Fishing for the Moon by the Night Sea Review

Fishing for the Moon by the Night Sea is the tenth entry in the Towelket series, released on May 22, 2012.

The story begins with Mocha, our protagonist, whose gender we can choose at the start of the game. In the middle of a stormy sea, they are rescued by a certain mermaid and taken in by an innkeeper named Miss Green Tea and her daughters. Meanwhile, a local fisherman named Moochasu rescues a mysterious fairy who decides to take him to another world as a reward for his good deed.

If you've been keeping up with the games, some parts of this story might sound a little familiar. At first glance, this game might seem like a remake or reimagining of the creator's previous work, Towelket 4 Ocean. And although it shares some of the characters and even certain plot points, Night Sea is very much its own thing. This is most evident in the game's method of storytelling. Instead of focusing on exploration like Towelket 4, Night Sea is more of a dating simulator than anything else.

Similar to the previous entry, Laughing Warawau, Night Sea's story is not very straightforward. In order to uncover all that this story has to offer, the player is encouraged to go through each route to really see the full picture. This approach to storytelling is something that is completely unique to this game, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of effort that went into making it work. The only other game that really tried anything close to this was Towelket Fury, which allowed you to choose between two girls at the beginning of the game. But despite the choice, the paths were almost identical, except for some slightly different dialogue. Night Sea, on the other hand, has a total of 11 routes, each with unique characters and events

Despite being created in RPGmaker, Night Sea is more like a visual novel than anything else. Combat is virtually non-existent except to advance the story, so you'll spend most of your time walking from place to place to meet the character of your choice and choosing from dialogue options. The choices in this game aren't as consequential as other more traditional visual novels, often just giving you an alternate response from the character you're talking to or very obvious route pickers. However, it is possible to lock yourself out of certain routes based on a choice you made much earlier in the game.

The story itself is rather intriguing and while it borrows some of its concepts from Towelket 4, it manages to take those ideas and create something completely new and unique. Again, it's really hard to talk about it without spoiling parts of it, but the execution is sufficient enough. By the time you finish all the routes, you should have a good understanding of what's really going on. While there are some conclusions you may have to draw on your own, there's a lot more conclusive information given here than in something like Laughing Warawau, so if the vagueness in that game wasn't really to your taste, you might have a better time with Night Sea.

Personally though, my feelings towards this game are a little more mixed. While I enjoyed the story itself for the most part, the whole dating sim aspect left something to be desired. Getting to know the story and world better through the different paths you can take is a very neat idea, but I can't help but feel that this system wasn't used to its fullest potential.

I went into this game expecting that each one would give you a new piece of information that you could later put together and sort of put the whole story together like a puzzle. But that ended up not really being the case. While some routes contribute to the overall lore of the game, others consist mostly of just hanging out with the girl of your choice, skipping through the repetitive plot-relevant scenes, and getting the standard ending. It was to the point where I questioned if the game even intended for players to actually go through every single route. But since there's no real way to tell which character route might provide some new information, I guess it was just the expectation to play through all of them.

And that’s not to say that this makes most of the routes objectively terrible. If anything they’re all entertaining in their own right. Each character has their own unique little storyline going on and I can truly applaud the effort. I don’t believe the quality of these routes should solely be determined by how much they contribute to the overall narrative.

However this leads to my second problem. The characters available to date are just not very interesting. Amusing? Sure. But beyond that I really didn’t find myself getting particularly attached to any of them, at least not as much as the game probably hoped I would. They are objectively very two-dimensional characters. The majority of them have a specific gag attached to them and that will more or less make up their entire personality. And while there is some conflict that happens within their storylines- you don’t really get any significant character development from it.

To be clear, I don’t think the characters in this game are bad. In fact most of them are pretty similar to their portrayals in previous games. I don’t particularly mind getting to see these characters in a more slice-of-life like setting. However there was just this nagging thought at the back of my head that I really couldn’t shake while playing through each and every route. It’s fanservice. Whether you decide to go through all the routes or not, you will be spending a good amount of the game’s runtime going through what I like to describe as a “dating sim intermission”. And while it’s not completely inconsequential to the overall narrative, the actual payoff is often disproportionate to the time spent on it.

But to reiterate, the dating sim portion of the game is still very entertaining in its own right. To say I didn’t have any fun with it would be a complete lie. I’m sure for many, this aspect of the game is its main draw and just getting to hang out with their favorite funny Towelket girl is more than enough. But personally? I think I was hoping for a bit more substance than that. It’s a great concept that unfortunately just doesn’t commit to itself as much as it should.

Anyway, aside from my personal gripes with the dating sim aspect of the game there is just one more thing that I believe holds it back from being as great as it could have been. That being, its connection to Towelket 4. Night Sea is not a remake of Towelket 4 and I personally struggle to really call it a reimagining. I would say these two games have absolutely nothing to do with each other aside from sharing a couple of characters, but this isn’t quite the case.

Storywise, Night Sea is really at its best when it’s doing its own thing. Sort of similar to Laughing Warawau where it takes some of the characters from Towelket 6, but does something completely different with them. However unlike that game, Night Sea does lift specific plot developments from Towelket 4 and unfortunately, this is often where the story is at its weakest.

This isn’t really a case of the game taking from some of the more questionable parts of Towelket 4’s story, but rather, it lifts moments that worked perfectly fine within the context of that game and clumsily inserts them into its own narrative. As a result, there are a couple of awkward developments that seemingly only exist because they also happened in Towelket 4. And yeah, the game does sort of have its own explanations as to why this stuff happens within its own context. But even with that, they just don’t really benefit the story in a way that makes me think of them as anything more than a callback to a previous game. I just generally believe that certain aspects of this story could have been displayed in a much more cohesive way had it not relied so much on specific plot elements from Towelket 4.

Now, I know I’ve gone on and on about my issues with Night Sea so far so let’s talk about some of the positives: The setting. This game’s setting is probably one of the more unique ones in the series. The world we are introduced to is one that goes by its own specific set of rules, clearly different from our own and a lot more developed than the average vaguely fantastical setting. It’s a constant source of intrigue and it really has so much to offer. While I was satisfied with what I knew by the end of the story, I still found myself wanting to know more, wanting to see more. And this wasn’t due to anything the game was lacking but just the attachment I had to the setting itself.

Also, this game just looks really good. The aesthetic is somewhat similar to Laughing Warawau, albeit a lot more grounded, which gives it a unique identity of its own.

As for the characters, though some of the dating options didn’t quite live up to my expectations, ironically it was often the characters you couldn’t date (or just had much shorter routes) that I found most interesting. The cast as a whole is pretty neat, it’s just that they’re at their best when the plot is actually moving forward. The antagonists are great, they’re personally my favorite villain group in the series.

It’s really neat seeing some of the little interactions and relationships the characters have with each other, though admittedly it can get a bit inconsistent at times. Every now and then the game will establish a certain relationship or dynamic between characters, but then when you decide to pursue their route, there’s a bit of a contradiction or certain connections are outright never acknowledged again for whatever reason despite being treated like a pretty significant detail beforehand. Thankfully, it’s nothing really immersion breaking and it doesn’t occur enough for me to really consider it a Problem™.

Fishing for the Moon by the Night Sea is a very, very ambitious game and despite some of my issues with it, I do think that it manages to accomplish what it sets out to do quite well. Though it doesn’t quite live up to its fullest potential, it still manages to convey what it wants to convey and the end result is something that’s still fun and intriguing. It’s no surprise that it’s quite popular within the Japanese Towelket community. I think most fans of Towelket will find something to appreciate in this game and it might just be accessible enough to easily recommend to those who might enjoy indie visual novels in general.

I rate this game 3.5/5 Towels