Fish to Dish: Idle Sushi

Fish to Dish has 761 English reviews and 26 of them are negative. I read all 26, which makes this one of the few reviews in this library where I can say the criticism is fully characterised rather than sampled.

Fourteen of those 26 use the word "idle" or "idler". That's the argument in one number.

The complaint: it isn't idle enough

The objection isn't that the game is bad — it's a category dispute. A 10.8-hour reviewer states it plainly: "an idle game that doesn't progress while it's closed, so you gotta constantly keep an eye on it."

A 120-hour reviewer sharpens it into something genuinely funny: "weird to have an idler that doesn't respect your time. Its sole function is to be open all the time and be there doing things, but there are two achievements for actively having the game open & doing NOTHING AT ALL." I can't identify those specific achievements — this game's achievement API names are bare numeric IDs — so that's their account rather than a verified fact. But the underlying point stands on the design: this is a semi-idle game that asks for check-ins, and the store's own description ("relaxing and enjoyable idle fishing game") sets a different expectation.

The second theme, in 8 of 26, is the window. It occupies a strip along the bottom of the screen rather than behaving like an ordinary resizable window, which a 0.2-hour reviewer found immediately off-putting: "I really don't like how it just covers up your screen at the bottom instead of being a normal window."

Third, at 6 of 26, is thinness. "It's cute, but it's frustratingly empty," writes a 16.8-hour reviewer. "There's a bare loop of get fish, upgrade meals, sell meals, get money and buy better rods to repeat the loop." A 56.9-hour critic: "this game runs out of stuff to do extremely early."

One further note, raised by a 110-hour reviewer, is that some art is recognisable stock: "I am extremely tired of seeing the same itch.io free assets in every single game." Using licensed asset packs is entirely legitimate practice for a small studio and I'm not going to treat it as a scandal — but it's a fair aesthetic observation, and it's part of why originality scores a 6.

A caution about the playtime figures

The critics quoted above have 10, 16, 56, 110 and 120 hours, and the median across all 26 negatives is 104 hours. Recent reviewers median 168.

As with Ropuka's Idle Island earlier, those numbers mean much less than they would elsewhere. This is a window that sits open on a monitor while you work. Its playtime counter measures uptime, not devotion, and a 335-hour negative review of a desktop idler is not the paradox it looks like.

What's genuinely good

The support, first of all. Between August 2025 and July 2026 this went from v1.11 to v3.02 — a Halloween 2.0 update, a 3.0 major update built around a Dave the Diver collaboration in June 2026, a "Fish to Cats" spin-off update and trading cards in July. For a NZ$8.99 game from a small studio that's a serious commitment, and it comfortably exceeds what most of its shelf-mates manage.

The collection loop is the real draw: common through legendary fish across several maps, feeding a bestiary, a menu, an aquarium and a restaurant you decorate. It's the same appeal as filling in a sticker album, and the achievement curve says people do fill it — 101 achievements with the median held by 53% of players, which is one of the most generous distributions I've measured. Compare Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, whose most-earned achievement sits at 52.2%.

Sentiment is stable and high: 96 of the last 100 English reviews positive, and 95.9% across 1,176 Simplified Chinese reviews, which make up almost half the corpus.

The verdict

Fish to Dish: Idle Sushi earns a 7.5. It's a pretty, cheap, well-supported collection game that does what it says, and at NZ$7.19 the value case is easy — the only optional extra is a NZ$3.59 supporter pack, which is a tip jar rather than a paywall.

It doesn't rate higher because its critics are right about the category. An idle game that stops earning the moment you close it is asking to be babysat, the loop is thin once the rarity tiers stop surprising you, and the fixed screen-edge window won't suit everyone's setup.

Buy it for the collecting and the crossovers, keep it open in a corner, and don't expect it to work while you're away — because it won't.