How to Fish

1. Summary

How to Fish is a cheap co-op game in which you crash on an island, catch fish, beat or shoot them to death, sell them, gamble the proceeds at a roulette table and fight bosses across what reviewers count as five islands. Nearly every review recommends it. Playing with friends is the reason given most often, and the stories are about friendly fire, seagulls flying off with a dead teammate, slapping each other back to life and losing a fortune on green. Players are also surprised that a fishing joke game has gunplay this satisfying, and 360 no-scopes on airborne fish are a running joke. Reviewers mention paying $7 or $8, or less on sale, and price comes up almost only as praise.

Even glowing reviews often add that the campaign is short: groups who give a time mostly finish in four to eight hours, and replay value is thin. Boss difficulty divides players. Some enjoy the challenge, while others hit a wall at the Giant Piranha, the pufferfish, the albatross or the lava whale, especially solo or in large lobbies. A smaller set of bugs does real damage when it hits: weapons that vanish or get flung away on death, players stranded at sea without a radar after a late-September update, and lost saves. Solo players disagree on whether the game holds up without friends.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Chaotic co-op with friendsHigh

Groups describe evenings of nonstop laughing, all-night sessions and finishing the game in one sitting, with friends, partners, siblings or kids. Friendly fire counts as part of the fun: "I think we died more because of friendly fire and dynamite than the fish." Shared money creates its own comedy ("Kept getting framed for spending our money"), and a few reviewers mention lobbies of up to eight players as a plus. Positive reviews that use the word "friendslop" mostly mean it as praise, some calling this one of the better ones ("Most fun $7 to be spent with a friend."), while a handful of negative reviews use it to dismiss the game. Some players think the fun depends almost entirely on the group, as covered under solo play below.

Shooting fish, trick shots and dynamiteHigh

The core joke is to reel a fish in, fling it in the air and no-scope it with a sniper rifle for a score multiplier, and positive reviews say the gun handling is better than it needs to be. A reviewer who works as a designer wrote "It is especially obvious that a lot of effort went into the combat system", and another found the "gunplay is outrageously crisp for the setting." Weapon upgrades (reviewers list a pistol, SMG, shotgun, sniper, assault rifle and bow) pull players from one island to the next. A few dissent: some find the recoil, aim sway or hitboxes frustrating, and casual players say the late game asks for more aim than they expected from a joke game.

Absurd humor and ragdoll physicsHigh

Seagulls snatching fish and corpses are the most retold moment ("I watched a seagull fly away with my sisters corpse."). The revive mechanic gets its own stories ("One of the funniest things was being able to revive your friend by literally slapping them."), and so do NPCs who eat anything you throw in their mouths, fish wearing sneakers, a seahorse that is literally a horse, and drip fish references such as the "Travis Scott fish". The seagulls are also the one joke that annoys people, when they interrupt boss fights (see below).

The roulette table and drip fish skinsMedium

Gambling talk is mostly happy. "Bet it all on green" is a running meme, and players enjoy the swing of turning one fish into a fortune or losing the team's savings: "Came for the fishing stayed for the gambling". The skin slot machine, which takes rare drip fish, draws the complaints. A few players dislike rolling duplicates or skins for weapons they do not own, and one wrote that "the skin roulete machine hitting dupes skins with no reward really sucks as well". Completionists also find collecting every drip fish a slog.

Great value for a small priceMedium

Players compare the price to a coffee or a pint ("Costs what a cup of coffee is. So worth the play."), and a few say they bought copies for friends. The handful who disagree say a game you finish in a few hours is not worth $8, and one would not pay more than 5 euros, so they suggest waiting for a sale.

Where players are split

A short campaign with little replay valueMedium

Length is the caveat that shows up in otherwise glowing reviews. Groups who give a time mostly report four to eight hours, and full achievement runs take longer. Fans mostly treat that as fine for the price and ask for DLC or a sequel ("Worst thing about the game is that it ends."), while some negative reviewers see it as the deal-breaker: "It ends just as you start actually enjoying it". A minority found the ending anticlimactic, and some note that after the final boss there is nothing to do but restart with maxed gear. Players ask for more islands, New Game+, an endless or roguelike mode and Steam Workshop support.

Boss difficulty and balanceMedium

Bosses are named in 17% of negative reviews. Supporters enjoy learning attack patterns in a joke game ("The tension in these boss fights rivals any FPS."), and say dynamite piles or teamwork get them through. Critics name specific walls. The Giant Piranha on the second island is faulted for its swarm of minions: "Spamming minions with a boss thats just bullet sponge and very hardly discernable from them just feels like bad design." Others get stuck at the pufferfish, the albatross (unavoidable dive attacks, a tiny hitbox, and a bug where it freezes far out at sea) or the lava whale. A few players blame patches, saying one made the second boss impossible for their group, another nerfed dynamite stacking and another closed the island-skipping shortcut speedrunners used: "Don't patch the game to be harder, you should be embracing it." Timers on boss fights draw specific anger, and so does scaling. Solo players say the timers do not account for one player ("Scaling the timer to the number of players is an easy easy fix."), and large lobbies say boss health scales too far ("the balance has made the game impossible for large groups of players"). Some also complain about seagulls carrying off downed players mid-fight.

Is it worth it solo?Medium

Reviews that discuss playing alone disagree. Some say it is fine or even relaxing solo, like the older player who wrote "I played it solo because I am older and do not have many people to play with and still had a lot of fun". Others call it boring or "lonely" without a group, and a smaller set say late bosses are close to impossible alone. Players without friends on Steam also want a way to find a group: "without a server browser youre essentially forced to play the game single player".

What frustrates players

Bugs that eat your gear, your boat or your saveMedium

About one negative review in ten describes a bug, a crash or lost gear, and the worst of these take away progress. Players lose weapons on death: guns that drop and then despawn, fall through floors or docks, get flung hundreds of meters by an explosion or sink into the volcano's lava, wiping out hours of upgrades ("Stop having your items flying all over the place when you die."). They ask for a keep-inventory toggle, a backpack or boat storage, and a way to buy back weapons sold by accident. The radar is the other recurring problem. Reviewers say an update added small side islands, and players who lost or dropped the radar at sea report being stranded with no way to find an island, sometimes respawning on one of those islands with no boat. "If you lose the radar you're just stuck forever without any way to know where youre going." Another put it as "it added special islands that you can only leave with a radar but none sell a radar". Most of the radar complaints were written from September 28 on. A smaller group lost saves outright, including one group who said that when cloud saves arrived, "it took the blank NO saves and over wrote the local and only copy of the real save." Bosses that freeze or fail to spawn, items falling out of the boat, and kicks to the main menu round out the list.

A repetitive grind for someMedium

Every island repeats the same steps (fish, sell, upgrade, summon boss) with little change in how fish behave, according to the negative reviews that call the loop grindy, tedious or repetitive: "the gameloop quickly devolves into a grindfest". About as many negative reviews simply call the game boring, mid or overrated. Some say the grind is padded, and worse in multiplayer because the whole group has to be equipped from shared money. A number of positive reviews also admit it is "a bit grindy", but say the gambling and boss fights break it up.

Performance and multiplayer connectionsLow

A small number of reviews report performance or connection problems, and others say the opposite (that it runs on a "potato laptop"). The complaints are frame drops in crowded fights, especially the Giant Piranha's swarm and large dynamite stacks ("The game runs at 20 fps with everything on minimum"), laggy or jittery play for guests while the host runs smoothly, invites that do not work, "connection failed" errors and audio that distorts or shifts pitch.

Controls, controller and accessibility gapsLow

A small but specific group raises control issues: aim assist on controller that is too strong to turn off ("on controller, the aim assist is so powerful it makes it hard to aim and it drags me away from my target."), Steam Deck menus that are hard to navigate, keys that cannot be rebound (a problem for left-handed players), key settings that do not reload on restart, no per-player voice volume, and requests for colorblind options and larger item markers.

3. The player conversation

Most reviews are one line and silly, built on the same few jokes: "fih", "peak", "I learned how to fish", "bet it all on green", seagull grudges and claims that this is how Americans fish. They say little about the game beyond liking it. The reviewers who write a few sentences agree with each other on four points: it is great with friends, the shooting is surprisingly good, it is worth the price, and it is short.

Negative reviews are rare (5%) and fall into two camps. One group never connected with the loop and calls it boring friendslop within the first hour or two, and some of them mention refunding. The other group liked the game and turned against it over a specific wall: a boss they could not beat, weapons lost on death, a radar soft-lock or a lost save. The difficulty complaints come mainly from solo players, very large groups and people who rarely play shooters. Achievement hunters are a visible subgroup who enjoyed the challenge of finishing the game in under an hour but grumble about collecting every drip fish.

Approval held steady week to week through September. It dipped slightly in the week of September 28, when the radar complaints pick up and reviewers mention an update with new small islands, the bow and a manta ray boss, and was back at its usual level in the first days of October. Requests for more islands and updates run through the whole period, and several reviewers say they will return when new content lands.

4. What the developers could do

1. Stop weapons from disappearing on death. Players who lose or fling away their gear describe hours of upgrades wiped out, and they ask for a keep-inventory option, safe item drops or a buy-back.
2. Make getting stranded at sea impossible. Players who lost the radar on the new small islands were stuck, and they want radars sold on those islands, a respawn at the lighthouse or a way to recall the boat.
3. Rebalance boss scaling for solo and large groups. Bosses are named in 17% of negative reviews, and players specifically ask for timers that scale with player count, a gentler Giant Piranha, pufferfish and albatross, and health that does not balloon in big lobbies.
4. Add more islands and a reason to replay. "Too short" turns up even in glowing reviews, and fans ask for new islands, New Game+, an endless mode or DLC they would happily pay for.
5. Fix the progress-breaking bugs and protect saves. Frozen or invisible bosses, items falling through docks and boats, crashes and cloud saves overwriting real progress cost players whole runs.
6. Add a public lobby browser. Solo players without friends on Steam say they cannot find a group, which leaves them playing a game they feel was built for friends on their own.
7. Remove duplicates from the skin machine. Players who feed rare fish into the slot machine resent rolling skins they already own or for weapons they do not have.
8. Improve controller and accessibility options. Adjustable aim assist, usable Steam Deck menus, full key rebinding, per-player voice volume and colorblind-friendly item markers are small fixes that several players request.