Octodad: Dadliest Catch Review

Sometimes you hear about a game and you just have to play it. A game so crazy, so unique, so fun, and so gamey that it makes you want to seek it out. As soon as I heard about a game where you play as an octopus posing as a human and trying to avoid suspicion while desperately keeping control of his eight flailing limbs I realised Octodad was one of those games. But fun as that game was, that was only a brief free proof-of-concept. After a successful Kickstarter campaign developer Young Horses have revamped Octodad into a large, hopefully more complete experience. If they’ve done that Octodad: Dadliest Catch will be a must-play game for everyone, and not just the best title and tagline ever: “Loving Father. Caring Husband. Secret Octopus.”.

The setup is a little bit hard to explain if you’re not familiar with the game, so bear with me. The titular Octodad is an octopus trying to pass himself off as a normal husband and father without his wife, kids, or any neighbours getting suspicious about his true species. This is rendered tricky in many ways, including a mysterious obsessed Chef trying to make sushi out of him, but it’s mostly due to his unwieldy eight legs making even the simplest everyday tasks extremely difficult.

This was right after I smacked her in the face with the wedding ring and smashed a window getting my bow tie

It’s a puzzle game, although since the solution is often obvious the more accurate description would be a challenge game. Like QWOP or Surgeon Simulator the challenge comes from the deliberately obtuse and unwieldy controls, although Octodad is probably the only one that makes sense of this by making your character an octopus in disguise. If we’re being honest I found the default mouse and keyboard controls, which are the same as the original Octodad, utterly unplayable – and not in a fun way. Once you plug in a controller (there’s even support for PS4 pads on PC) it’s impossible to go back. It’s still extremely difficult to control Octodad of course, but it’s faster to flail about. On mouse/keyboard as precise tentacle movement is necessary you have to do everything with the mouse, pressing MMB to swap between “hands” (to grab things) and “legs” (to move). On a controller with dual analogue sticks you can do both at once, keeping the difficulty but making the game a lot faster and a great deal more fun.



The slightest nudge in any direction can send Octodad’s tentacles flailing wildly, and you have to control each tentacle one at a time. Even walking in a straight line or picking up an item can be extremely challenging, so climbing a soda mountain or stealthily evading marine biologists (!) feels nearly impossible until you do it. No matter what happens, the results will be extremely funny. I managed to smack my wife in the face with her ring on our wedding day while trying to put it on her finger. Throughout all of Dadliest Catch I never failed to have a smile on my face, and there are very few games I can say that about. There are a small handful of really frustrating bits, mostly involving climbing or having to do an action within a certain amount of time, but I never reached the limit of my frustration where I’d become actively pissed off and leave the game. Checkpoints are generous usually, and most importantly it’s all so whimsical it’s hard to stay mad at Octodad.

Try not to make others suspicious, like the way I ran them over with my shopping cart

The story and writing is a surprising highlight. It’s like a classic Saturday morning cartoon, including having a fun title sequence with a catchy theme song. The game starts out on Octodad’s wedding day and cuts forward to a few years later when his wife is just beginning to get weary of her husband’s constant eccentricities, and a fateful trip to the Aquarium might prove their undoing. Just remember I’m talking about an octopus who only communicates via blubs that his family can somehow understand here – incidentally, keep the subtitles on, the translation on some of these blubs is hilarious. The game’s just funny all the way through, both through Octodad’s unintentional slapstick comedy, the cute and frequently witty dialogue and the many movie/TV/game references (my favourite being Octodad’s horrified reaction at someone reading a book titled “To Serve Octopus”).

So barring a few frustrating moments Dadliest Catch is lots of fun all the way through and so whimsical you can’t begrudge it much. So what’s the downside? First of all, the camera’s terrible. It’s a 3D game where you can’t move the camera beyond a slight tilt to the right or left, and while that doesn’t matter for most of the game when it does it’s really annoying. Furthermore the camera changes perspective without your input, and I failed a couple of tricky moments because my view changed suddenly so I went the wrong way. Secondly there are a few bugs, although the only serious one was when a vital object disappeared and I had to reload. Nothing too big.

The vengeful Chef torments Octodad wherever he goes

The worst problem comes down to your opinion slightly: Dadliest Catch is incredibly short. I’ve got nothing against short games if the experience is fun (which Octodad is) and they had the potential if longer to wear out their welcome (which it could), but even with a good mess-around it’ll only take most players 2-3 hours to get to the excellent ending. There are hidden Ties around each level, co-op (which hilariously allows two players to control just one Octodad, one on the “arms” and one on the “legs”) and Steam Workshop support which will hopefully surge with new user-created content (as movement is the biggest challenge that shouldn’t be too hard) to increase the play time, but 2-3 hours is by any measure too short. Furthermore the only locations are the tutorial’s church, the house which is only three rooms and the garden, a small supermarket, a boat for a flashback level, and the gigantic Aquarium. I’m sure with a push Young Horses could’ve made at least one more location, like a department store or something.

Still, Octodad is three hours of fun I wouldn’t want to throw back. While it is too short an experience it’s a great, unique one and I urge anyone who likes fun games to give it a go. Anyone who played Surgeon Simulator and thought it was hilarious should immediately pick up Octodad, and anyone who thought it was funny but wanted a fuller game experience should be covered too. Dadliest Catch is funny, charming, challenging, and packed with loveliness. It’s over too quickly, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather be playing in that time.

You’ll probably make your own, but I personally love the Chef’s cries of “I’ll get you Oc-to-puss!”. Or the theme tune.