I like fishing. For a few hours, I can cast a line and with it all my troubles. There’s something utterly cathartic about sitting down on some rocks and just connecting with your line. Fishing in a digital world however? Meh. You’re either doing it in a quick mini-game or you’re this close to chucking your peripheral through your flatscreen when your line snaps.
The problem with fishing in video games, is that it just cannot compare to the real thing. Unlike racing games that at least have an expensive physical solution that provides all of the thrill without the blunt force trauma of a car crash should you be unsuccessful in taking a corner, fishing doesn’t have that advantage.
Unless Sony is willing to add the mother of haptic feedback hardware into a new PS Move controller and you can hire someone to squirt seawater into your face at a regular interval, that’s an experience which is best left to the real world. Which is where Rule With An Iron Fish comes into play. If you can’t emulate the experience, you can at least have fun with it, right?
The setup is simple: You’ve been recently marooned, the islands are filled with a scurvy sort of nautical clientele and they’re all hungry for some fish. That’s where you and your ace skills in sinking a sinker come into play. It’s up to you to cast the perfect line and snap up some snappers so that you can serve up some Big Mackerels for profit.
Rule With An Iron Fish’s key hook (heh) comes in the variety of the fish that you can capture. Copperfish Cracker, Lumpsuckers and the Mocktopus make up just some of the 100-plus denizens of the deep who are busy floating beneath, while the actual mechanics behind reeling in a whopper are simple enough to grasp. Throw your line in te right spot, augment your hooks and bait and you’ll soon click in a trophy fit for a king.
It’s all wrapped up in a neat aesthetic, a dedicated hub for showing off your accomplishments and plenty of challenges. Rule With An Iron Fish is charming stuff, and it has the one aspect of real-life fishing down pat: It’s a charming diversion. If you’re keen on trying your luck at landing a fish this big (stretches arms out of their sockets), you can find Rule With An Iron Fish on Steam right now.
Last Updated: September 5, 2017
