Fishing Games Are A Thing

Fishing games are much harder to define than they used to be.

Sure, you can still spend an evening selecting lures, finding the right lake, and trying to land a realistically modeled bass. But you can also pilot a boat through a Lovecraftian nightmare in Dredge, catch dinner for a sushi restaurant in Dave the Diver, hang out with friends in WEBFISHING, or discover that Final Fantasy XV takes Noctis’ fishing hobby far more seriously than anyone expected.

Developers have turned virtual fishing into horror, RPG progression, cozy collecting, multiplayer socializing, open-world exploration, simulation, and even underwater arcade shooting.

The surprising thing isn’t that fishing games are a thing. It’s that two “fishing games” can now have almost nothing else in common.

The Best Fishing Games for Different Types of Players

If You Like…	Try	Fishing Factor
Indie horror	Dredge	5/5
Genre mashups	Dave the Diver	4/5
Social multiplayer	WEBFISHING	5/5
Cozy games	Stardew Valley	2/5
Collectathons	Animal Crossing: New Horizons	2/5
RPGs	Final Fantasy XV	1/5
Open-world games	Call of the Wild: The Angler	5/5
Serious simulations	Fishing Planet	5/5
Pixel-art indies	Fishing Paradiso	5/5

The Fishing Factor isn’t a review score. It measures how important fishing is to the actual experience. A 1/5 game can still contain an excellent fishing system; it simply means you can play most of the game without touching a rod.

Dredge — The Best Fishing Game for Indie Horror Fans

Developer: Black Salt Games
Released: 2023
Genre: Fishing adventure / horror
Fishing Factor: 5/5

Dredge is perhaps the best example of what happened when indie developers stopped assuming fishing games needed to be realistic.

The basic loop couldn’t be simpler. Take your boat out, locate fishing spots, catch whatever is underneath, return to port, sell it, and improve your vessel.

Then the sun goes down.

Suddenly, staying on the water doesn’t seem quite so relaxing.

Dredge turns fishing into the foundation for exploration and cosmic horror. Its inventory system is particularly clever. Fish occupy differently shaped spaces in the boat’s limited cargo hold, so bringing home another catch can become a small spatial puzzle.

Fish can also appear as disturbing aberrations, transforming the normal fishing-game excitement of discovering a rare species into something much less comfortable.

That’s why Dredge works for players who couldn’t care less about realistic fishing. The fish aren’t really the point.

They’re what gets you back onto that increasingly suspicious ocean.

Dave the Diver — Fishing Meets Restaurant Management

Developer: MINTROCKET
Released: 2023
Genre: Adventure / management
Fishing Factor: 4/5

Dave the Diver has a different problem: it seems physically incapable of sticking to one genre.

During the day, Dave dives into the Blue Hole, catches fish, gathers materials, explores deeper environments, and encounters increasingly unusual creatures. At night, the catch becomes inventory for Bancho Sushi.

The result is an extremely satisfying loop:

Dive → catch → collect → serve → upgrade → dive deeper.

Fishing consequently affects another part of the game rather than existing as an isolated minigame. Catch something interesting and it can become part of the restaurant operation.

Then the game starts throwing in bosses, minigames, equipment upgrades, new characters, missions, and mechanics that would sound ridiculous if listed without context.

Dave the Diver is a fishing game for players who don’t necessarily want to spend the entire game fishing.

WEBFISHING — The Multiplayer Fishing Hangout

Developer: lamedeveloper
Released: 2024
Genre: Multiplayer / casual
Fishing Factor: 5/5

WEBFISHING understands something that realistic fishing simulators occasionally forget: waiting around can actually be fun when you’re doing it with other people.

Fishing is the central activity, but the social environment is arguably just as important.

Players wander around a deliberately simple world, catch fish, collect things, and spend time with other players. It feels less like a competitive multiplayer title and more like an internet hangout where everybody happens to own a fishing rod.

That’s a clever match of mechanic and purpose.

Fishing naturally creates downtime. WEBFISHING fills that downtime with other people.

Stardew Valley — A Farming Game With a Serious Fishing Habit

Developer: ConcernedApe
Released: 2016
Genre: Farming RPG
Fishing Factor: 2/5

Nobody has to become a fisherman in Stardew Valley.

Plenty of players do anyway.

Instead of making fishing a single button press, the game uses a minigame in which players try to keep a moving fish inside a catch bar. Easy species cooperate. Difficult fish can bounce around aggressively enough to make farming look considerably more appealing.

The important part is how fishing connects with everything else.

Catches can produce income, complete Community Center bundles, fill collections, and provide ingredients. Dedicated players can also hunt legendary fish.

It effectively becomes a game within the game.

Animal Crossing Turns Fishing Into a Collectathon

Developer: Nintendo
Genre: Life simulation
Fishing Factor: 2/5

Animal Crossing: New Horizons barely needs a fishing tutorial.

Find a shadow. Cast. Wait. React.

The clever part is everything surrounding those actions.

Fish availability varies, while different shadow sizes create uncertainty about what is underneath. The museum then gives every new species additional value.

Fishing becomes another collection system.

Anyone who has ever filled a Pokédex understands the appeal. You aren’t trying to catch a fish anymore.

You’re trying to catch the one missing from your collection.

Final Fantasy XV Takes Fishing Weirdly Seriously

Developer: Square Enix
Released: 2016
Genre: Action RPG
Fishing Factor: 1/5

Final Fantasy XV is about a prince reclaiming his kingdom amid an increasingly dramatic conflict.

Naturally, the prince spends his free time fishing.

What makes this memorable is how unnecessarily substantial the system is. Noctis can use different rods, reels, lines, and lures while fishing at different locations, and the activity has its own progression.

It also gives the game breathing room.

After fighting enormous monsters and dealing with the end of the world, standing beside a lake trying to land a fish feels strangely human.

Call of the Wild: The Angler — Open-World Fishing

Developer: Expansive Worlds
Released: 2022
Genre: Open-world fishing
Fishing Factor: 5/5

Call of the Wild: The Angler is closer to what most people probably imagine when they hear “fishing game,” but its open-world structure gives the activity a different rhythm.

Players explore large environments, discover promising fishing spots, pursue different species, and experiment with equipment.

Finding the location becomes part of the game.

That’s a major contrast with Dredge. One game asks what’s lurking beneath the water. The Angler is more interested in whether you’ve found the right water.

Fishing Planet — The Serious Fishing Simulator

Developer: Fishing Planet LLC
Genre: Fishing simulation
Fishing Factor: 5/5

If the previous games aren’t sufficiently serious about fish, there’s Fishing Planet.

Equipment selection, bait, lures, locations, species, and environmental conditions all contribute to a more simulation-oriented experience. Multiplayer and competitive elements add another layer for players who don’t simply want to fish alone.

It’s almost comically different from catching something in Animal Crossing.

And that’s precisely why it belongs here.

Both are unquestionably fishing games.

They just have almost no agreement about what a fishing game should be.

Fishing Paradiso — A Smaller Indie Take

Developer: Odencat
Genre: Pixel-art adventure
Fishing Factor: 5/5

Fishing Paradiso demonstrates why the basic mechanic works so well for smaller indie games.

A developer doesn’t need photorealistic water, an enormous open world, or complicated combat to build progression around fishing.

New catches create goals. New locations create exploration. Better equipment creates progression.

Fishing Paradiso wraps those fundamentals inside a colorful pixel-art adventure with a stronger narrative focus than a conventional simulator.

It’s a useful reminder that fishing games don’t need to simulate fishing to take fishing seriously.

Fishing Games That Aren’t Really Fishing Games

Final Fantasy XV and Stardew Valley aren’t unusual because they contain fishing. The strange part is how frequently developers add the mechanic to games about completely unrelated things.

Red Dead Redemption 2 lets Arthur Morgan fish throughout its enormous Western world. World of Warcraft has maintained fishing as a profession across years of expansions. Animal Crossing makes it part of island life.

Why does this mechanic keep appearing?

Because fishing gives open worlds something combat doesn’t.

It provides a reason to stop.

A player can leave the primary progression loop, explore somewhere purely because there’s water nearby, discover a new collectible, or spend ten quiet minutes doing practically nothing important.

That’s surprisingly valuable in games constantly demanding that players complete another objective.

Then There Are Games Where You Shoot the Fish

And now things get weird.

Fish table games remove most of what players associate with fishing. There may be no rod, casting, bait, or patient waiting. Instead, creatures move around an underwater screen while players target them using cannons.

Fishing War from Spadegaming is a particularly videogame-like example. Up to four players can participate, while targets include creatures and characters such as the Pirate Ghost Ship, Monkey King, and Awakening Dragon. Special mechanics include Lightning Slash and the Dragon Wheel.

Fishing Legend adds fantasy targets including Dragon Treasure and Mythical Phoenix, while Fishing God frames its underwater action around searching for the Dragon King’s treasure.

Fishing Kingdom goes even further into arcade territory with a Laser Cannon and an actual Big Boss fish.

RealTime Gaming’s Fish Catch uses multiple screens, different cannon strengths, auto-targeting, and numerous targets.

These particular fish table titles can also appear on online gambling platforms and may involve real-money play, which makes them fundamentally different products from conventional releases such as Dredge or WEBFISHING. 

For video game players, however, the interesting part is the design mutation.

The rod disappeared. The waiting disappeared. Fishing became an underwater multiplayer shooter.

Fishing Is Basically a Loot System With Water

Strip away the lake, boat, and rod for a moment.

A typical fishing game asks the player to:

Search → attempt → catch → reveal rarity → collect → earn a reward → upgrade equipment → search for something rarer.

That sounds suspiciously like an RPG loot system.

A legendary fish functions like a rare drop. Better rods and reels are equipment progression. New fishing areas resemble higher-level zones. A complete fish collection isn’t that different from filling a Pokédex or bestiary.

That’s why developers can bend fishing into so many genres.

Dredge connects the loop to horror and inventory management. Dave the Diver feeds it into an economy. Stardew Valley uses it for skill progression. Animal Crossing emphasizes collecting. WEBFISHING turns the downtime into social interaction.

Fish tables take the same hunt for targets and rarity and speed everything up until it resembles an arcade shooter.

The setting changes.

The underlying satisfaction doesn’t.

Which Fishing Game Should You Play?

If you want the strangest possible introduction to fishing games, start with Dredge. It’s also the easiest recommendation for indie players who don’t normally care about the genre.

Dave the Diver is better for anyone who enjoys games constantly introducing new mechanics. WEBFISHING is the obvious choice for multiplayer players who primarily want somewhere relaxed to hang out.

For cozy-game fans, Stardew Valley remains difficult to beat, particularly because fishing is only one part of a much larger progression system.

Players genuinely interested in virtual fishing should move toward Call of the Wild: The Angler or Fishing Planet. Those games spend far more time exploring the activity itself.

And if you already own Final Fantasy XV, Animal Crossing, Red Dead Redemption 2, or another RPG with a suspiciously detailed fishing system, you may already have a fishing game without realizing it.

Maybe Fishing Games Aren’t Really About Fishing

Fishing naturally contains several things game designers love: anticipation, uncertainty, discovery, rarity, collection, resource management, and progression.

Slow those ingredients down and you get a simulator.

Make them relaxing and they fit a cozy game.

Attach them to an economy and you get Dave the Diver.

Add cosmic horror and you get Dredge.

Replace the rod with a cannon and suddenly you’re fighting a Big Boss fish with a laser.

So yes, fishing games are a thing.

The harder question is what actually qualifies as one anymore.