Scale the Depths is a weird new fishing game out today on PC

The pixel-art fishing game Scale the Depths is now available on GOG and Steam. You play as a tiny fishmonger robot in this release developed by Glass Gecko Games and published by Pretty Soon.

The core loop is simple. Catch fish, scale them, sell them, and upgrade your gear. The actual fishing leans heavily into arcade action rather than simulation. You do not just cast a line and wait for a bite. You drop your hook into the water and manually steer it left and right to ram into fish. Dealing enough damage to a fish allows you to reel it in.

Once you pull a fish onto your boat, you have to prepare it. The scaling process is its own minigame. You have to remove the scales carefully without damaging the meat. A clean cut means a better product for your customers.

Serving the locals

You are not selling your catch at a normal market. Your customers are the local wildlife and a variety of mythical creatures. You will feed regular animals like herons and otters. You will also run into massive cryptids like Kelpies and the Loch Ness Monster.

Each customer has specific preferences and personality quirks. Giving them the exact fish they want earns you bigger tips. Mess up an order, and they will complain. They are surprisingly demanding for animals getting free table service from a robot on a boat.

That money goes straight back into your equipment.

The shop has an extensive list of upgrades. You can buy better rods like the Wood Rod 92 to handle heavier catches. You can purchase sharper tools like the Boning Knife to make the scaling minigame easier. You can also spend your cash on cosmetic items to customize your boat and dress up your robot.

You need these mechanical upgrades to reach deeper waters. The fish get larger and more aggressive the further down you go. Early catches are easy to hook. The massive creatures lurking near the sea floor require multiple hits and a lot of patience to reel in.

From game jam to full release

The original prototype gained traction during the 2024 GMTK Game Jam. The theme that year pushed developers to build games around a single scaling mechanic. Glass Gecko Games took the prompt literally. You scale the depths of the ocean, and then you scale the fish you catch. The joke worked well enough to get the prototype into the top 20 games of the jam.

The development team spent the last two years expanding that basic concept into a full release. The current version has four distinct biomes inspired by real-world locations.

You will start in relatively normal waters before moving on to places like the Outer Banks. Eventually, your robot will travel to Point Nemo, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. The environments change drastically as you progress. You will navigate around shipwrecks, dodge underwater hazards, and hunt entirely different species of fish.

They also added a narrative layer to the incremental progression. Scattered notes and logs explain exactly why a small robot is running a seafood business in the middle of the ocean. The lore gets surprisingly dark for a game about a cute robot feeding an otter.

Fishing minigames are practically mandatory in modern RPGs and life simulators. Scale the Depths cuts out the rest of the game and just makes the fishing weird. It is a strange, focused loop that knows exactly what it wants to be.