Hello fellow anglers! As promised it is time for us to tell the story of our journey to the iCast 2016 show and how we explored the fishing America.
I would like to start with saying that the scale of iCast show is just immense, its incredibly big in terms of space and crowded in terms of people visiting it. In a matter hours we witnessed how hundreds of showcase platforms and booths were put together, how thousands of people worked to transform an empty hangar into the celebration of fishing.

So did we...
Hundreds of tackle companies gather each year at one place to showcase new products. But new on iCast is now new in the regular meaning you'd expect. A lot of companies from the industry deliver close to no innovation and only the very few struggle to move the fishing industry ahead. As you may assume - Fishing Planet is one of the brave few. The thing is, several years in a row the fishing industry experts notice that the sales of fishing licenses to the underaged have decreased by 30% and there is no one in the industry with the solution to the problem. But us... =) When we were heading to the show we aimed to get the real tackle companies work with Fishing Planet and add their produce to the game. We as well wanted to get the feedback from the real Pro anglers if they feel the game is as real as we say it is. So we started slow with no hustle, after we set up the booth with three huge 4k screens and a VR showcase people started coming.

The rumor had it - odd guys from Easter Europe had an awesome thing one should try. And it was not long that we had people pouring to our booth from all over iCast and tackle producers started passing by our booth.
Then we had a first Pro-angler say his word - Remington Barkley, the future champion was just blown away with what he saw.
More and more media reps were coming, bloggers, youtubers but it was not until the kids started playing our game that the big tackle guys showed up. Some of the children playing the game at our booth were the kids of tackle company executives. It turned out that after they found our game they were playing it same whole night. The proof that Fishing Planet is the best tool to appeal to the younger generation was in our hands. And the younger generation made it's choice

As we are now in the middle of negotiations I won't tell you who the big guys are, but you have surely used their tackle. In short words, we had huge media coverage, a lot of visitors, unbelievably positive response and quite a lot of opportunities have emerged that could help Fishing Planet grow. Oh, I almsot forgot to post a team picture =)
Now, when we finished with iCast we went to explore fishing itself. Frankly speaking, we weren't as good as you guys may be, but we've caught some fish and enjoyed the beauty of American nature, we discover the Everglades, researched the San Joaquin Delta and caught fish. Meet Ivan (the Artist)
Meet Ivan (the Engineer)

But even this was not the end of our journey. After iCast and the expedition part of our trip we went to San Francisco to participate in Casual Connect award ceremony for the Independent developers. But that's a completely different story...

P.S. I promised you a teaser, didn't I? Behold, the pure and wild natural beauty of Alaska (reminds you of the Revenant movie, doesn't it?). But even more is coming! New tackle, lots of new fish species, anniversary tournament, lots of bug fixing and nice perks like ability to walk while fishing) You'll love it.


P.P.S. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY SPECIAL THANKS TO ACHILLES FOR HIS HELP AND SUPPORT, HE'S BEEN A GREAT PART OF OUR TEAM DURING ICAST, WE HAD A LOT OF FUN AND DID SOME GREAT STUFF TOGETHER!