Having played a load of indie games on the Switch, I can absolutely state 2 things that are tied to Fishing Break. First, the Switch has always been pretty desperately in need of a decent fishing title. Second, while there have been games that have worked reasonably well coming from the mobile space, most of them simply feel like cash-ins. Unfortunately, I can pretty definitively say that Fishing Break has done nothing to change my mind on either of these statements.

The first thing I take issue with, and that I’d say is a pretty common stumbling block, is that rather than taking the time to set up some competent console controls for it they just threw in a cursor and pretty awful pointer controls. In particular for casting this is a mess, especially since sometimes I was unable to get it to register that I was trying to cast at all, and there are very few visual indications to help. In addition, reeling fish in is just something you’ll need to work out on your own, and the answer to pretty well all issues you run into is that you’ll need to grind… a lot. The thing is, even when you can catch new fish types, or manage to luckily nab a tough one with weaker equipment, there is still very little excitement or reward to any of it.

The sad thing here is that there are elements that could have made the game stand out given the generally poor state of the competition. Taking some time and care to implement decent controls, help make the action more varied, and working on just a bit of excitement could have made for a decent time. Instead, this feels like little more was done than sliding the folder over, taking some minimal steps to make it workable, and then calling it a day. The result is disappointing.