New Year, last year’s games. I want this month to be dedicated to catching up on a bunch of games that I bought, but did not get to. This week’s game came out in the middle of November and with school, work and GOTY stuff I just never got to it. This week is a roguelike fishing game that may just be the most difficult game I have ever played. This week is Lake of Creatures.

Lake of Creatures is an action roguelike from Antenna Games. The game was released on November 15th for the PC and retails for a very affordable $12.50.

Lake of Creatures is about trying to find out what the hell happened and why there are loads of mutated fish in various lakes.

That’s it.

Lake of Creatures really just boils down to picking a character and dropping into a bunch of randomized areas, killing fish and harvesting them for profit to buy upgrades while trying to not get consumed by the incredibly high difficulty ceiling of the game.

Shooting is pretty typical. Each character has their own type of firearm. The basic man has a pistol that fells really clunk and when the aiming is tied to the mouse, then it feels even clunkier. This leads to a lot of missed shots and early frustrations that run deep.

The meat of the game is the “Binding of Isaac” like gameplay. Each lake section is sectioned off by a set number of rooms, one of which will offer an upgrade and the next section will offer a store, a hotdog challenge (which I still don’t know what it is for) and then it leads to a boss room. I’ve only ever gotten to the third area and the areas are varied ad have a just enough of a new coat of paint to makes them different, for instance, poison lake has poison and is visibly polluted looking and the snow level has breakable ice that hinders the player when fighting baddies.

Each room is randomized and can spawn any number of enemies, lootable chests of varying types (heart, gun, ability and generic unlocked coin chest) that aid in your attempt to solve the mystery. Things like more damage, split shots, more HP, explosive fishing rod, retaliation shots when hit and a slew of other abilities make the cut which makes me feel like I am playing a true homage to The Binding of Isaac.

Each ability feels a little lite compared to the game that influenced it but Lake of Creatures creates its own fun spin on the typical ability.

Enemy types are varied enough to keep interest throughout each run. Mastering the game takes a lot of effort to memorize each of the differently timed shots. The bosses are a little more difficult but follow the same script as the minor enemies. As the game progress the enemies get more health which makes for a “feel bad” run when you don’t get the damage modifiers and you are forced to re-run when you know that you won’t make it.

There is a little fishing mini-game that mimics the collecting of money. After a room is cleared there are fish that you can catch with your “physics based fishing rod” and honestly, it is fun for what its worth but the “fishing” in this fishing roguelike lives and dies in this end of room mini-game.

There are traps and puzzles to solve in each respective areas and, on occasion, the trick is to risk it. I’ve died more to the environmental hazards than anything else in my many hours of playing and sometimes when you have a really good run and it is hindered by a spike field, it gets pretty demoralizing.

Lake of Creatures is a goofy looking pixel game. I like how I cannot distinguish the fish from other enemy types. All of the sprites are so goofy looking and it makes the game feel more welcoming and cute.

The music, I don’t know where it came from, but the level music is really heavy and it fits the action. There was more than one occasion when I was bopping my head to the insane little heavy metal like sounds of each level.

Lake of Creatures is $11 and it is one of the hardest games that I have ever played. I don’t know if I can attribute it to my lack of skill or that the game is designed to stop you from winning. The abilities are reminiscent of The Binding of Isaac but they lack any meaningful change when in combat. There were runs where I stacked damage and still felt as though I was too weak for the final section. This then translates into resetting runs when the starting item does not reflect a successful run.

That being said, Lake of Creatures is a fine game for the money. There are lots of abilities and characters to unlock but it suffers from combat that gets a little bit boring, environmental hazards that ruins runs a fishing mini-game that provides borderline nothing to the overall game mechanics and a health scaling that forces run resets.

6/10