Lake of Creatures

Lake of Creatures (2024) is an action fishing game where you boat around lakes to defeat enormous aquatic monsters with guns, laser beams, and a fishing rod. While it's a wacky concept, the marine setting is more than just scenery, as you need to use the money you make from selling your catch to buy upgrades and new weapons to help you advance. The unique loop of fishing, fighting, selling, and improving, paired with its looping challenge makes for a novel time.

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You play a lone fisherman on a small boat on a lake and must use your fishing rod to collect fish to sell to local traders. Unlike other straight fishing games though, here you must also defend yourself from hordes of hostile creatures, birds, mushrooms and giant frogs. Play involves moving your boat around the lake and using your fishing rod to catch fish to sell when you return to shore. But reeling your line in attracts the attention of nearby creatures who try to attack you. You use an arsenal of weapons, from a gun to a laser ray to a sword, to attack and defeat them while dodging incoming attacks.

As you progress, you gain and buy new weapons and abilities that increase your power, letting you take on more powerful foes until you finally face the final boss of the lake, then move on to the next. When you die, you start again from the beginning but get to keep the weapons, items and abilities you gained, letting you progress further each time as you experiment with ambitious attack strategies and weapon combinations.

The result is a game that requires you to balance combat and progression with fishing to make money to allow you to progress, creating a unique twist on the roguelike genre that demands strategy and precision but also leaves space for silly and absurdist fun.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Lake of Creatures 20 months ago. It was re-examined by Thom Robertson and updated 3 days ago.