Review: Cornerpond is a cute game, but it’s not cornering the idle market and leaves me to ponder just how idle-friendly it is

Cornerpond is a little “idling” game that sits in a minimized position on your screen, so it doesn’t take up space. Your avatar sits at the end of a dock and catches fish for you. You can let it idle so that it auto-catches, or you can play the little mini-game of hitting circles that pop up to help speed up the catch.

You won’t catch fish infinitely, however. Some of the bait needs to be replenished and your fish storage size is small. So, you’ll have to keep checking in on your pond if you want to progress at all. 

Ironically, Cornerpond isn’t a game that was on my radar. My husband wanted it and I promptly stole it in the name of this review. Whoops. And, honestly, it’s probably a good thing that I did since this game isn’t a true idler. I’ll go more into that in the bulk of the article.

Cornerpond: CORNERstone of idle games or a game that inspires disPONDency?

So, Cornerpond sits where you put it – for me, it’s at the right-hand bottom corner of my left monitor. I have the option to drag it between monitors and even size it up. This makes it more versatile than most lower-third games, so that’s a positive!

In Cornerpond, your avatar stays on the dock, so there’s no moving locations in an active sense. Instead, you can buy new locations to move to that will change the way the land connected to your dock looks and change the types of fish you can catch. 

Your whole goal here is to simply catch fish and then sell them for a profit. Once you’ve built up enough capital, you can use that money to buy upgrades or cosmetic items. For upgrades, you’ll be able to upgrade your rod power, orb power, inventory space, bait capacity, quests, and the mouse shop. 

I know, your brain just went offline with that last one asking what a mouse shop is and what it is doing in a fishing game. I wondered that, too. It’s simply a little mouse that will come out to the dock where you can buy wares.

Since some of those upgrades aren’t self-explanatory, let’s just run them down quickly.

• Rod Power: This is your automatic reel power and how easily the fish is caught.
• Orb Power: This is how effective hitting the orbs that pop up when the fish is on the line is in reeling in the fish.
• Fish Inventory: The space you have to hold fish, I’ve upgraded it several times, and I only have 40 slots for fish open.
• Max Bait Capacity: The amount of bait you have on hand and can use. Only one bait is infinite, and it’s the one you start with that attracts the lowest grade of fish. I’ve only got it up to 25 bits of bait.
• Quests: These are little quests that pop up every 3 hours that bid you to catch certain types of fish. If you do, you’ll get experience and money.
• Mouse Shop: A mouse-run shop that will sell cosmetic items or potions to aid your fishing. It only shows 3 items unless you upgrade it to show more.

Aside from the above list, you only have two more things you can upgrade. You can buy different land that will give you different fish, and you can buy different bait types. They will affect the rarity of fish you can entice and will cost money to restock.

I am once again asking you for more idling time

The only other thing you can buy is cosmetic items. Your avatar has a few options available to switch up. You can change their hairstyle, hair color, eye color, skin color, clothing color, and give them a hat. Lastly, you can buy a cute little bobber for your rod to use while fishing. 

Despite having a pretty clean list of things you can buy and upgrade, the ability to advance is slow. 

While the game does have idling capabilities, I almost feel like it’s disingenuous to call this an idler. Let me be clear, it is an idler. It’s just not an idler in the sense that you can leave it up for a few hours and then come back to see progress.

This game is heavily capped when it comes to idling capabilities and is impacted by how much bait and inventory you have unlocked. For me and where I’m at in the game currently, I can only hold 40 fish. However, that doesn’t really matter because I only have the ability to hold 25 bait. So, unless I’m using the worst bait, I can only have 25 fish at most after going idle. 

I’ve sat and watched it as it went and realized that I have only about 20 minutes of idling I can manage before I have to actively tend to the game. 

Remember when I said it didn’t really matter that I stole this game from my husband? Well, he doesn’t have the same luxury that I do. He can’t come and check his fish every 20 minutes. In truth, it’d likely take him 10 times as long to progress as it would me because he’s rarely at his computer. 

He’s a huge lover of idle games, and we’ve had our fun with a ton of them like Rusty’s Retirement, Ropuka’s Idle Island, and Spirit City: Lo-Fi Sessions. Those games let him do the upfront work to get set up, and then the game idled away while he worked or relaxed with me. 

If pseudo-idler isn’t a gaming term, it is now

With Cornerpond, he’d have to get up and pull himself away at least once an hour if he wanted to make any headway. 

This game is not for the casual idler. Even if the price tag is low and a great price, it’s not going to be worth it if you can’t spend a considerable amount of time checking in on your progress. 

And, in my opinion, you can’t upgrade your inventory and bait size enough to make a difference. I’ve played 147 hours, and in that time, being at the computer and having more free time than the average bear, I’ve only managed to catch 2351 fish. 

Doing some rough math and using my current stats, that means that I’ve had to attend my fisher at least 94 times. Realistically, it was more than that because I’m using my current stats of being able to hold 25 bait. I’ve had to upgrade 2-3 times to get here. So, it’s well over 100 times spread out over 6 days. 

If we assume that I had to do that 100 times and each idle session is 20 minutes due to the bait limit, then I’ve only actively been progressing about 33 hours of the 147 that I’ve been playing. This means that there are 114 hours where this game was open and not aiding me because I wasn’t actively watching it.

I don’t know what percentage that all amounts to, because you’re lucky you got this much math out of it. However, I think I can safely assume that you spend more time just keeping this game warm on your desktop than it actually does anything.

This isn’t to say that it isn’t a great game, but I feel like a lot of growth is missed. 20 minutes of active earning just makes this game feel like it stops and starts abruptly, and messes with the fluidity of the game. 

All in all, I find it enjoyable, but it’s missing an element that makes it a true idler. 

If you’d like to try out Cornerpond for yourself, you can get it over on Steam for $2.99, or check out the list we did of some idling incremental games. Otherwise, you can check out the review we did of Promise Mascot Agency. It’s about an ex-Yakuza member going to a desolate town and turning the love hotel into a thriving mascot business.