Indie Game Club Issue 5: Ranita Fishing

Welcome back to SUPERJUMP Indie Game Club for our monthly discussion of free, independently published video games! This month, we are discussing an abandoned project by Fáyer called Ranita Fishing. We invite anyone to play along with us, and you can jump into the action now! Our next game will be Loria which is available for free on Steam!

Now sit and drop a lure as the team lets you know what this demo is all about.

Alexander B. Joy

I was excited when our club settled on Ranita Fishing this month. Fishing games number among my stranger passions (such that I literally wrote the book about the Game Boy’s finest example), so I went in wondering whether this indie project would mark a worthwhile entry in an underappreciated genre.

My verdict, unfortunately, is “not quite.”

It’s a good game that needs a rebrand, for Ranita Fishing is less a fishing game than a gentle platformer that encourages clever uses of a fishing rod (culminating in a downright inspired boss battle of sorts that relies on inventive casting). It’s a lovely little experience when considered through that lens, but a fishing game it is not – and it doesn’t grasp what makes such games fun.

Where Ranita Fishing excels is with its aesthetics. Its draw is the promise of spending time amid relaxing, appealing surroundings, and the game’s presentation delivers, adopting the polished plasticine look of the Link’s Awakening remake on Switch. Its world resembles an assemblage of bright and colorful playthings, telegraphing a space where you can exist peaceably and free of threat. Accordingly, the game overwhelms with coziness and cuteness. The fish designs aim to make you smile, often opting for silly yet creative forms that are delightful to uncover (the Rockfish, in particular, put a big grin on my face). Small touches, like your protagonist’s grandfather waving when you enter his line of sight, add to the charm.

Despite its title, Ranita Fishing is fundamentally a platformer because the actual act of fishing is an afterthought. For starters, it takes too long to start hunting for fish – the first chunk of the game has you scouring a hilly landscape for the scattered pieces of a voxel piñata, which you must find before you see any trace of aquatic wildlife (what dp I care about scavenger hunts? I’m here to fish!). When you do start fishing, it amounts to an Animal Crossing-style test of patience. But instead of the exciting reflex challenge that Animal Crossing presents, here you only need to press a button once the fish is hooked, irrespective of timing. Stranger still, it’s often less advantageous to study the movements of the fish and lure than to watch your character on land, because the bright red exclamation mark that appears over its head when the fish bites offers a more conspicuous reel-in signal than any seen on the water. What kind of fishing game incentivizes ignoring the fish?

That single mechanical error embodies my central problem with Ranita Fishing. At their core, fishing games are about learning where to allocate your attention: what to watch, what to look for, and how to turn the observation of small details to your advantage. Ranita Fishing has no idea where your attention should go, leading some of its scattershot ideas to end up half-baked.

Even so, Ranita Fishing makes no pretense of being anything more than a tech demo that a few friends created in a short span. With those constraints in mind, it’s a success – ably showcasing a set of gameplay principles that, given the appropriate development resources, could blossom into an enticing adventure. I do hope someone provides the team that opportunity, because I’d happily spend a few more afternoons helping a cute frog hoist some weird fish.

Nathan Kelly

To our luck, pioneers of the 3D platformer continue to expand their skills and find new ways to push the genre forward by taking the relationship between character and environment to new heights. Fishing and jumping are two cornerstones of game design that have evolved together throughout the decades and occasionally meet in the middle every so often so that Big the Cat can go looking for his frog.

Ranita Fishing’s blueprint does not propose anything radically new in the platforming space; however, its novel take on fishing left me surprised and entertained for its short duration.

The initial room of the demo fails to showcase any notably new features, though it does display beautiful 3D graphics with obvious inspiration from Animal Crossing. The first area also reminds me to be grateful when a developer stops showing tutorial pop-ups after the first time picking up a collectible. That is not the case here, and it slows the game's pacing down much more than it may initially seem, amplified by the random nature of fishing when the game allows you to do so.

The first room was not a great introduction, but the remainder of the demo had me hooked for the remaining 30 minutes that I spent running around watching the silly animation the frog does each time it takes off into a sprint. Using the fishing rod to reach places that you otherwise wouldn't does not make for engaging puzzle solving, but it does make the exploration more satisfying. I loved my time catching leaves in bushes and plucking birds out of the sky.

The fishing didn't mesh well with the collection-based gameplay, to my tastes. The completionist mindset often engaged by collection platformers grated against the relaxed attitude that fishing demands. I was sprinting to the other parts of the various ponds, trying desperately to catch fish before they ran away from me. I was challenging myself to catch every fish on the board as quickly as possible, as if they were minikits in a LEGO game.

Finally reaching the end, I found a fun and inventive boss fight and a rewarding fishing list to finish. Ranita Fishing is a gorgeous demo, displaying fun ideas that I would have loved to see expanded upon with new fishing rods or environments. I hope this developer gets to make a form of their vision, as they are clearly a team of talented creators who just need the idea, funds, and playtesting to make something truly great.