The most underrated game of 2024 reminds me of Animal Crossing, but it’s all about fishing – and nothing else

When your sport(s) of the 12 months largely encompass psychological horror and back-to-back, brutal boss fights — as mine did — you’ll nearly undoubtedly want one thing mindlessly stress-free to relax with. Positive sufficient, as I wrapped up my time wandering across the streets of Silent Hill 2, an cute, unsuspecting sport started doing the rounds on social media: Webfishing.

Webfishing is easy. You fish. That’s it. After hours of deciphering Silent Hill 2’s ending circumstances, fishing is all I needed to do.

Positive, Webfishing does have a bit of extra to it than simply fishing. There’s a chat perform, and in the end, the concept is that you simply make mates — or dangle together with your present mates — and chat whereas ready for a fish to chunk. There’s cosmetics, upgrades, and even playing, however not the predatory sort; Webfishing, luckily, doesn’t require you to spend a penny past the £4.29 that the sport really prices.

Positive sufficient, myself and a detailed pal started working catching fish and shortly spent most of our income on scratchcards. Our newfound income, which weren’t actually income in any respect, have been shortly spent on cosmetics and higher bait. Higher bait means greater fish, and the fish in Webfishing get actually huge…

And what occurs while you catch these huge fish? As a rule, you’ll discover different people — who all seem like Animal Crossing characters, by the best way — cheering for you in chat. I’ve had a few of my nicest, most harmless of on-line interactions all 12 months in Webfishing.

An extremely easy premise with, for probably the most half, a beautiful playerbase and neighborhood. In a single random foyer that I joined, hoping to quietly fish whereas watching YouTube, I joined a gaggle of individuals fishing from a rest room. One of many many issues you are able to do in Webfishing that I didn’t know existed on the time. One other participant introduced out a guitar and started taking requests from others, whereas all of us continued to fish from the identical, small bathroom.

On one other event, myself and my pal determined to spend our Saturday night having some in-game (and actual!) beers whereas taking part in Webfishing and catching up on one another’s lives. Our server shortly went from simply the 2 of us to a number of pixelated cats and canine gathering on the pier to talk about something and all the pieces, get drunk on in-game wine, and naturally, fish.

There have been a couple of casualties to the wine, however all in all, logging right into a sport to fish together with your pal after which discovering your self chatting to a complete array of like-minded, LGBTQIA+ folks whereas doing so isn’t one thing I essentially anticipated from Webfishing once I first put in it. I used to be pleasantly shocked, and it’s what retains me coming again. That, and fishing, in fact. There’s an actual kick from catching a fish so huge that it clips by way of the map. Although, not a lot of a kick from then spending your whole income from it on scratchcards, and dropping most of them.

Webfishing is weird and surreal at the perfect of occasions, particularly while you witness your pal parkour from one aspect of the map to the opposite — meowing frantically your complete time, as a result of that’s a factor you are able to do — however there’s one thing simply so pretty about all of it. Webfishing is a small nook of the web the place — when hackers aren’t attempting to damage the enjoyable — you may really change off and loosen up for some time. Fish, gamble, parkour. Push folks into the ocean. Get wine drunk on the pier. Webfishing is an underrated gem and a uncommon place of respite for players who want a break from all of it.