Fishing Game

Introduction

Some games earn their reputation through sheer scale; others earn it by doing one small thing with real care. Fishing Game, released 25 August 2022 by solo developer louis morel, is unmistakably the second kind. It takes the beloved fishing minigame from Stardew Valley, strips it down to its own small, self-contained experience, and wraps it in illustration and writing several reviewers describe as punching well above the game's tiny scale. It costs nothing to download today and sits Positive with its small player base, 92.3% across 39 reviews.

A familiar minigame, sharpened

The core loop will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has fished in Stardew Valley: watch a moving indicator, keep your cursor within a shifting target zone, and reel in the catch before your patience — or the fish's — runs out. Multiple reviewers explicitly compare the two experiences and land on this one favourably, one specifically noting it "holds a decent difficulty, especially the final level," and another describing genuine escalating challenge as new locations and fish types are introduced. A "Fish Compendium" tracking more than twenty unique catches gives the short runtime a concrete collection goal, several reviewers citing it as their favourite individual element precisely because of the funny descriptive text attached to each new entry.

Writing and art that punch above the premise

What elevates this review's sample well past "a competent fishing minigame" is how consistently reviewers single out the presentation around it. The fish and character designs draw repeated, specific praise — one reviewer calls out the Mudskipper character by name, another simply writes "the fishes are very well illustrated." The writing earns similarly specific praise for being funny and strange in a way that feels genuinely authored rather than templated, and more than one reviewer flags the game's final level as a real high point, describing an unexpected shift in tone toward something darker without spoiling exactly what happens — one jokingly claims the last fish gave them "PTSD," a review shared by several others hinting at the same surprising turn.

A small, real technical wrinkle

Set against the praise, one specific and reproducible complaint stands out: the fishing minigame's timing bar can run slightly off the visible screen at certain resolutions, making the precise timing window — already the hardest part of the later levels — harder to judge exactly when the difficulty is at its peak. It's a small, fixable issue rather than a fundamental design flaw, but worth knowing given how much of this game's difficulty curve depends on being able to see that indicator clearly.

Not every reviewer landed the same way

A small minority of this review's sample pushed back on the tone rather than the mechanics. One reviewer, clearly enjoying themselves overall, still asks pointedly who the intended audience actually is, pointing to an odd mix of religious references and generational humour that didn't always cohere for them — a genuine, if good-natured, point of confusion rather than a real complaint. A separate, brief dissenting review reports being unable to get past a specific design choice without elaborating on what, standing as a rare outlier against dozens of enthusiastic reviews in this same small sample.

From a small price to free, without much record of why

One detail worth flagging plainly rather than glossing over: several of the earliest reviews, posted the same week the game launched in August 2022, specifically mention paying a small one-time price — figures around US$2 or £1.69 come up more than once — while the game's Steam listing today shows it as entirely free, with no price history displayed anywhere on the store page. This review checked the game's public update history directly and found no announcements at all recording when or why that change happened. That's not a knock against the game itself — a small developer choosing to stop charging for a short, largely finished project is a perfectly reasonable decision — but it's the kind of detail a prospective player deserves to have stated plainly rather than left unmentioned, especially since it means older reviews weighing the price against the experience were judging a slightly different proposition than what's on offer today.

Why a free game still gets judged the same way

It would be easy to wave away any rough edges in a free release on the grounds that you get what you pay for, and this review has deliberately avoided doing that. The fishing bar's off-screen display issue, the short runtime, and the tonal confusion a couple of reviewers describe are all real, specific observations regardless of what the game costs, and they're weighed here exactly as they would be for a paid release. What that scrutiny actually turns up, though, is reassuring rather than damning: the complaints in this sample are minor and specific, while the praise for the writing, art and final-level twist is detailed, repeated, and consistent across a small but genuinely enthusiastic review base. A free price tag doesn't automatically earn a good score here — the substance behind it does.

Final Verdict

Fishing Game is a small, free, unpretentious idea executed with real specific craft — distinctive art, genuinely funny writing, and a final act several reviewers single out as the best surprise in a very short package. It won't take you more than half an hour to see everything it has to offer, and a minor display issue with its timing bar is worth knowing about before you reach the hardest levels. None of that changes the basic calculation: at no cost at all, this is an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoyed fishing in Stardew Valley and has thirty spare minutes to find out what a solo developer built around that same small idea.