The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish

The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish puts players in the role of Jet, a witch's daughter living on the back of a giant, ancient, flying catfish drifting through a sky where fish and sea creatures are conjured out of clouds rather than water. The core loop combines light puzzle-solving with photography, spawning creatures and capturing them on camera while working through a cast of neighbors, a witches' bureaucracy that communicates by fax, and a story that turns out to be about far more than fish. It's developed and published by ZIPIT! Games, released 27 March 2026 at $14.99. This review draws on all 75 of the game's lifetime reviews, every single one of them positive.

A story reviewers keep calling an allegory

This review's sample doesn't just like The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish, it keeps trying to articulate exactly what the story is doing, and lands on remarkably consistent language. One reviewer called it "an incredible allegory for the transition between childhood and adulthood and working through its messiness." Another described it more directly as "a lovely little game about two completely opposite points of view regarding death, and maybe, just maybe, taking a more nuanced approach to it all," specifically praising a central disagreement between Jet's mother and the wider setting about how to face mortality. A third summed up the game's tone as "a meditation on the impermanence of everything around us — to embrace that our rivers will run their course and to hold tight to what we love most along our way." This review finds that degree of consistent, considered language across independent reviewers unusual, and reads it as strong evidence the writing is doing exactly what it sets out to do.

Small, funny details that make an absurd world feel real

What repeatedly stands out in this review's sample isn't just the big emotional beats but the specific worldbuilding choices that ground them. More than one reviewer called out the in-game computer and its blog posts as a favorite detail, with one writing "I loved that you could explore some of their blogs and you got these little pocket stories by reading what they're blogging about, the way their personality comes together." Another highlighted "the society of witches' legal team that communicates exclusively by fax" as one of several "grace notes" that "help this world seem real even though it is intrinsically absurd." This review considers these exactly the kind of small, specific touches that separate a game with genuine voice from one merely borrowing a cozy-game aesthetic.

The one mechanic everyone agrees doesn't work

For a completely unanimous review sample, this review's reading found real, specific criticism inside otherwise five-star reviews, most consistently aimed at a single minigame. One reviewer, while still strongly recommending the game, wrote bluntly that "nosies might be one of the worst videogame mechanics ever put to code," adding that unlike every other "fishing" minigame in the game, which felt "fun and creative," this one "detracted from the experience a lot and didn't feel congruent with the rest of the gameplay loop." This review takes that kind of precise, isolated criticism from an otherwise enthusiastic reviewer more seriously than vague complaints, since it points at one fixable weak point rather than a broader problem with the game.

Rough controls, and a developer who visibly fixed some of them

This review's sample flagged launch-week control issues more than once, with one reviewer writing the game "felt insanely twitchy with a controller and I had to dial the sensitivity way down." Checking ZIPIT! Games' own partner-event history against that complaint turned up a direct match: a 29 March hotfix, two days after launch, explicitly listed "Fixed Mouse sensitivity issues" among its changes, alongside fixes for fish "swimming through the ground" and achievement consistency. The studio kept going from there, shipping five separate patches through 20 April covering grammar, puzzle tweaks in the game's Australis region, and inventory visibility for collected shells. This review credits a small studio that clearly kept listening and patching for a full month after release, even if the original controller tuning shouldn't have needed a fix in the first place.

What the achievements confirm about how people actually play

The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish tracks 18 Steam achievements, several tied directly to completing specific regions — the Gulf, the Archipelago, and Australis — and this review checked the global completion data to see how far players typically get. A striking 40.2% of players have earned "ACH_VOID_PHOTO," a single memorable photography moment, while only 12.8% have earned "ACH_COMPLETE_ALL_PP," full completion across every region. This review reads that gap as consistent with what its sample describes: a story-forward game most players finish once for its narrative high points rather than one built around systematic completion, which fits a cast of reviewers who keep talking about the ending rather than the completionist grind.

A short game, and a story some wanted to revisit differently

The most common practical complaint in this review's sample is length and structure rather than quality. Reviewers consistently reported playthroughs in the 6-to-9-hour range, and at least one wished for an easier way to see the game's other ending "without having to play the entire videogame again," calling it a "mini-gripe" precisely because the game is so short. This review agrees that's a fair, minor structural complaint rather than a real flaw, but flags it clearly for players expecting a longer runtime at a $14.99 price point.

Verdict

The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish is a small, strange, deeply sincere game about riding a giant catfish through the clouds that turns out to be really about growing up and making peace with loss, and this review's completely unanimous sample backs that up with specific, considered praise rather than blanket enthusiasm. One clumsy minigame, some launch-week control tuning that the developer has since partly addressed, and a short runtime are real, named costs, but they sit inside a game reviewers keep describing as something that caught them off guard and stuck with them. This review finds that combination — genuine craft, an unusually consistent emotional response, and a small studio that kept patching — more than earns a strong recommendation.