About Fishing – Demo Impressions

Finally, a fishing game in the style of the TV show Twin Peaks. If you ever dreamt about fishing while being in a cozy, yet slightly unsettling dream—now, your time is here in About Fishing. While it has an esoteric feeling in the story and world—you actually need to have patience like a true fisherman, too, as fishing is the main gameplay.

Innocence lost
About Fishing starts rather innocently, albeit a bit strangely, with you and your dad out fishing, being shown the ropes for optimal angling and cryptic fish lore. As these friendly outings go, you soon find a corpse tucked into an underwater cave. And from here on out, we enter the twilight zone of obscure and very secret fishing. The demo switches from being a child to an adult, and now dad is in jail, landing him there thanks to his obsession with the dead girl, and her twin sister who apparently also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. 

Being a huge fan of Twin Peaks, which About Fishing gives off strong vibes, I was immediately sold on the premise of the story. What also added to this feeling was the solid visuals and unnerving atmosphere, especially the part involving the dead girl in the dark, creepy cave. However, as I mentioned in the introduction, fishing is actually the gameplay—and I quickly felt that the mystery of the tale is held “hostage” to this fact. 

Fishing is what we do
Now, I don’t mean that the gameplay is bad in any way, as it was actually excellent, with cool fishing physics and intuitive fishing rod mouse controls. But it’s clear that the narration will stop for a while, seeing as you will need to fish to earn money—to buy new and better equipment. The reason I talk about this, while still finding the fishing enjoyable, is that my mind raced towards unlocking more of the story, which had the effect of making the fishing a grind. Honestly, though, that’s my problem, as overall, the combination of the gameplay and the mysterious narration is top-notch, if you enjoy weird esoteric things, leading you deeper into wonderland…

So, make sure to give About Fishing a try if you want to test something new with good retro PlayStation 1 graphics, splendid music, and a moody setting.

Thanks for reading.

– Thomas