Open Fishing XL

Although I didn’t like the original gamejam demo, I bought this product hoping that continued development would make it a worthwhile experience. Despite some major graphical improvements and the implementation of many new features, the unfortunate truth is that the gameplay is still just as bland as it was back in 2022. Doing everything in this game takes absolutely ages; waiting for a bite takes ages, reeling the fish in takes ages, cooking the fish takes ages, and getting enough money to buy a worthwhile upgrade takes ages (Unless you’re on the Rogue Isle, in which case you can’t work on your catch record or any of the achievements). Hell, even saving in this game takes ages. This would be great for an idle game, except that this isn’t really an idle game. Depending on your rod strength, you will lose many larger fish unless you instantly react to a bite or enable an optional setting which disables pretty much all of the game’s progression mechanics, and even if you do enable this setting, you still need to manually decide what to do with each fish and then manually recast your line. Rods have a durability meter which only decreases when reeling in a fish, meaning they will only…

Fun, engaging, and the atmosphere is so relaxing! Lots of options for accessibility and preferences (instant catching, disabling pixellation etc...) and the dev seems super nice :)

spooky ambience and fun fishing mechanics would recommend

Shame to see you go Dev, much love and prosperity in your future endevours.

Turns out good new fishing games aren't made anymore. Had to dig up this ol' ps1 banger to get my fix. Natsume could never.

Drawing your own map is easily my favorite feature of this game. The fishing mechanics are extremely simple, so it can get boring after some time, but creating the map has been keeping me busy.