UnexpectedGames

Hook, Line, & Sink… Into Adventure!

I wrote about The Big Catch back in January of 2023, thinking it was going to release the following year. There was never an official release date, however, only wishful thinking on my end. Games take a long time to make, especially debut titles from independent studios. Filet Group, based out of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, launched a Kickstater for their project back in 2022. Fast forward to IGN Live 2024 where The Big Catch was re-revealed alongside a brand new trailer and a publisher announcement. In 2025, XSEED/Marvelous will be publishing Filet Group’s debut release, The Big Catch. At the moment, The Big Catch appears to be exclusive to PC/Steam, but I can’t imagine it won’t find its way to other platforms, considering the type of game that it is. 2025 is looking to be another great year for games and while I’m looking forward to highly anticipated releases like Dynasty Warriors Origins, Monster Hunter Wilds, Split Fiction and what Nintendo Switch 2 launches with, The Big Catch is what I’m arguably most excited about.

So, what is The Big Catch? According to their Kickstarter page, “The Big Catch is a 3D platformer all about tight expressive player movement, exploration, and FISH. In addition to inheriting the best parts of retro and modern platformers, The Big Catch is designed to be something fresh (like the fish).” I’ve said this a lot lately, but I’m always excited when I see indie developers venture into the PlayStation 1/Nintendo 64 era space. We’ve been inundated with 2D, retro-inspired games for years and while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, The Big Catch looks refreshing and inspired. When I first saw the initial Kickstarter trailer, I thought the character designs looked charming, yet familiar. There also appeared to be degree of buoyancy/stretchiness to the character animations, which gave me confidence that the game was probably going to feel good to play. The music in the trailer was also incredible (more on that later) and the traversal/platforming looked extremely satisfying.

After the latest trailer and publisher reveal this past summer, the Filet Group released a prologue/demo of sorts called “Tacklebox” for PC/Steam. According to an update on their Kickstarter page, Tacklebox was supposed to be a backer reward for those who pledged. After much deliberation, the team decided to release it to the public (with the promise of creating a new reward for backers down the road). I didn’t hear about the game until after the Kickstarter was already funded, so I’m thrilled I got the opportunity to play a slice of the game along with everyone else. I’m here to report that The Big Catch is shaping up to be one of the best 3D platformers I’ve ever played and it’s also one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I’ve had last year. So, what’s the catch here, exactly?

It’s All in the Hips

After a short opening cinematic where the main character is shown wandering a desert, the game casts you into a tutorial area where you can dip your toes into the controls, reel in a fish, and collect some coins before proceeding to the “open-world”. If you’ve played a lot of 3D platformers in the past, you should immediately notice that The Big Catch isn’t your typical mascot-driven affair. Caster can run, jump, swing their rod to attack enemies, reel in fish, and even swim, but there’s a much more advanced move-set here that’s not totally transparent to the player right out of the (fish) bowl. The tutorial signs don’t teach you everything either, which could be a detriment to some players, as you’re required to learn and master the more advanced techniques in order to complete the demo. In addition to the traditional 3D platformer move-set, Caster can climb-up and balance themselves at the top of poles (Sly Cooper style), walk and bounce on tightropes, swing on poles, (Jak and Daxter style), and even wall-run (Prince of Persia style). On particular walls and ceilings, there’s even moss/vine-like textures that Caster can use to climb and it feels and looks like it’s right out of Rayman 2: The Great Escape!

So, how do the controls and character movement in The Big Catch compare to the 3D platformers that came before it and how does it go up against some of its contemporaries today? When it comes to making/analyzing a 3D platformer, it’s impossible not to look back on Super Mario 64 (SM64) as a sort of baseline in terms of character movement and overall game-feel. Do you remember that N64 launch tape you could receive in the mail where the system is shown off and Ken Lobb demonstrates the controls in SM64? Well, it’s all kind of here, too! I played the Tacklebox demo on Steam using a PS5 DualSense controller. If you move the left analog stick ever so slightly, Caster will start to tip-toe. Apply a bit more pressure and he’ll begin to jog. Push the left analog stick completely and he’ll begin to dash around the environment. I think a lot of 3D platformers forget the basics that were introduced in games like SM64, so I appreciate that the Filet Group did their homework, so to speak. If I had to give one minor critique, I do feel like the tip-toe, slow-walking animation looks a bit odd and stiff. I’m not sure if it’s due to having a low amount of frames or if it’s something else, but I do hope it’s addressed before the full game launches. It’s not a major problem in the grand scheme of things, however. More importantly, the game feels good to control and it’s super satisfying to run around as this character.

Caster can also perform neautral jumps/hops by simply pressing the jump (X) button. The harder you press down on the button, however, the higher the jump. This also applies to the tightropes and nets that you can jump on in the demo, too. One thing I really appreciate about the character animations is that when Caster lands from a jump, there’s a sort of stretchiness/buyoancy applied to the animation where his knees jut out and extend before standing back up. Jak and Daxter on the PS2 had a sort elastacity to the character animations, which I always loved. While Jak didn’t have a particularly complicated move-set, they sort of made up for it with their smooth animations. It felt really nice to do rolling long jumps in that game, for example. I also look back on Banjo-Kazooie rather fondly. While it’s yet another game with a relatively simple control scheme, it just feels good to perform the Talon Trot ability to get around quickly or running into a crouching Flapflip jump to reach a high platform. You can crouch in this game and perform a slide by pressing the square ([]) button. If you jump before the end of the slide, you’ll perform a long kick-jump, which feels really good. There’s even that summersault jump from SM64! If you’re running in one direction and then snap the left analog stack back in the opposite direction and jump, you’ll perform a really cool sideways summersault jump.

Building speed and momentum plays a big role in this game, too. When you run down a slope, for example, you will begin to pick up speed, which you can then hold the crouch button to perform a slide. There’s even a ground pound maneuver that’s best utilized on slopes to build up speed. I do wonder if in the full release, techniques like the slide, butt slam or sideways summersault will be required in order to progress. In the demo, you’re never really asked to perform these moves, so they’re more or less stylistic flourishes to the move-set, which do add some depth/layers to the overall control scheme. Caster can also swing his rod around to attack enemies both on the ground and in the air by pressing the square ([]) button. All enemies take one-hit to kill and when they die, a coin will pop-out of them for you to collect. That’s the extent of the combat in the demo, however. It’s yet to be seen how combat-heavy the final release will be, although the initial launch does show what appears to be boss-like (giant spider) character. Finally, Caster can perform a spin jump by rotating the left-analog stick in a counter/clockwise motion. You can even buffer the input before landing from a jump. This technique is actually required in certain areas of the demo to collect some of the more hard-to-reach coins. The spin jump is best used from really high heights, however, as it gives you slightly more control over how you fall to platforms below you. Otherwise, you sort of drop like a rock. There’s more techniques and controls to explain, but if any of this sounds interesting, I can’t recommend playing the demo enough to see for yourself (and it’s free!).

After you complete the tutorial area, Caster will find themselves in the presence of a mentor named Fyskari Bail. They ask you to explore the plateau in search of fish and with each catch, they will trade you coins. The goal of the demo is to earn your “Scales”; a right of passage, so to speak, for the Fysker, which are presumably a tribe of fisherman. In a nearby cave, not far from the starting area, there’s a sealed door that shows a requirement of 696 coins to enter. This is the goal of the Tacklebox demo. Coins can be found scattered in the environment as collectables, many of which are hidden in hard-to-reach places. A good majority of the coins come from the fish you catch and trade with Bail, of which there are 26 to find. When you catch a fish, you’re supposed to bring it back to Bail and toss it into a basket nearby. This exchange feels super satisfying. Caster automatically pulls out their haul once you approach the basket and when you dunk the fish into the container, a handful of coins will burst-out and bounce around the area until they’re gathered. My one critique here is that there are multi-colored fish to collect in the demo. When Caster brings them to the basket and they pop-out above you, they’re always blue. I hope that the full release will take into consideration exactly what types of fish you collected when presenting them. The HUD is also super classy and clean. Your health bar (which looks like the bones of a fish), the fish counter, and the coins you’ve collected sort of dangle from the top of the screen, as if they were hanging from a fishing line.

Character progression, inventory management, menu navigation and the sort are big questions I have for the final release. Will there be a variety of fishing rods to collect and upgrade? Are the lures/bobbers customizable as well? Perhaps Caster will obtain a spiked-bobber that can be cast at enemies to deal more damage. Maybe the fishing line can be used to hook enemies and reel them in. Will the menu be presented as a titular Tacklebox where all of his equipment and lures are stored? Perhaps the developers will utilized a Resident Evi 4-like briefcase for the menu where you need to upgrade or find larger tackleboxes to hold more gear. I do hope there’s a nice menu where all of your collected fish are categorized and listed at the very least. Although they added a compass-like feature to the demo after the fact (which points in the direction of fish you haven’t captured and will flash red when near uncollected coins), it would be nice if there’s an in-game map as well that shows fractions/percentages based on the amounts of coins/fish you collected in each area. There are so many ideas and approaches the developers can take when it comes to character progression, inventory management and menu navigation. The demo is certainly more focused on precision 3D platforming, character movement and collecting things, however.

Time for Adventure

If you were fortunate (and old) enough to have experienced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time back in 1998, you’ll likely never forget the feeling of leaving Kakariko Village and stepping foot onto Hyrule Field for the first time. Hearing the field theme play while seeing iconic landmarks in the distance like Hyrule Castle and Death Mountain represented in 3D for the first time was a magical moment for seasoned Zelda fans and first-timers alike. From my experience, not many games have captured that “feeling of adventure” that most Zelda games have been doing for decades. I’d like to think Falcom’s very own Ys franchise has more or less understood the assignment (see Ys VIII, for example; the starting beach area while Sunshine Coastline plays in the background is the epitome of “adventure”). Somehow, the folks over at Filet Group have potentially done what many adventure game developers fail to accomplish. The open desert environment is vast and loaded with secrets, begging to be explored.

As Caster exits the tutorial pond, you’re teased by tadpole-looking creatures that pop-up out of the sand. After whistling for their attention and with the cast of your rod, these little friends become your “Epona of the Desert”, if you will. Before you realize it, you’re sand-surfacing and zipping across the wasteland in front of you. You can even “crack the whip”, so to speak, to continuously build-up speed while surfacing across the landscape. There’s a cool down for this mechanic, but just as the meter fills back up, you can time the button press to do a “perfect golden crack”, which gives you a fairly significant boost. The music that plays when you’re travelling across the desert landscape perfectly encapsulates that aforementioned feeling of adventure.

Speaking of the game’s soundtrack, I sent the composer, Quade Zaban, a tweet on Twitter (I’m not calling it “X” and this will be the last time I reference that site) complimenting him on how the piece from the trailer was evocative of the PS1 era and how it also reminded me a bit of Kohei Tanaka’s work on Alundra (one of my favorite PS1 games of all time). To my surprise, the composer confirmed my suspicion that Tanaka’s work was in fact an influence! I didn’t become aware of this game until after the Kickstarter was already funded. I’ve been skeptical of most Kickstarter projects, however, after having backed a few that were either disappointing (Mighty No. 9) or have yet to release (like Unsung Story, which I backed in 2014…), but The Big Catch looks (and sounds) promising.

A Demo for Your Thoughts

One of the main hooks (sorry, I can’t stop) of The Big Catch is, well, catching fish! The fish are more or less the Power Stars, Jiggies or Power Cells from Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, respectively. Just like the monkeys from Ape Escape, what’s super fun and interesting about the fish is that they’re living collectables. The fish will naturally swim away from you as you approach them and some of them even have tiny legs, so they have no issue jumping out of the water to scurry away. If a fish is water-bound, you actually need to find a lure before you can even begin to reel them in. Lures are expendable items that can be found growing on special trees. Finding the trees with lures isn’t always an easy task, either. When you’re holding a lure, some of your movement is disabled, so it sort of becomes a puzzle in a sense to take it back to the pond/river where the fish is. For the land-based buggers, the fish will ultimately grow tired if you chase them for long enough. The ones that have found themselves on the surface will usually take Caster through the surrounding area, which sort of becomes a platforming challenge in and of itself. While some fish are relatively easy to catch, many of them can be found at the very end of challenging platforming sequences, many of which require mastery of the controls. There’s also a lot of verticality in the stages, but thankfully there are shortcuts/wrap-arounds you can can activate (à la Demon’s/Dark Souls if you were born yesterday) to make retracing your steps more manageable. If the full game plays with these ideas in even more creative ways, I think the fish from The Big Catch will easily become one of my favorite collectables in any 3D platformer.

The Big Catch is surprisingly very physics/momentum-based. There are Prince of Persia style poles to swing from, nets you can bounce off of and other contraptions that make use of your fishing rod for traversal. One such contraption are these grapple points that look like fans. When you cast your rod at them, you’ll be propelled forward. In some instances, you need to propel yourself back and forth from these grapple points to build enough speed/momentum in order to reach out-of-reach platforms. The bouncing nets work similarly in such a way where the harder you press the jump button, the higher you bounce. Then there are the swinging poles; you’d think you’d have to swing at the center of the pole to launch yourself to platforms in front of you. More often than not, however, you need to swing at the end of the pole that connects to the wall, so that you launch yourself into a wall-run. From there, as long as you don’t immediately jump, your character will follow the curvature of the wall, slowly running downwards/upwards until you either fall or jump. Caster, thankfully, can grab ledges to pull himself up, which you’ll be doing a lot. The physics/momentum-based platforming can take a minute or two to wrap your head around, especially since the game doesn’t necessarily teach you the more nuanced controls during the demo.

The 3D Platformers of Yore

I mentioned this at the jump, but I’m thrilled that we’re starting to see more indie developers graduate from the school of NES/SNES era 2D action-platform game design. A lot of developers are now making more games reminisicent of the late PS1/early PS2 era and I love to see it. Over the past decade or so, we’ve had a variety of 3D platformers from studios both big and small. On the indie front, there’s been games like A Hat in Time, Demon Turf, Tinykin, Psuedoregalia, and Yooka-Laylee, for example. My personal favorite indie 3D platformer was from last year, Penny’s Big Breakaway. Evening Star Studio’s debut release was a linear, stage-by-stage 3D platformer, but there was a ton of freedom and expressiveness in the general move-set, which is how I feel about Demon Turf, Psuedoregalia and The Big Catch’s controls. The aformentioned games have experimented with the 3D platformer “formula” in some fashion or form, from controls to game structure. A Hat in Time, for example, follows the SM64/Sunshin/Galaxy approach where the player picks an objective from a menu before hopping into a world. The level is then crafted around that objective and once you collect the main collectable, you’re booted back to Peach’s Castle, so-to-speak. Yooka-Laylee was more or less an extension/tribute to Banjo-Kazooie, but that game, just like A Hat in Time, had a hub-world that connected to individual levels with non-linear objectives.

On the “AAA” front, you’ve got games like Team ASOBI’s Astro Bot, Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank, and Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. For awhile, it seemed like Nintendo was the only big developer/publisher making “traditional” 3D platformers. Insomniac has been making Ratchet & Clank games for a very long time and the overall design hasn’t really changed since the PS2 era. Unlike their counterparts, Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper, who evolved into their own thing by taking inpsirations from Grand Theft Auto (and have since been put to rest), R&C has somehow stuck around. The success of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission back on the PSVR put Team ASOBI on the map. Astro’s Playroom was a delightful sampler of what Astro could be (considering it was a free download/pack-in with the PS5), but the 2024 release of Astro Bot brought PlayStation’s little robot mascot into the big leagues. The huge elephant in the room is the next mainline 3D Mario game, however. Will Nintendo’s next entry simply be Super Mario Odyssey 2? Will it be an extension of Bowser’s Fury or something completely brand new? Time will tell (hopefully soon), but whatever Nintendo plans to do with their next mainline 3D Mario title, it will most likely reset the benchmark for the genre.

So, until Team ASOBI and Nintendo release their next Astro Bot and mainline 3D Mario game, respectively, you’ve got games like The Big Catch to fill-in the gaps! While The Big Catch is certainly pulling inspiration from a lot of the older games I grew-up playing, it also feels fresh and new. In terms of what I’d like to see from the final release, I do hope the levels in this demo are integrated into traditional 3D Zelda-like spaces with lock & key progression, mini-bosses and the sort. You have three hit-points (HP) in the demo, for example. I sort of hope there’s a Heart Container equivalent from Zelda in this game where you can increase your maximum health. That’s the kind of things I’m looking for, but that may not be the Filet Group’s vision for the game. The closer The Big Catch is to traditional 3D Zelda, the better, I feel. I think the Tacklebox demo is a good representation of how the game will control and play, but I hope the final release has a more traditional game structure, at least in terms of how both the story and gameplay bits are presented to the player, especially when it comes to pacing.

Character progression, inventory management, and menu navigation are some of the big questions I have for the final release. Will there be a variety of fishing rods to collect and upgrade? Are the lures/bobbers customizable as well? Perhaps you’ll obtain a spiked-bobber that can be cast at enemies to deal more damage. Maybe the fishing line can be used to hook enemies and reel them in. Will the menu be presented as a titular Tacklebox where all of his equipment and lures are stored? Perhaps the developers will utilize a Resident Evi 4-like briefcase for the menu where you need to upgrade or find larger tackleboxes to hold more gear. I do hope there’s a nice menu where all of your collected fish are categorized and listed at the very least. Although they added a compass-like feature to the demo after the fact (which points in the direction of fish you haven’t captured and will flash red when near uncollected coins), it would be nice if there’s an in-game map that shows fractions/percentages based on the amounts of coins/fish you collected in each area. There are so many ideas and approaches the developers can take when it comes to character progression, inventory management and menu navigation. The demo is clearly more focused on precision 3D platforming, character movement and collecting things, however.

I do think The Big Catch feels positioned for success, but that’s dependent on a few things; I think the developers need to balance the game’s difficulty and make it a bit more approachable while somehow mainting their vision for what clearly appears to be a relatively hardcore and unforgiving 3D platformer. The game already feels like a dream to control, but I do think some of the more advanced techniques need to be tutorialized a bit better. The pathing through some of the environments could use some additional guideposting, but that might be intended design. The Big Catch feels like it’s carving a very particular niche while simultaneously filling a void that Nintendo has arguably removed themsleves from in the traditional 3D Zelda-like space. I’m guessing the Filet Group is waiting for the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct in April before they show/announce anything else. This game feels like prime real estate for the Nintendo audiance, though. Just as long as they don’t launch the game a week before Grand Theft Auto VI’s release, I think they will be okay.

Even though the Tacklebox is a demo, it feels like a “reel” game. Okay, enough of my nonsense. I spent around 10 or so hours collecting all of the coins and fish to earn my “Scales”, which is more time I’ve spent playing some indie games last year. It was one of my most satisfying and rewarding experiences of 2024. Without question, The Big Catch is my most anticpated release of 2025. I love it so much, I also made a new video for my YouTube channel, which acts as a companion piece to this blog post! The developers over at the Filet Group have been patching the demo since its launch and recently announced an update on their Kickstarter page saying that they are in “go mode” in terms of development. Lures and lines crossed, here’s to The Big Catch in 2025!

Hook, line, and sink… into adventure! Bye Forever.

-Matty