Art of the iPhone

If you’re a fan of fishing games, you’ll find Flick Fishing ($1.99) from Freeverse to be polished fun. Its simple and can be consumed in small bites, which makes it perfect for the mobile gaming experience. Flick Fishing is more trial-and-error than a thinking man’s game, but that’s kind of like real fishing. Overall, we found it to be a relaxing game with innovative use of the iPhone’s controls and are rating it a 7.7 out of 10, recommended.

What’s most impressive about Flick Fishing is how polished the game is. Despite there being currently over 8,000 apps in the iTunes App Store, this level of polish, even in simple casual games, has been all too scarce.

For game play, Flick Fishing utilizes the iPhone’s accelerometers to simulate a real-life fishing pole. Flick the iPhone forward, and your line is cast into the water. A float in the water will indicate if the fish are biting. To reel in the fish, trace your finger clockwise with the on-screen fishing reel. You can also select different bait from a tackle box to catch different types of fish.

Flick Fishing is a slow-paced game–it will require your patience. But not as much as real life fishing would. I would guess there was an average of 20 seconds between catches.

There is some challenge and action to game. For instance, catching the really big fish requires some learned skill. After breaking my fishing line a few times, I soon learned to pay attention to a tension meter at the top of the screen that shows the amount of force on the fishing line. Landing a big one becomes a battle of letting the fish run, then reeling it in, and repeating until you can ultimately land it.

My only complaint is a familiar one for games in the app store: the game is too small, and the game play not varied enough. The only thing that changes between fishing spots is the difficulty level, type of fish, and type of bait you can use. On second thought….that’s kind of like real fishing.

Conclusion

For this reviewer, Flick Fishing was a refreshing change from some of the poorly designed and just plain ugly iPhone games and apps that are released by the dozens every day in the iTunes app store. Fans of fishing games will definitely want to pick this one up, although they shouldn’t expect a deep gaming experience–just some casual mobile fishing fun. 7.7 out of 10, recommended.

Tips

Bait is important, especially in the more difficult levels. You’ll have to experiment to catch some of the bigger fish.

The smoother you cast, the further the line will go. Bigger fish like to hide further away.

When there’s a bite, Pull the iPhone backwards or touch the reel and reel in clockwise to hook the fish and set the line.

Name: Flick Fishing
Developer: Freeverse, Inc.
Version Reviewed: 1.1
iTunes Download: