Jesse the Fisher

Jesse the Fisher is one of those little indies that feel like an experiment and still stick with you, not because it's polished, 'cuz it's really not, but because it's got a huge cozy charm. The setup is simple: you're a young boy named Jesse who gets wrecked by a sea monster, sinks to the bottom, and a mermaid tells him he's gotta catch twelve sea critters if he wants to face Pacazal, the beast that sank the ship he was on. Oh, and if he stays down there too long, he'll turn into a fish lol. No pressure, right? The whole thing runs on RPG Maker 2003's default engine but with a twist, you're not trying to kill anything, you're trying to figure out the right combo of skills to capture each creature. Think of it like a puzzle fighter where you're just throwing bait and hoping you guessed the sequence correctly.

Visually, the game goes all in on black and white, and honestly that's where it shines the most. The overworld sprites are stupidly simple, but the character portraits are really gorgeous. They've got this handdrawn cozy feel and the battle sprites are animated, which is wild for an RPG Maker 2003 game. They're not gonna blow your mind or anything but seeing the fishes wiggle and move on screen during fights adds way more personality than you'd expect from a jam game that didn't even make its deadline.

Now the combat, 'cuz this is where people either click with it or get frustrated and bounce off. The game tells you to prepare skills before capturing a target and if you mess up the order, you just have to start over from scratch. No progress saved, no hints, just trial and error. Some fish take three turns, some take forever and the feedback is literally nonexistent. You don't really know if you're doing it right until it either works or doesn't, it's like Pokémon's Safari Zone but way more frustrating. However, to be fair the game slaps an action strategy RPG tag on its websites, so it's not like the dev's hiding what he's going for. It's just that the execution leaves you guessing more than strategizing.

Story-wise, it's super short, so don't expect branching paths or deep lore dumps. The writing is a bit wordy at the start and some people felt it explained too much too fast, but for a game made in two weeks for a jam that didn't even get submitted, you kinda have to judge it on a curve. The characters are likable and they've got this skeleton of potential that could be really cool if fleshed out in a longer version. Someone even asked for a second edition, which says something.

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The music I think is royalty free but is chill so it fits that underwater vibe but it sounds choppy because of the interpreter, the web version uses the same as the 3DS and has the same issue too, and here's the thing: when playing on a 3DS, the game can chug even on the New models. It's most noticeable during the opening cutscene but after that it runs okay, sometimes it feels like it froze before snapping back to normal but that's not the game's fault at all 'cuz on PC, it runs as intended, it's just the current EasyRPG build acting up, so future updates should fix it.