Presented as a demo of sorts to whet appetites for a larger game on the way, The Big Catch: Tacklebox surprised me in that it was so big that it could be passed off as an independent game in its own right. Like, you could’ve sold me this, y’know? I paid six bucks for Pseudoregalia, a game with a similar scope. That being said, I’m glad Tacklebox is free, because it serves as a good opportunity for the development team to get some feedback on a project that, at this point, I believe very much has some kinks to be ironed out.
Mechanically, Tacklebox is fantastic. Your core moveset is relatively simple, and there are only so many props in existence, but the game consistently finds unique ways to stitch objects together and you consistently find new ways to stitch your moves together. The fish-catching aspect is inherently charming, and the world itself inspires a sense of intrigue. The way the music kicks in your first time venturing out into the desert as you realize you can head out anywhere you can see gives off a very Wind Waker-esque feeling of adventure. The aesthetics overall are fantastic. Everything is here. There’s so much potential. It’s just... certain aspects of the design left me frustrated most of the time.
While Tacklebox will ask you to make the most of your moveset, it’s not necessarily a brutally difficult game. The problem is instead that it’s a very punishing game. I feel as if the majority of my playtime was spent going through the same few platforming challenges over and over again in order to get back up to wherever I had fallen down from. There are shortcuts you create here and there, but the harsh reality is that any time you mess up a tricky maneuver, you’ll have to pay for it with time spent retreading old ground. This isn’t helped by the fact that much of my time in certain areas was spent wandering in circles trying to figure out what in the world I was missing that I needed to find in order to progress—the way forward in an area can sometimes get a little obtuse. I can appreciate the concept of rewarding players with greater attention to detail, but when a fish I’m chasing jumps up somewhere out of my reach and I have to stumble around for 20 minutes unable for the life of me to figure out how to follow it, I’m not exactly going to be enjoying myself. Is this a skill issue? Maybe. But there’s most definitely a learning curve, and the fun factor takes a serious hit every time you make a mistake and have to slog your way back to where you were. Perhaps Tacklebox demands precision so fast because it's a demo—it wants to show further applications of its gameplay, but doesn't quite have the time to train the player for its difficulty to feel natural. I'm hoping that the full game will feel better in this sense.
The demo inspired enough curiosity in me to explore all it had to offer, though the sheer frustration of it leaves me unwilling to go for 100% completion. I was inspired to keep playing past the hour and a half mark almost solely because I saw the game had a Steam achievement, but at this point it’s difficult for me to care as much, especially considering I found myself over 100 coins short of completion after exploring with what I thought was a great thoroughness. The game is not particularly completionist-friendly anyway—it’s not exactly made clear once you’ve collected everything in a given area (apparently the compass can help with this, but how in the world was I supposed to figure that out myself?). Maybe with a little help from a guide, I’ll hop back into the game sometime in the future and give it another go, this time being sure to get everything in one area before heading to the next.
Tacklebox is a demo that showcases a foundation with incredible potential. The mechanics are well constructed, the base concept is charming, and I’m left eager to learn more about this world. The final product can turn out to be an excellent game... I just desperately hope that feedback is incorporated and The Big Catch takes a slightly different direction than this demo in its design.