The fishing rod mechanic features simple tap and swipe controls, but takes skill to use effectively. Tapping onscreen causes the lure to cast to that point. If the lure collides with an object, Al will reel in and pull himself up to it. From here, the player must swipe downwards to throw the object down while flinging themselves up. By continuing this process, the player is able to climb higher and higher into the sky, eventually progressing through space and other dimensions.

The first iteration of the fishing rod mechanic was interesting, but overcomplicated. Casting was done in the same way as it is now but reeling was manual rather than automatic. In the prototype, we had a reel icon in the corner of the screen that the player had to tap and hold after hooking onto an object in order to pull up towards it, then release to unhook. While this sounded good on paper, it quickly became clear that this element of the system was clunky and unnecessary, so we reworked it in a way that was better suited to the mobile platform. Reeling was made automatic, and unhooking was made into a fling controlled by swiping the screen, making the mechanic feel much more intuitive.