Look, I really love this game when it works, but the key word there really is WHEN.
I tried to use this for co-working, the pomodoro timer, and having some gentle encouragement from the community as I worked to keep me on track. When I run this game, I close literally everything else on my computer, and I do mean EVERYTHING, web browser included.
However, this game loses connection and crashes A LOT. I mean at least once an hour.
This problem is even worse if you have it in tiny window mode to use some other function of your computer, or have it in basically anything but fullscreen even if you're only using this game. At least in full screen you might get an entire hour of work before it loses connection and all your focus/ticket collection progress disappears, but in any of the alternate window combinations, you'll barely make it half an hour before the entire application crashes completely, or it just disconnects and the entire internet functionality of the program stops working.
Yes, you read that right. When the memory leak inevitability causes your connection to disconnect from the fun server you've been vibing with, trying to get back in is impossible without shutting down and restarting the entire game. Sure, you can try and load the server list, but it'll spin forever and never pull anything up, so the only thing you can do is close down entirely and go back in.
This fundamentally breaks the entire purpose of the app. If you are fighting with your productivity app and babysitting it, you're not getting things done. It's pulling you out of the things you're working on to constantly fix the game that's supposed to quietly keep you moving.
- If you use the same computer you're running this on to do other things, like work or write, and you need to use another window, good luck. It'll be down more than it's up.
- If you use a work computer or some other device, you'll come back mid-focus to get a little encouragement and find yourself at the home screen and unable to reconnect, with no idea how long you've been offline.
Which means that making tickets through actual focusing is not really possible. If you want any of the cosmetics, you'll have to play the mini games, which again defeats the purpose of using this for focus. It's great to have little break activities, don't get me wrong, and I have found the fishing fun, but still. I'm using this to get more work done and if it's constantly crashing, then the cosmetics incentive that's built into the game is basically gone because you don't make many tickets to begin with and you lose the ones from your focus session if you don't end the focus before quitting out.
So. What does this mean for you?
This game has promise. It really does. It's very charming, the community is mostly fantastic (there will always be some trolls), and if it worked the way it says it should, I would 100% recommend it.
However. For a low-poly 'Webfishing' style game, you should not struggle to meet the RAM demands of this game or constantly disconnect from servers, which are the MAIN draw of the game. Because of that, I cannot recommend it in its current state.
