iPhone Review: "Ninja Fishing" is a Good Catch

Do you like ninja? Of course you do. And fishing? Who doesn’t! So, have we got a game for you! Part Doodle Jump, part Fruit Ninja, Ninja Fishing is a fun little iOS game where you — a (very fat) Ninja — are looking for some sushi. After pronouncing a pithy zen like statement — like “Does […]
Ninja Fishing

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Do you like ninja? Of course you do. And fishing? Who doesn't! So, have we got a game for you!

Part Doodle Jump, part* Fruit Ninja*, *Ninja Fishing *is a fun little iOS game where you — a (very fat) Ninja — are looking for some sushi. After pronouncing a pithy zen like statement — like "Does this katana make my butt look fat?" — you swipe the screen to cast your line and catch some fish. Navigate your hook down between the fish by tilting your phone around, trying to go as deep as possible, up to the limits of the length of your line, until you reach the treasure chest at the bottom.

As soon as you hit a fish — whether it's at the bottom or not — the fishing real runs backwards and you pull up every fish you can hit with your hook on the way back, up to the limits of what your fishing hook can hold. But wait, you aren't done yet. Now you have to slice that fish by swiping your finger across them as they are flying through the air. Slicing them turns them into sushi, and you get more points. The more you slice the more points you get. But watch out: swipe that pack of dynamite and you loose all the fish left.

As you gain more points, the depths get deeper, and the fish get thicker and stranger. You need to keep catching new types of fish to slice up and get more and more gold to spend in the shop. What can you get in the shop are new and sharper knives (to cut fish faster), better lines (to go deeper) and better hooks (to hold more fish). You can even purchase a sales guide that will let you charge more for the sushi you are slicing.

At first, I was skeptical how long this game would hold my attention, but as I got into the gameplay, the tilt action got more and more addictive: difficult but not impossible.

Then I handed it to my son, and he hasn't put it down since. When I asked him where it fell in the spectrum of iOS games, he rated it higher than Angry Birds, a great compliment indeed. Dashiel's favorite part of the game is the special auto-drill sinker that plows through fish to get the line deeper, faster. The tradeoff, though is that you are turning many of the fish you pass into a bloody pulp, so fewer fish to pick up on the way back. If you don't like seeing dead fish don't play this game.

Gamenauts has created an instantly addictive game, that you can still put down when you need to, but will quickly want to pick back up — all of this for only $.99.