Gone Fishing Reviewing

Perhaps it’s a side-effect of the current culture of needing to be stimulated at all times, but I’ve found that I feel a need to multitask while watching things on my computer. Whether it’s chatting with friends, reading things online or playing simple games, I just feel compelled to do something “productive” at the same time.

One thing that really scratched that itch was fishing in World of Warcraft Classic, as it was a pretty mindless activity, but it felt productive because I could sell some of the fish for gold on the auction house. However, my stingy nature makes it hard to justify paying a subscription just for fishing, so I’ve started the quest to find an alternative game. You’d think that I could just buy SEGA Bass Fishing and re-live my childhood memories of watching my dad play, but the thought of actually sailing a boat out and manage bait and lures makes my head hurt. I think what I’m after is a fishing mini-game in a non-fishing game.

I tried to find some reviews of fishing games in non-fishing games, but there aren’t many, and those that exist aren’t very in-depth. Here are a few that I found:

https://www.thegamer.com/best-fishing-games-arent-only-about-fishing/
https://gamerant.com/best-fishing-games-ranked/
https://soft-care.eu/fishing-mini-games-worth-playing/
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-fishing-games/

I thought I would try making my own reviews, taking some games from those lists, and others that are already in my library.

My reviews are going to be heavily slanted towards what I’m looking for in a fishing game:

• Relaxing
• Don’t need to worry about complex mechanics, e.g. bait management, rod management, sailing a boat, understanding how to read a fish detector machine
• Exciting (I know that’s a contrast to relaxing, but I mean the excitement of possibly getting something good. A bit like that dopamine rush that loot boxes are designed to incite.)
• “Productive” – I want to feel like I’m achieving something while fishing
• Something I can do in the background
• Ideally not subscription-based
• Ideally not time-limited, e.g. Stardew Valley fishing is fun, but you can’t just sit and fish for a long time since the game has a timer for each day. Once it gets too late (2A.M, if I recall correctly), your character falls asleep and you wake up in bed the next day. You also need to manage your energy levels (though you can eat fish to recover energy).

I’ll break my reviews down into the following sections:

Fishing mechanics – how fishing in the game works.
Time-to-fish – how long it takes to unlock fishing. As a rough breakdown for this rating:
Less than 20 minutes: 5/5
20-60 minutes: 4/5
1-2 hours: 3/5
2-5 hours: 2/5
5-10 hours: 1/5
10+ hours: 0/5
Multitaskability – how easy it is to do other things in the background while fishing
Time management – how much you need to consider managing your time in the game (also indirectly includes having to manage resources like energy)
Excitement – how exciting fishing can be
Usefulness – how useful fishing is in the game, whether it’s for gathering crafting materials, gives quest rewards, or it’s simply just something fun to do on the side
Ambience – how nice the overall ambience is while fishing

Happy to take any suggestions in the comments! They don’t need to meet my requirements, as it could be a case of “the customer doesn’t know what they really want”. After all, fishing in World of Warcraft, which is what triggered this search for a game, doesn’t really meet the exciting requirement. Maybe I need to bite the bullet and learn some stuff about real fishing.

Will keep a list of my reviews below and update as I go.

• New World 4.5/5
• My Time at Portia 2/5
• Spiritfarer 3.5/5
• Black Clover M: Rise of the Wizard King 1/5