There was a period of time in the post–Stardew Valley era where it felt like half the indie games announced at varying video game conventions fell under the genre of "wholesome, cozy fishing sim." It was a woeful oversaturation of the market on par with the post–Produce 101 era of Korean pop music. There was Moonglow Bay, which broadly fell by the wayside despite having music by Lena Raine. There was Luna's Fishing Garden. There was Fishing Paradiso. There was Cat Goes Fishing.
But skip forward another couple years, and the fishing game genre has expanded! There are just so many fishing games out there nowadays, of so many different varieties. I pull up the Steam store's Fishing category, and my Steam recommends the Exploration fishing games crossover, "because you've played games tagged with Exploration." Just above it, my Steam also recommends the no doubt overflowing Dungeon Crawler fishing games crossover category.
For transparency's sake, I am currently only actively playing through two fishing games: Dave the Diver and Dredge. Dave the Diver is a fishing game that also falls under the Sushi Restaurant Management sub-category. It's charming a charming little game well-geared toward a general audience, and has boss battles and shark combat on top of the core harpoon fishing. You can bring a gun into the ocean. The day-to-day structure of the game makes it easy to play in mostly 20-minute intervals as a feel-good palette cleanser. I usually hop to it after finishing a session of my second fishing game, Dredge, which I also play in 20-minute intervals because I am a big baby.
Dredge is a fishing game that falls under the Eldritch Horror sub-category. It's not freaky in the sense of jump scares or monsters chasing you. Instead, it's the atmosphere. Each of the islands the main character visits is filled with dour, world-weary inhabitants. The sound design is half of the horror; you catch a mutated fish, and the game plays an eerie ringing sound while all of the other noises vanish. If you stay out too late at night, you start seeing rocks crop up where there weren't any before, and glowing red eyes in the distance that your dim head lamps cannot see. I play perhaps overly cautiously and have yet to die—this is not super common, as other people who've played have informed me that they die tons of times—and after encountering a huge fish that damaged my boat for the first time, I panicked and have yet to return to Dredge again.
It is with this experience and authority, plus having put 150 hours into Stardew Valley, that I present to you a very scientific intervention into the field of video game classification. I have trawled—dredged, even—through the Top Sellers and Recommended games under the fishing category on Steam and sorted each game into the major groups. Without further ado, here is the Official Taxonomy of Fishing Video Games, complete with examples.
Wholesome, Cozy Fishing
- Moonglow Bay
- Luna's Fishing Garden
- Fishing Paradiso
- Cat Goes Fishing
- Fantasy Fishing Town
Dungeon Crawler Fishing
- FATE
- Battle Chasers: Nightwar
- 9th Dawn III
- The Chronicles Of Quiver Dick
- A Fishy RPG
Realistic Fishing
- Fishing Planet (including DLC of Fishing Planet: Japanese Odyssey Pack, Fishing Planet: Voyager Pack, and the Pro Angler Sport Bundle)
- Call Of The Wild: The Angler™ (including DLC of Call Of The Wild: The Angler™ - South Africa Reserve)
- Ships At Sea
- Russian Fishing 4
- Feed And Grow: Fish
- Ultimate Fishing Simulator
- Bassmaster® Fishing
- SEGA Bass Fishing
- Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2
Eldritch Horror Fishing
- Dredge
- Sunless Skies
Restaurant Simulation Fishing
- Dave The Diver
- Catch & Cook: Fishing Adventure
Typing Dungeon Crawler Fishing
- Cryptmaster
Actually A Farm Sim
- Stardew Valley
- Animal Crossing
- Ova Magica
- Dinkum
- Rune Factory 5
- Farm Together 2
- Everafter Falls
- Rune Factory 4 Special
- Rune Factory 3
You See, But Do Not Necessarily Fish, The Fish
- Subnautica
- Abzû
You Are The Fish
- I Am Fish
