Whisker Waters Switch Review

I’ve really been looking forward to Whisker Waters after stumbling upon it on Twitter one day. The concept of a fishing RPG reminded me of Legend of the River King, a game that had been absolutely hooked with it’s unique approach to fishing and storytelling. Whisker Waters seemingly promises to be similarly poised to be a great story and a cozy fishing game bundled into one package. What’s it Like? Grab your tackle box, find a nice spot, and cough up a furball as we review Whisker Waters on the Nintendo Switch.

Whisker Waters starts by weaving a tale about Fisher Ranger sealing away an evil presence and disappearing into legend. The story is told by an Elder cat named Pepper Tidbit, who will guide you in the early stages of the game to show you the ropes of mastering the art of fishing. So begins your journey to catch and catalog fish as you travel around and uncover the story of the world you inhabit. It all sounds rather interesting as a concept, but unfortunately, every great idea and gameplay mechanic is so poorly executed that it almost instantly falls apart. Why? Let’s take a look together.

The gameplay revolves around fishing and some exploration, but the problem is the fishing mechanics are fiddly and uninteresting. You walk to the water’s edge, find your fishing rod in a radial menu and cast. From here you are tasked with pressing certain directions to lure the fish to bite, except when there’s a crowd of fish, the screen becomes a jumble of directional prompts. Even if you manage to get all your target’s prompts correct, another fish may randomly take the bait. Sometimes it says “You’ve hooked a high-grade fish” then instantly returns you to the default starting position of casting, instantly losing the fish. If you successfully hook a fish, you need to keep your control stick in line with a small green bar that moves in order to bring the fish closer to the shore. During this time, you may have several mini-games that require you to shake the control stick from left to right or mash the “A” button. Win or lose, it didn’t seem to matter and you can still land the fish regardless. These mini-events disrupt the gameplay from being a cozy experience to a frantic and annoying button mash, which seemed to do their best to take me out of the world instead of investing me in it. There seems to be a bunch of baffling gameplay choices that just don’t work.

Graphically, the world of Whisker Waters seems both crowded and empty. The environments are littered with swaying grass and stagnant trees and due to low texture quality, it all seems very sterile. Your character doesn’t blink or seem to have any life in them unless you leave them on an idle animation, and everything just somehow seems lifeless. Despite the low texture resolutions, the game suffers from horrendous pop-in and is unable to maintain a consistent framerate, making both the fishing and exploration aspects of the game. The camera is unwieldy, making it difficult to wrangle while moving around the world as well as making me feel motion sickness, something I have never experienced before in a game. I have now tried playing the game across a few different sessions and sure enough, motion sickness sets in when traversing the world. There are also other elements that display a distinct lack of polish that really stand out to break immersion, like leftover boxes on creating overlays, including the main fishing UI, as well as the mini-games that pop up from time to time.

For my vision-impaired fisher cats, there are no accessibility options, so further research may be required to see if Whisker Waters is for you. For the price of $30 AUD, there are plenty of other games that may be more deserving of your hard-earned money, and Whisker Waters, on Switch at least, feels like an early alpha build, not quite ready for consumer consumption.

I was really looking forward to Whisker Waters and it pains me to write such a negative review about such an interesting game concept. The simple fact is that Whisker Waters is not good at all on Switch. It’s unoptimised and runs terribly, and the controls (especially the camera) are an absolute nightmare to deal with. That being said the game does show promise and could be fixed with a few updates. As it stands, it is very hard to recommend Whisker Waters on Switch, and if you are very keen to play, I would suggest trying it on Steam as the PC version fares better and has a return policy via Steam just in case. The menu animation shows a glimmer of hope as to what the game could be, until then it’s best to save your money or spend it on a different fishing game like Moonglow Bay.

So, What’s It Like? Whisker Waters is like Everdream Valley, mixed with Animal Crossing.