Silicone Heart's fish flee from your hook

The fish in Silicone Heart can sense danger and flee from your hook. Getting one into the bag means taking control of the hook itself, steering through an underwater world inhabited by mechanical creatures. For a farming adventure set on a planet-sized rubbish heap, it's a lovely extension of the premise: even a fishing trip takes you amongst somebody's discarded machinery.

Garden of Dreams' 5 October demo update expanded fishing into a system with eight species, equipment upgrades and its own progression. The free PC demo remains available ahead of the game's planned 1 December release. Underneath the cyberfarm, there's a smaller expedition to prepare for, with creatures to pursue and a clock running on each session.

Follow the hook below the surface

The official fishing screenshot gives the hook a place to explore. A thin line curls down through blue water, and a lamp projects a cone of light ahead of the dangling tool. Banks of rubbish frame the passage: cans, bottles and loose cables sit amongst glowing bulbs. Fish and jellyfish occupy the space between those heaps. The dump continues below the waterline, with its own strange wildlife moving through it.

Putting the controls on the hook draws your attention into that space. Keyboard and mouse input let you move it around underwater, while the line has its own physics. The point of contact with a fish becomes the thing you guide. That gives an ordinary piece of fishing equipment an unusually prominent role: it's your means of investigating the depths as well as bringing something back from them.

The creatures have different habitats, rarity and behaviour. They patrol their territories, react to danger and respond differently to damage. Those details give the chase two participants. You're moving a hook through an environment occupied by fish with their own movements and reactions, so recognising a creature involves more than picking out its silhouette. Its response to your approach belongs to the encounter too.

The developer's fish artwork makes those silhouettes a pleasure in themselves. A broad, round creature has a segmented metal body and bright yellow fins; another resembles a long orange caterpillar fitted with a pointed tail. There are little propellers, glassy bulbs and conspicuous mechanical joints. They share the cobbled-together character of the world above, while their varied shapes give the underwater cast an identity of its own.

Different fishing levels have their own lighting and underwater scenery, including aquatic plants and layers of background movement. That gives exploration an attraction alongside the collection of species. The screenshot's banks of electrical debris are especially well chosen: their bulbs and wires carry the planet's visual character into a place where a fishing line can thread amongst it. A rubbish heap has acquired a surprisingly colourful underwater edge.

Pack for a timed trip

A preparation screen and dedicated upgrade inventory give fishing its own equipment setup, with a results menu waiting afterwards. Hooks, lines, reels, bags and flashlights all appear among the upgrades. It's an appealingly specific equipment list. The light in the screenshot already gives one of those objects a visible job, illuminating a patch of water ahead of the hook as it hangs beneath the surface.

Active and passive items add another layer to that preparation. Magnets, a compass and lures are among the devices available during fishing, affecting the hook or the fish. That spreads the equipment across both sides of an encounter: the thing you're controlling and the creature you're trying to catch. Preparing for the trip has several parts to consider before you start moving through the water.

Each fishing session has a timer, giving that movement a boundary. Fish states persist, and populations can recover. Together, those features put individual trips within a continuing fishing ground. A results screen closes an outing, while the inhabitants have a life across visits. The combination is a good fit for a game about settling into a place and gradually learning how its odd machines work.

The Captain has your first tackle

The introduction to fishing comes through the Captain at the scrapyard, who supplies your first upgrades and teaches the basics. That's a personable way into an equipment-heavy activity. Silicone Heart puts you amongst broken robots with everyday problems, and meeting a local opens this particular part of their world. A fishing lesson belongs alongside the repairs and conversations that make the planet somewhere to live.

The catch also belongs to the wider resource-gathering adventure. Robotic fish provide materials, alongside the gathering, growing and machinery that support your automated cyberfarm. Fishing gives that work a different setting and a different tool to handle. You can spend time arranging the patchwork farm above, then follow a line down into blue water where the planet's mechanical life takes another form.

For a voyage organised around the vessel carrying your catch, our look at the trawler in DREADMOOR follows another fishing adventure's preparations. Silicone Heart's most inviting detail is closer to the fish: a little illuminated hook exploring a submerged rubbish heap. The equipment gets you down there; the creatures give you something wonderfully peculiar to pursue.