Mobfish: Hunter: a great game with a fishy undercurrent

I don’t know how but the wizards at Malaysia-based Appxplore have done it again! Last month I reviewed the company’s excellent game Caveboy Escape, which I found both brilliant and charming. Now I find myself in the awkward situation of praising them again. I’m British, and an abundance of praise is against my very nature. Now they have released Mobfish: Hunter, another excellent game for both Androidand iOS

(See: Caveboy Escape review: charming, cute and time-devouring)

It’s difficult to say anything bad about a game like Mobfish: Hunter, which manages to be both really weird and really simple. Let me start with single sentence: you play this game as a cyborg fisherman’s futuristic grenade. We are never sure why this man feels the need to massacre fish, or why people are always requesting he commit fish genocide.

Maybe half the population was wiped out by bad sushi? Who knows; it’s a mystery, and once you get over the copious environmental damage you’re doing, Mobfish: Hunter becomes a brilliant game.

So pretty

Did you know it’s really pretty under the sea? People had mentioned it before, but Mobfish: Hunter convinced me. I love the art in this game. The fisherman looks awesome, with his robotic components and his enthusiastic, fish-killing grin. The fish also look great, whether they are cute little goldfish or large, creepy fish that could take Cthulhu on in a tentacle-off.

Well don’t you all look murderable!

Each fish has its own coloring and facial features. Some of them look so cute I feel a momentary pang of guilt before I murder their entire fishy family. Some look so hideous I know I’m doing the world a favor!

One of my favourite things is how the background darkens the deeper under the ocean you go. It’s a simple mechanic, but it works so well and letting you feel how far you’re getting and how deep you are. It’s simple it’s subtle and it’s brilliant, just like most things in this game.

So how does it work?

It’s a simple concept: the fisherman throws his grenade into the sea and you control the grenade by tilting your device. You try and get the grenade as deep as possible dodging all the fish until you reach your maximum depth. Once your reach that depth, or hit a fish, you grenade begins ascending and you must murder as many of the fish as you can on your way up.