I've been enjoying Webfishing a great deal, recently—a chill, tidy little multiplayer fishing game where you can customise your pixelated cat (or dog). But I couldn't help but wonder, as I had insightful conversations with strangers by the river, whether the experience would be improved if the catches could shoot bullets at me out of their eyeballs. The answer is: Sorta.
Lake of Creatures is a new roguelike from solo developer Antenna Games, and having messed around for a bit, I can safely say it's a solid romp. Like a can of tuna, it does what it says on the tin—you swoop around a set of lakes filled with mutant fish and alternate between gunning them down and trying to catch them.
It's a neat enough concept that plays nicely in execution, too. While the gunplay's pretty standard, the fishing mechanic is a novel layer on top of your standard top-down run 'n' gunning. In order to extend your casting line, you have to swing it around a bit, then click to stop the bobber mid-swing to land it in the water. This operates a little like having a flail with a button that freezes its head in midair. So a fish can bite it. I've lost control of this metaphor.
Fish will appear after you've cleared a room of combatants, and sometimes there'll be multiple—which turns fishing into a cute combat challenge of its own, as the remaining fish'll often try to mercilessly gun you down. Actually catching them involves a timing-based minigame where you need to click at the right moment to deal critical damage, though a whiffed reel still hurts them slightly.
Otherwise, you have a gun, an armoury of weapons you can pick up, and a bunch of Binding of Isaac-style upgrades that'll give you stuff like boosts to your boat speed, poison bullets, and a floating trident to stab your enemies. There's also a melee attack, which unfortunately highlights the rough spots in Lake of Creatures.
It's entirely possible that this is a skill issue on my part, but the game is appropriately, well, floaty.
UPS
CAT
shooting
fishing
boating
rights