GAMEPLAY: The tutorial's wording was a touch confusing, but jumping into the game wasn't too much trouble. I'm not sure what the point of the meter is, since I can move the bobber around freely. It took a long time to figure out what 'smushify' actually entails and how to use it, since my menu seemed to be stuck on "? + Pufferfish". Turns out, each smush is a set combination that's revealed once you fish up the right fish, which was not explained. Once I got past the first rod, things certainly picked up, and I got interested in seeing what fish were out there.
VISUALS: The artwork is pleasant and works remarkably well with the near-rainy day the sky shows. The rod's animations aren't the cleanest: the bobber should dip and splash into the water, and the fish should have weight once out of the water. Things look tacky without gravity. The animations done by hand were lovely, though--I especially enjoyed the 'chow down'. I also quite liked the fish sprites (with all their quirky details) and the way they move through the water.
AUDIO: The music's nice enough, but got boring after a while with the only sounds breaking it up being reels and splashes.
THEME: 'The fish you pick up' feels like a loose definition of 'everything', seeing as most games only have the one intermediary step of selling fish, but it still does fit the bill.
I ought to mentioned I was very stunned when I fished up an entire Kraken. You certainly got the size right.