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Game Design: Why Every Game Should Have a Fishing Mechanic
The short answer is because it’s fun, but we’ll go a little deeper.
The first question I ask about any game that is being released: does it have fishing?
This sounds like a joke, but it is not far from the truth. I love a fishing mini-game, and I’m way more likely to play a game if I know there’s fishing in it. But why? Why am I like this? And why do so many games have fishing?
I took some time to explore the kinds of fishing mini-games that exist, and what makes them fun.
To gather info for this piece, I first went through all the games I could think of that had a fishing. There were… a lot. And I’m sure there are games that I have forgotten here, so if you have played a game with a really good fishing mechanic, please let me know about it.
- The Sims 3 & 4
- Cult of the Lamb
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (and possibly 1, I didn’t play it)
- Animal Crossing
- Ooblets
- Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons
- Stardew Valley
- FFXIV
- World of Warcraft
- Every other generic MMO that exists
- Hades
