Fishing is one of gaming’s most reliable ways to turn a busy adventure into a quiet pause. A player can handle a repetitive task, listen for a bite, reel in a catch and return to the main activity. Sometimes the reward is even a treasure chest filled with useful items.
That rhythm helps explain why fishing appears across so many genres. The Legend of Zelda, Hades, Fire Emblem, Persona, Tales, Stardew Valley and The Sims all use fishing in different ways. At this point, a game without some kind of fishing activity can feel more unusual than one that includes it.
But popularity has not made fishing minigames universally loved. Players continue to debate whether they should be relaxing or demanding, detailed or disposable, and whether every game needs one at all. Looking at real fishing, celebrated examples and developer experiences reveals why the best systems work.
The real appeal: quiet, patience and surprise
People who fish regularly often describe the activity as meditative. Stephanie Tinsley Fitzwilliam, who goes fly fishing in alpine rivers, streams and lakes, values the chance to be outdoors in a quiet setting after a hectic working week.
Real fishing also involves inconvenience. Storms arrive, lines become tangled, hooks catch in trees, fishing spots can be crowded and reaching the water may involve a long, hot walk. Those frustrations rarely make it into a game, but patience does. The eventual bite provides a sharp burst of excitement after the stillness, encouraging the fisher to try for one more catch.
Fruity Snacks, a Final Fantasy XIV fishing creator who also fishes outside games, sees that contrast between calm and tension as central. The player settles into a peaceful routine, then must concentrate when a fish strikes before returning to that calmer state.
May Gardens, a game designer and curator of fishing-focused games, brings a different perspective. She has fished for salmon since childhood and once landed a 30-pound salmon, but her experience is mainly ocean fishing: trolling for salmon and occasionally jigging for halibut. Her rod is secured in a clamp while a down-rigger lowers the tackle using braided line and a 10-pound lead weight.
That kind of fishing is far removed from the casting and fly-fishing imagery used by most game systems. Gardens says she would like to see a game capture the colder, more technical and less romantic form of fishing she knows best.
What makes a fishing minigame satisfying?
Stardew Valley was repeatedly praised as a standout, with Hades, Final Fantasy XIV and Sea of Thieves also receiving strong approval. The appeal of Stardew Valley lies in its sense of give and take: the fish’s movement creates tension, and players can begin to recognise what may be on the line before the catch is complete.
That behaviour echoes real fishing. Chinook, or King salmon, may run hard and fast, while Coho, or Silver salmon, often head for the surface and can leap free. A game does not need to simulate every technical detail to suggest that distinction. Different bait preferences, bite timings and movement patterns can make catches feel meaningfully different.
Fishing can also be an ideal low-attention social activity. In the VRChat world FISH!, players can fish while spending time with others. The world promises more than 20,000 unique fish and a full progression system, making it closer to a complete fishing game than a small side activity.
That middle level of engagement is a major part of the attraction. Players can chat, watch something on another screen, see their collection grow and enjoy the repeated motion without demanding constant concentration.
The social account Is There A Fishing Minigame? takes its name from the question it tracks, but its operator does not believe every game requires fishing. A tense game can use it as a breather, as Hades and Red Dead Redemption 2 do. A calm game can use fishing to add a small amount of challenge, as seen in Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing.
The wrong placement can damage pacing. In a tightly structured experience such as Outer Wilds, fishing could distract from the central journey or become an activity players either never have time to enjoy or spend too much time pursuing.
Simulation, comedy and the problem of repetition
Sega Bass Fishing remains a favourite for some because it combines tension, rewards, boat movement and lure selection. It focuses attention on the fish rather than only on the player character. Other games, including Dredge and Webfishing, put less emphasis on realism and more on accessibility and fun.
That seriousness is precisely what puts off other players. Dr Anne Ladyem McDivett prefers the simpler fishing found in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where players can fish with a line, spear-fish or visit an arcade to play Sega Bass Fishing. The first two options feel relaxed and direct; the arcade game’s demanding catches make the experience frustrating rather than restorative.
Comedy is another valuable ingredient. Daphne Sophinos, project lead on Beatblock, argues that fishing works especially well when it creates a joke or an amusing contrast. Animal Crossing benefits from a dad joke with every catch, while Nintendo 3DS AR fishing could place realistic fish beside a brightly cartoonish Cheep Cheep from Mario.
There is also a growing concern that the format has become predictable. Fruity Snacks points to systems built around keeping a bobber inside a bar or pressing a button at exactly the right moment. Those mechanics can work, but fishing minigames would benefit from more experimentation rather than repeating the same timing challenge.
Designing the pond beneath the surface
Building a simple fishing activity can involve surprisingly complex systems. Chris Balser worked on The Elder Scrolls Online and inherited its fishing system in 2014 while taking responsibility for crafting and gathering. The goals were to provide a relaxing activity between other tasks, a collection to complete and a source of achievements, titles and dyes.
In ESO, each fishing hole has a type containing common and rare fish linked to the surrounding region. Players are encouraged to fish near one another: more people deplete a site faster, but the group receives access to rarer fish. Later updates added new locations, harder catches, fish that could be processed into food ingredients and increasingly unusual fish with their own rule changes.
Yejin Park, concept artist on Grave Seasons, believes good fishing systems let players read the water before casting. Shadows, shapes, locations and time of day can suggest what is available, giving the fish a stronger sense of presence.
The Grave Seasons team deliberately chose a straightforward timing-and-rhythm approach inspired by early-2000s minigames. Fish type, bait, seasons and rarity all had to work together, while sound and visual feedback needed to make success and failure feel worthwhile. The team even created a debugging tool to test expected catches and balance the results with quality assurance.
Palia took a different route. Maxwell Zierath explained that the game’s first minigame became a lesson in building scalable systems in Unreal. Originally, each fish stored data in six separate locations and every movement had to be authored by hand. The system was later refactored to make adding fish easier, while keeping the player-facing experience intact.
That experience was praised by former community lead Faye Visintainer, who enjoyed pulling a fish back and forth to keep it inside a safe catching area. She found the mechanic easy to learn but difficult to master, and valued the variety of fish, behaviours and uses for the catch.
How fishing fits a larger game
Destiny 2 may seem an unlikely home for fishing, but its system grew from a long-running studio joke into a feature for Season of the Deep. Corey Willis, a former Bungie staff systems designer who worked on it, drew on childhood fishing trips in Florida and time spent playing TNN Bass Tournament at his grandparents’ house.
The design was intended to be low-stakes and social while matching the game’s established loop of playing activities with friends, defeating enemies and collecting appealing rewards. Willis divided the experience into four connected parts:
- Preparation: choosing a location and collecting bait or tackle.
- Performance: setting the hook and reeling in the fish.
- Payoff: receiving a valuable or disappointing catch.
- Prestige: displaying and sharing the results.
Bait was earned through the wider game, which encouraged players to keep participating in its core activities. Fishing locations appeared on different destinations, changing the available fish and giving players more control over the species they pursued. Catching used a timed button press with better rewards for accurate timing, several levels of success and a clear failure state.
The rewards were designed as colourful, glowing fish-shaped loot. When someone caught a legendary or exotic fish, nearby players received a better chance of landing a high-quality catch, turning individual success into a shared event.
Players could then return to their aquarium and deposit fish into a terminal. New discoveries appeared in the tank, while the hand-in process provided loot and showed collection progress. The aquarium gave catches a visible sense of achievement rather than allowing them to disappear into an inventory.
A small activity with a big job
Fishing minigames succeed when they understand the game around them. They can provide rest in a stressful adventure, gentle tension in a cosy simulation, social interaction in an online world or another layer of collection and reward in a live-service game.
The strongest examples communicate more than “press a button when prompted”. They give fish distinct behaviour, make preparation meaningful, use sound and animation to sell each bite, and provide rewards worth pursuing. They may also add humour, discovery or a place to display the results.
For more conversations about interactive entertainment and arcade culture, explore the RETROCADE Arcade Blog and browse the latest arcade videos. If you are considering a dedicated home setup, the Arcade Machine Buying Guide can help you compare options, from full arcade machines to compact bartop arcades.
Whether fishing is peaceful, funny, competitive or unexpectedly demanding, its enduring appeal comes from the same basic rhythm: wait, notice the signal, respond well and see what comes back.
Leave a Reply