Thank you! this is really useful feedback.
I’ve actually played a little bit of Cult of the Lamb, but apparently not enough to even realize it had fishing, so that gives me a very specific reason to go back and study how they handle it.
And I agree with your point about the difficulty. The tension/alignment system is there, and I wanted the player to be actively doing something during the catch instead of just waiting for a result, but it definitely ended up being pretty forgiving.
Part of that was intentional because I really wanted people to be able to make it through the full game and experience the story. But I also would have liked to do another balancing pass and push the fishing a little further. Enough that the tension meter actually matters and a catch can genuinely be lost, without making it frustrating or turning the story into something players have to grind through.
That was one of the places where the 96-hour limit caught up with me a bit. The system was functional, but I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to tune the challenge.
So I think your criticism is completely fair. If I keep developing Angler’s Wake, making the fishing deeper and more skillful without losing the relaxed, reflective feel is definitely something I’d want to work on.
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback, and for giving me another game mechanic to go study.