It is not menace that causes one’s skin to rise when fishing. The quiet shell of the early hours, a cooling speckled ambiance that could only be fractured by the victory of a big reel or something more unwelcomed. Tranquility is eerie because it is not known to last. In About Fishing, an upcoming game from Arctic Eggs creators The Water Museum, there are many unspoken rules between you and your grandfather about the art of the catch. Some about what swims in the water. Others about what’s beneath the soil. After spending a few marvelous hours with a playtest build, I am convinced this ambitious and alluring game will be this year’s dark horse masterpiece.
Arctic Eggs was a novel simulator of something nonexistent. At an outpost at the end of the world, your skills flipping sausages and cigarettes with a self-heating frying pan granted you access through the levels of the city and its secrets. It was a fun concept paired with an immaculately constructed world of freaks.
The crux of About Fishing requires less introduction. Cast. Patience. Reel. Glory. Exotic catches fetch a higher price, which you can trade for new gear and smokes. As a child, your grandfather taught you a more obscure technique, rehooking a fish on your line and controlling it like an RC car. As an adult, your grandfather is in prison. The local cemetery sinking into the ravine has unearthed the skeletons that put him there. Above and below, The Water Museum can render new, captivating worlds in ways unlike anyone else.
About Fishing isn’t a horror game per se. It is macabre, subversive, unnerving, uncanny, but its world is less about being chased down by its creatures and more being trapped by its beauty. At first your grandfather seems to be speaking in tongues, talking about curly fries, geese and mermaids as if shorthands for commonly understood phenomena. Even in this early build, it’s fascinating how much these ravings begin to translate themselves naturally, the feeling of submerging and acclimatizing into realms hostile to traditional air breathers.
It’s also worth mentioning that About Fishing is gorgeous. We’re waist deep in incredible “low poly” options, but it’s even better when creators buck the nostalgia factor and explore these techniques beyond what we recall from childhood. The lighting, textures and sound cues truly bring to life a place that is as serene as it is discomforting. If a retro reference is helpful, I imagine this being the type of game we would see more of if the candlelit Vagrant Story was as successful as Final Fantasy VII.
From what I have played, About Fishing is a wildly ambitious work from The Water Museum. I spent as much time using my fishing skills to snatch up turbots and turtles as I did casting the line to trace out secrets in the baroque features of this sleepy waterlogged town. Fishing, be they standalone games or side-quests in open world blockbusters, have always been an underdog gaming recreation. At its center, fishing may finally get its GOTY flowers as About Fishing spools a fable that will reel in even the most uncurious.
