Overview
Fishing games are a pretty popular genre for Android devices, and there are quite a few to choose from in the market. In this article we’re going to take a look at one of the newer Android games called Gone Fishing from Drimmi. Gone Fishing has a lot of gear to equip and tons of fish to catch, but how it stacks up against the other big fishing games in the market is the real question.
Gameplay
As soon as you fire up the game you’re thrown right into a lake, and given a brief tutorial covering the basics of the game. We won’t go through everything as the tutorial will cover that, but I will say that it’s fishing made simple. The way you actually catch a fish is a bit different from other game, as you have to play a kind of mini-game each time you get one on the hook. You’re given a gauge and have to move the “reel” up and down to match the fish that’s shown in a spotlight. When the green gauge gets to the top you’ve got your fish and are given its stats and worth. The game itself runs off of a series of quests, each a bit tougher than the last and they seem to vary quite a bit. There isn’t a list of quests, and the market description says they use a principle generator to build up quests so we’re just going to go with that.
Features
As you progress through the game new locations can be unlocked with achievements from the previous level. You have to have 5 achievements to advance, and it actually took me awhile to get past the first lake. There are 8 different lakes to fish including a mountain lake, sandy shore, and a nighttime lake. Gone Fishing has quite a bit of gear to help you land the big ones with 10 different rods, 15 types of bait, and 9 kinds of food to lure the fish in with. All the items can be purchased from the shop at any time using money earned in the game from selling fish or by buying money via the in-app purchasing setup. All the baits can be bought with coins, but 4 of the rods and all of the food lures have to be bough with gold coins. I’m not sure if they can be earned during the game, but the prices are pretty steep on some items; the most expensive “gold coin” rod is 12,842 coins which will run you about 20 bucks in real cash.
Gone Fishing has a big, detailed fish encyclopedia that shows the different types of fish in the game and what they like to eat as well as how many you’ve caught for each type. If you dig achievements Gone Fishing has plenty of those; each lake has its own set of achievements and there is a general set for the overall game as well. It’s also a social media game as you can take a picture of any fish you catch and post pictures to Twitter or Facebook for bragging rights. There’s something in the market description about prizes being awarded for “placement of materials” and awards for “global game goals” but they don’t really elaborate and the market description is a little rough to put it nicely.
Verdict
I’ve always enjoyed fishing, but rarely get time to go so I’m always on the lookout for new Fishing games and was pumped to check out Gone Fishing. The excitement didn’t last too long though, as unfortunately I quickly became bored with the game. You have no control over the location or power of your cast which isn’t all that bad, but I thought the quests were tedious. They generally involve catching a certain amount of a certain fish or a set weight, and one of the quests involved catching 40 fish along with two other tasks; it took ages to complete that one and I was a burned out at the end of it. The graphics are nice, and there is some cool equipment to use but I really found the gameplay a bit too repetitive for my taste. It’s a good quick play fishing game, just not one I could see myself playing for days. You can check out Drimmi’s Gone Fishing in the Android market for free.