I personally really enjoy Conditional Fishing. Catch something at night, under X weather effect, when Y event happens, etc. I think it just gives more agency in terms of chasing a goal. This game has none of that. Each Region has 8-10 Fish to catch with a flat % Catch rate, and you either catch it with your rod or with a timed trap. The problem here I feel is the trap catches fish in bulk, so you really don't even notice when you catch something new since its stacked on top of 10 other fish.

Overall I just found the catalogue not really that interesting or satisfying to complete, it was just something I did in a few hours and only target farmed like 3 fish to finish as everything else was just collected pretty passively.

I feel adding Shiny, event fish, conditional fish, specific bait types to catch different fish, Just something where you feel you're taking more of an active role in collecting a catalogue would make it feel way better. I like the idea of different mini games, but I wonder if having them unique to each zone would be better, or just having Legendary fish use a unique Minigame so you notice when you're fighting a rare catch.



However, past the fishing, the much larger part of this game in my opinion is the Idle/Incremental side of the game. I feel after a few hours, Fishing starts to not really feel worth your time, which is kind of silly in a game about fishing? This game ultimately is all about making Money to progress upgrades, increase your Research rate and unlock new things. But actually Fishing really just isn't that profitable.

The point of the Fish is to fill the Fish tanks which gives you a passive income for each customer in your store. This quickly becomes the Majority of the money you're making and managing the shop overshadows the actual Fishing side of the game.

The game also uses an Ascension system to reset progress and leverage Meta Progression. However, I think this is kind of where I feel the game starts to fall apart. The game in the later stages are really poorly balanced and planned out. You can easily unlock everything without ever Ascending, and if you play for a few hours on your first Ascension you can unlock everything besides Offline passives instantly, making the point of ascending again feel kind of pointless?

On top of this, once you reach the end of the game and you're just chasing the last few achievements, your income quickly plateaus where doing anything active in the game feels completely pointless. The last Achievement I have is to earn 1 trillion dollars. Right now, I have a passive income of 42 Million per Minute, If I were to go and catch a fish, the best selling ones go for around 21 Million. So I might be able to double my income, but when we stop to look at how the numbers work... At my current rate of income, it would take about 400 hours to reach 1 trillion. So that's 200 hours of grinding actively to hit the end.
All upgrades currently run me over 1 billion, and when you do the math it would take over 10 hours for the upgrade to become profitable.
Ascending does give you a multiplier, but it really feels pretty small all things considered and completely resetting progress feels questionable if it would be worth it.
Just as an example, it cost me 207million to upgrade my tank capacity by 1, doing so, putting the most valuable 1 weight fish into the tank, increases my profit by 0.39 Million per minute. So in 530 minutes, it would become profitable to have made that choice.

Ultimately what I'm really saying is just that I think this game just scales really poorly. You can rush through and unlock everything in 4-6 hours, and then to actually 100% the game, the last achievement suddenly asks you to invest 200-400 more hours in.

Even if I'm missing something here, I think the real point is that its just not a really interesting system to half afk, cleaning tanks every 20 minutes for the next 2 weeks to earn an achievement. The game has the idea of Synergies within a tank with provide a multiplier, but the value only applies to the fish within the synergy, and is out preformed by just spamming 1 higher value fish. I think this bonus should apply to the whole tank, or even go further and say the whole room. If you have a room dedicated to all ocean fish, that should be a bonus. If you have Ocean synergies within each tank that should be a stacking bonus. Giving more things to tinker with and work towards would be a nice way to help scale.

And on top of that, Research quickly becomes pointless. Either having it convert into money, or instead allowing you in the end game to upgrade zones themselves so that every area you visit could reach the same level of value, allowing you to use all the different synergies and find set ups that could be worth more would be more interesting then just spamming the same thing in every tank.


Just in closing, again I do think for its price, this game is 100% fine, and I hope this didn't come off as too mean or critical. I wanted this to be more constructive on how they could improve the game, or ways to make the next game better. I think it was fun for a few hours, but I think there's just a lot of room to tighten up and fix the experience to make it generally better then what it currently is. <3
36 found helpful Steam ↗
▼ Not recommended 4 hrs
Big fan of both fishing and incremental games which is why I got this game. This game was heavily underwhelming in both aspects. If you like cozy idler games this is definitely the game for you

Pros:
1. In depth tank decorating and cleaning system
2. Fishing minigames are mostly unique and interesting, and are not difficult to fail
3. The pixel art for the fishing locations and the fish themselves are great and visually appetizing
4. Music is original and fits the vibe of the game

Cons:
1. Only 6 fishing areas and 53 total fish. For a price tag of $8 this is a letdown.
2. Fishing minigames and music get repetitive after the first 2 hours
3. The aquarium is not graphically interesting with mostly dull tones and the background is an empty void
4. You only get 3 "rooms" to put a total of 9 fish tanks in, they're pretty small, and get crowded really quickly
5. The incremental aspect of this game is pretty boring and short-lived.
6. The ascension aspect of this game is a huge letdown with only a few upgrades pertaining to actually "playing" over idling the game
7. Lack of creative freedom in the aquarium. Wouldn't really be an issue if it wasn't so dull. This is a core aspect of "cozy" games to me and where it really falls through in the genre.
8. The skill tree is incredibly small and not mechanically interesting
30 found helpful Steam ↗
▲ Recommended 1 hrs
I will obliterate every customer in this aquarium to get a clear view of the puppy's tail wagging while I pat it's tiny head. I will pat its tiny, itty bitty, adorable face every time I see it running between people's legs. All shall despair (except the puppy). Ten out of ten.
24 found helpful Steam ↗

Reviews are by Steam users, hosted on Steam.

Latest updates

Lured In v1.1.2 Released

2 days ago
This quick patch fixes a problem where your offline time was not saved if you sat in the main menu for too long.ChangelogFixesFixed an issue where offline time was not saved if the game autosaved in the main menu

Lured In v1.1.1 Released

3 days ago
This small update for Lured In introduces some fixes for Steam Deck, as well as more changes to the chef and scientist to fix problems and make them more balanced.This update also adds in a few new things, such as fish silhouettes in the water, cancelling minigames, and some panels for the ascension/research menus. Lured In now also uses a save backup system, so if a save gets corrupted, it can attempt to load your backup save instead. This should help alleviate problems people have had with saves being corrupted.ChangelogAdditionsAdded in a backup save system. Now whenever the game saves, it creates another duplicate save. Then if your main save is ever corrupted, the game attempts to load the backup. Hopefully this will prevent the rare scenarios when someone quits on the frame of a save, and their data is corruptedAdded in fish silhouettes that bite and nibble your bobber in the waterAdded the ability to cancel out of a minigame while your inside of it with escape (start on controller)Added in some panels inside of the research and ascension menus to show your current amount of currencyChangesMade it so the chef and scientist will only trade with fish that you have already discovered beforeMade it so the chef and scientist will use the minnow as a backup fish incase there are no valid fish to pick fromImproved the rate at which the aquarium cursor updates its position on mouseChanged the position of the chef and scientist so they are easier to click onSlightly changed the shape of the navigation area to leave a notch where customers will avoid the chef and scientistMade multiple tweaks to functions to better support moddingIncreased the distance away that the broomba can collect donationsUpdated all translations and contributorsFixesFixed an issue where some nodes in the research tree were unselectable. The game will now automatically calculate valid boundaries for menus like these.Fixed an issue where the cursor inside ascension/research menus was hidden behind ...

Lured In v1.1 Released + Steam Deck Verified

10 days ago
Our first post-launch content update is here!This update includes a lot of new changes and additions, to alleviate the most pressing issues people have had with the game. Also now with new ways to generate cash, the trillionaire achievement has returned! Very sorry for the poor handling of that on my part.I've spent a lot of time cycling back and rebalancing some things, including reworking the speed at which you accumulate ascension. I'm hoping all these new tweaks will make Lured In feel a lot more fair.What's NewSteam Deck VerifiedI've been working on controller support for Lured In from the very beginning, so I'm happy to say that we are verified for Steam Deck! I always imagined Lured In as a great game for on the go, so big thanks to everyone who has helped us get there,Deep SeaThe Deep Sea is a brand new fishing region, where you get to catch some super deep dwellers. I could have gone the route of reskinning the ocean region, but that's lame. Instead you fish out of a facility with a moonpool. Way more epic.There were a lot of fish I wanted to explore in this kind of area, so we're just scratching the surface so far! Coming updates will have even more thrown in.New AscensionsAscensions were clearly lacking during our launch, so I went through and added 6 new ones! These are a combination of QOL, bonuses, and new mechanics.You can now automate your donation collection with the Broomba, as well as trade with the new Scientist NPC to use up your research points while in end-game.I wanna thank everyone for your help on improving Lured In. I've got a lot more content planned that you all have suggested, so we'll be tackling that very soon! I plan on adding in bait, as well as a way for decorations to provide bonuses. Not to mention more fish, and the usual batch of upgrades.If you run into any issues with this update, please let me know over on the Steam forums, or on Discord. Thanks!ChangelogAdditionsAdded the ability to set a direction for some decorations, lik...

Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.

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