Scale The Depths – PC Review

Kyle McGrath

8 hours ago

A robot wearing an orange cap and jacket, and a blue t-shirt while welding a knife in the air. He's on a boat surrounded by piles of gold coins. In front of him is a green, blue striped fish with a yellow belly on a wooden board. And behind him is the lock Ness monster and a bird perched on the railing of the boat. The text says 'Scale The Depths'. The letters are blue halfway, with a white bottom half. The 'the' is yellow, and the 'l' is a knife.

Scale The Depths is a new fishing game created by Glass Gecko Games. And has us on a rustic old boat catching, scaling, and prepping fish, all while taking in the calm music. The game is out now on Steam, and also has a demo for those who prefer to try before they buy.

Some Weird Customers

Gameplay

In Scale The Depths, you must catch fish to feed the customers that arrive next to your boat. There’s a variety of different customers, all with their own preferences on what kind of fish they like and dislike. Giving them fish they like fills their hunger meter faster, but there’s no real penalty for feeding them fish they aren’t as fussed on, it just fills a little slower. Once satisfied, they’ll leave, and you’ll receive payment of the total value of fish you fed them. Eventually, you can move to new areas on the map, meet new customers, and catch new types of fish.

And there are a lot more cool customers.

The bait of your fishing hook follows your mouse as you hold the left mouse button, though you can change this to the A and D keys in the settings if you’d prefer. You also have a reel indicator, which shows how much line you have left before your wire retracts. You have to hit fish multiple times with your lure; some larger, tougher fish taking more hits than others. You’ll have to upgrade your bait, reel and bucket (which allows you to catch more fish in one go) using the money you earn from selling fish. This unlocks bait that does more damage, larger buckets, and being able to travel further underwater with your fishing line. You’ll also be able to buy baits with special effects, as some later fish will have abilities you’ll have to counter in order to catch them. Fish aren’t the only thing you can look for deep below; there’s also messages in bottles and other collectibles hiding down there. Additionally, there are also reels, which if you hit them, replenishes your reel so you can travel further.

Phases & Increasing Fish Value

There are four phases when preparing the fish before you sell them; descaling, removing parasites, removing barnacles, and chopping off their head and fins. You can skip these phases if you wish, but you won’t get as much money as doing it all thoroughly. And though you’ll always have to descale and chop the fish, they won’t always have parasites or barnacles. You also have to move the knife differently depending on what you’re doing. If you prepare the fish to a ‘Perfect’ state, you’ll earn a multiplier which increases how much the fish is worth, and it’ll have a little star in the corner of its picture. There’s a meter above the fish, and as you prep it’ll fill blue, with a bit of red if you damage the fish by moving the knife too fast or carelessly while descaling. To make the prepping faster and easier, like the fishing, you can upgrade your knife to make it larger and more efficient.

Don’t be mad at me, it’s what the client wants.

Graphics & Audio

Scale The Depths has such a cheerful vibe to it. Typically, being aquatic in theme, the dominantly blue and green colour palette is fun and pleasing on the eye, meshing well with the charming pixel art style. The varying characters are adorable, but I also love the different creatures types too, bringing in Selkies and Chupacabras. A fun little detail is the little animations that come with the collectibles when you mess with them a little bit too, and the cheeky name of the boat. The music is a lot of fun, with a more relaxed track for while you’re on the boat or on the shop menu, and a fun, sometimes jaunty tune while you’re fishing below water. It’s a fun, adorable and nautical treat.

Longevity

I spent 5 hours in Scale the Depth, and most of my time was unlocking everything for the first two biomes. After that I was beginning to get bored. There are 17 achievements for players to unlock with a couple being for collecting everything in the almanac. To uncover some of these entries players will have to also find a few collectibles. With some of these being messages in bottles and treasures.

Final Thoughts

After I entered the 3 biome in Scale The Depths, it was becoming a little too repetitive for me. I enjoy fishing games, and the game-play loop isn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t up my alley either. Controls are simple, even more so If you stick to just using the mouse. And each environment adds something a little different. But it became stale too quickly with having to work towards the knife, rod, and hook, etc.

I’m giving Scale The Depths, the Thumb Culture Silver Award. It’s okay, just not up my street.

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.