Ryan Veeder's Authentic Fly Fishing

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

"Forgiveness Rating: Delightful", September 30, 2019

This game is the "Joe Pera Talks With You" of interactive fiction.

Ryan Veeder's Authentic Fly Fishing makes up for every Inform game that's ever felt like a blank room with puzzle components glued down in front of you. The environment is solid and dynamic, but not overly dense: perfectly balanced. And it's very candid about its limitations. That isn't a downside: by gently explaining the walls of our comfortable game of pretend, we can preserve our own immersion by staying inside those walls and sitting by the lake together and doing as much or as little as we'd like today.

My one complaint is that Ryan Veeder is (Spoiler - click to show)terribly mean about insects' appearances.

Charming but misleading, December 23, 2019

This game has a few layers; on the surface it purports to be a fly-fishing simulator, but you can probably infer from the tone of the introduction that it actually focuses on life around the lake rather than the literal fishing itself. I hate fishing but love nature, so this suited me fine; on this layer it's actually a wonderful example of a very diffuse, unguided type of (back)storytelling, with things to learn and connections to make at your own pace, unprompted (largely unacknowledged, even) as you explore the area and learn about its contents. Unfortunately, at the risk of an incredibly mild conceptual spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show)if you keep digging, before long the game reveals itself to actually have a much darker story than the "laid-back" experience the introduction promises (and, maybe just as disappointing, a much more formally-traditional lock-and-key-puzzle driven adventure game beneath the veneer of open-ended meandering). So, minus one star for being disappointed that the premise was misleading, but still a high rating for the quality of the "fake" game that the less-interesting real game is hidden in.

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