✒️editors note: holy fuck the run on sentences in this one are crazy good luck

i've got a lot of joy out of keeping on top of current game trailers the last couple of years. as someone with three or four layers of ad blocking on every device i don't get new games advertised to me, and even when i did they would be whichever big update fortnite is adding this month. taking matters into my own hands has made me aware of loads of really nifty little indie experiences that i might not have seen otherwise! i first became aware of the big catch in the middle of a big batch of other psx/ps2 style movement games, and if it wasnt for the demo dropping a couple of weeks back i might not have given it another thought

the demo did drop though and hoooooly shit. first and foremost, just to get it out of the way, i need to give huge props to valve for starting nextfest and catapulting the concept of game demos back into the mainstream. they should never have gone away in the first place, but i'm happy to enjoy them now that they're back. theres a level of transparency with a demo that you just don't get out of a trailer and i love how extremely pro-consumer it is

further to this, the demo is incredible. it's huge, it lets you play with every little toy that the game appears to be providing, and it does an amazing job of tickling the exploration-for-exploration's sake itch that i constantly have. the demo is so good that people are already doing insane speedruns of it

movement

talking speedruns, i think they do an amazing job of showing off how watertight the movement system is in the big catch. runs are almost entirely high level play and creative movement around the map, leveraging only three glitches over an entire run (two ceiling clips and one superjump, and the ceiling clips are omitted in the smaller 10 fish category). in my personal experience, being someone who is not a speedrunner, i did find it initially a bit tricky. i started playing at the 'bones rails' area which has a couple of super weird jumps, but the fact that i stuck with it despite the difficulty is testament to how quickly the game grabs you. my most recent equivalent is penny's big breakaway, another movement platformer which came out a couple of months ago. comparatively, this game was driven by high score and combo chasing, which i found very demotivating. i also think penny's big breakaway is a bit more difficult in general: the perspective is tight and movements feel a little bit slippery and hard to control. i assume that i'd be able to master it like the big catch if i gave it enough time, but the aforementioned motivation meant that i didn't follow through there like i did here

in general, the broad strokes of movement seem to have been tuned to be satisfying wherever possible. climbing poles, ledges and walls is quick, and the latter also has a little jump, letting you blast through what would otherwise be a tedious action. the jump also snaps to the wall, meaning you won't fly off as long as you're holding a direction with the right stick. crazy! each area is separated by a big slice of desert, which i think is key for the world the game is building. these big gulfs would be daunting to travel without the shredders, sandworms that act similarly to the sand seals in breath of the wild. the boost minigame makes your travel feel much more active, while keeping the grandeur of the wide open spaces

the other elements (one might say, the key elements) of movement all come together in a lovely harmony. wallrunning and walljumping are an extremely key part of movement and are used almost everywhere. more secondary mechanics like swinging from your fishing rod, swinging from poles, bouncing on bouncepads and ropes, and grinding sonic-the-hedgehog-style on rails make an appearance in about half of the areas each. an area will focus on one or two special kinds of movement, linked together with precision jumps and wall runs. i began to really feel the flow of the movement system after i got over the aforementioned difficult curve which was IMMENSELY satisfying. the game also does a really good job of preserving momentum, so you can link swings into wallruns for extra distance, or ground pound an angled piece of geometry from a big height to transfer all of that vertical velocity into horizontal and go absolutely flying. by the last couple of challenges you've got such an immense grip on the basic techniques that you'll pick up the unique elements of the area instantly and begin to see the path appear your eyes like that bit at the end of the matrix

to summarise, the movement is rock solid, which is obviously important for a game like this, and strikes a happy medium of being challenging enough to be satisfying when you get it, but having some kind of secret spice that makes you want to power through after fucking up the same move ten times in a row

gameplay

what a segue! one of the key parts of gameplay that i really like is how it handles failure. the game is really good at legitimately punishing you for messing up, but never in a way that makes you want to storm away from your computer. i think the key to this is the generous and well-placed "checkpoints" - fishing lines placed in the world that let you shortcut your way back up to certain spots in an area. like the shredders, this removes the artifice of artificial checkpoints and also reduces time waste. if you die completely you normally only have 30 seconds or so of futzing about to get back to where you were: a good enough motivator to not fuck it up, but not too frustrating. it blatantly cheats off of dark souls' homework, but adapts it perfectly to the flavour of game that it's making

observation also plays a big part into the gameplay. sometimes the path will be clear to you, but just as often it'll just be a hodgepodge of random ruin elements. in these cases half the job is figuring out the plan of attack, experimenting and reassessing. it's a wonderful and creative gameplay loop that adds to the satisfaction when you finally figure it out

aesthetics

and while you're observing your surroundings, you might notice some honestly genius psx-style visuals. the retro aesthetic is a fine line to walk, and i think the recent resurgence of the psx style is having the exact same growing pains that pixel art did in the 2010s. however, like new pixel art visuals that build on the simple foundation with cool new modern effects, the big catch: tacklebox integrates reflection maps for metallic objects and clever shaders that build on the style without looking out of place. the aforementioned foundation is also rock solid - there is just the right amount of detail to the textures and models to pull the effect off, although i wish there was some kind of psx texture blurring included to really amp up the look; maybe i'm asking too much

we only get two characters in this demo, but both have extremely unique silhouettes and designs. bail is lanky and towers above the player character, with eyes and a posture that imply a haughty indifference. tackle leans back slightly while standing and pulls the classic japanese delinquent squat while crouching, which gives him a cocky confidence that i also adore. bail is dressed in a somewhat tribal-looking fisherman's outfit with various body wraps and jewelery, while tackle wears a bucket hat and wide-legged shorts. both characters can be visually read instantly, which is obviously super key to effective design. animation-wise, tackle has a long stride and throws his body with each movement, helping to add to the feeling of momentum from the gameplay. topping this all off is the incredible fish-catch cutscene, where the camera drops to a worm's-eye view below tackle as the kick the fish into the air, then up to the stunned and spinning fish, and then swoops into the smug grin as the fish is stowed in their hat. it's the absolute icing on the cake of a difficult fish hunt and it never got old

some final aesthetic musings that didnt seem to fit into the flow of my earlier writing:

• the game has a slew of filter options that start with the particular janky psx polygon filtering, giving everything a slightly unsettling (but very accurate) wobbly warping effect to polygons, an emulator style de-pixelisation, and then two levels of crt scanlines and noise. even the most intense effects are still extremely playable due to smart texture and model design
• the vistas of the game are all quite lovely. there's one at the end of a major area that will seem like a reward in and of itself, but i won't spoil it
• bail speaks with a banjo-kazooie style chopped and spliced jibber-jabber that i absolutely adore. i hope they don't change it

conclusion

the big catch: tacklebox has no business being as fucking good as it is. i've played some other demos in the wake of the steam nextfest but none have grabbed me to the point that i played a demo for ten hours in order to get a 100% achievement - frankly, almost no games have grabbed me enough to make me even think of trying to get a 100%. i am immensely excited for the final release, and while i won't be getting it on preorder (on principal) i am very keen to get it in its first week, and probably spend a couple of sleepless nights on it

🧑‍🔬 NERD CORNER 🧑‍🔬

i managed to get all the cool animated webps in this blogpost (semi-bypassing neocities' video ban) using a tutorial by matt j. the exact code i used was as follows:

ffmpeg -ss 12 -t 7.4 -i ./tbct.mp4 -vf "fps=20,scale=720:-1:flags=lanczos" -vcodec libwebp -lossless 0 -compression_level 6 -q:v 50 -loop 0 -preset picture -an -vsync 0 intro.webp

where -ss is the point that the section of video i want starts, -t is the number of seconds, and -i is the input file (in this case, a youtube rip of the game trailer). you can also tweak fps and image scale super easily here