Relax and fish (on the web!)
Webfishing👁 Image
is a fishing game created by solo indie developer lamedeveloper. It puts you in the role of a Funny Animal with the goal of catching fish and selling them to gradually upgrade your gear. The game has an emphasis on online play and being a virtual hangout space, featuring several novelty items such as chalk and instruments to play with others between catches.
Webfishing was originally made for Goodgis' Autumn Game Jam and released on itch.io👁 Image
for free on September 23, 2022. It was entirely remade for a full, paid Steam release on October 11, 2024.
Webfishing contains examples of:
- Ascended Glitch: When the game first launched on Steam, players discovered a way to clip out of bounds into the black empty space surrounding the hub using the private island flags, and found an invisible water source within allowing players to fish in what they dubbed "The Void". Patch 1.09 added more onto the Void, teleporting players to a completely new empty area when falling into the void's water which houses its own unique rare fish.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Falling into the water respawns you the last time the player was touching land.
- If you suddenly get a catch and have the chat window open, the game patiently waits for you to shut the chat window.
- Binomium ridiculus:
- The scientific name for the Unidentified Fish Object is "alienus caninus".
- The CREATURE has the scientific name "rraim eor", an anagram of "I am error".
- Button Mashing: Part of catching fish involves clicking a certain amount once you reach a small "gate" on the meter. Upgrading your rod's power increases the amount each click counts for.
- Character Level: You earn Experience Points as you catch fish and complete quests, which are used to rank up. Each rank requires more XP than the last, and there are 50 ranks total with badges to match each.
- Emote Command: There are eight different emote animations that can be used via a menu. Typing /wag into the in-game chat also toggles whether or not your character's tail is wagging.
- Experience Points: Catching fish and completing quests grants you experience towards leveling up to the next rank.
- Fishing Minigame: Hold down the mouse to reel in a catch, and button mash at certain prompts quickly enough to keep reeling.
- Glitch Entity: The "CREATURE" is a rare fish that's only catchable in the out-of-bounds Void area. It glitches between looking like multiple fish, and the text blurb for catching it is just "NiceCatch!" repeated over and over.
- Hard Mode Perks: The Challenge Lure makes small stars appear on-screen while you reel in fish, which harm you if you don't click them soon enough. If you do click on them, you earn bonus money.
- Money Sink: A few items have a particularly high cost.
- The trio of Heart, Smelly, and Sparkle particles have a very high price of 5000$ each.
- The "straight" title has an unusually high price of 9999$, especially compared to every other title in the game.
- The Golden Guitar has the price of 9999$ as well, though it's fair enough considering that it's gold.
- The last two collector fishing rods have a respective price of 15000$ and 25000$. To be fair though, with the kinds of fish you need to get to obtain them, you'll likely have those amounts of money.
- Eclipsing them all however is the Prosperous Fishing Rod, at the price of an insane 9999999$!!! That's basically 10 million dollars in a game where every other Money Sink combined is only 65000$, which is less then a hundredth of what you'll need to get the Prosperous Fishing Rod. It's flavor text, simply saying "Mr. Moneybags", is an accurate one describing the few who can pay for this rod.
- Ominous Fog: The fittingly named "Scary" option for view distance pretty much makes the game look like its taking place in Silent Hill.
- Precision F-Strike: All the game can say about the Unidentified Fish Object, a fish with the face of a dog that appears in water where a meteor strikes, is "...what? the fuck?".
- Public Domain Soundtrack: The Royalty Free Boombox exclusively plays Kevin MacLeod music.
- Shout-Out: Many of the FlavourText/Tool Tips for the fishes caught and catalogued in the journal are references.
- Catching a shrimp shows a line describing it as "one in a krillion!"
- The CREATURE's scientific name "rraim eor" is an anagram of "I am error".
- Two for SpongeBob SquarePants:
- Catching a snail has "Meow?" written on its flavor text, referencing Gary the Snail who vocalizes like a cat.
- The crab's flavor text being "Arg!" could be a reference to Mr. Krabs and his unique laugh.
- The description for the Black Bead Eyes is "Stop lookin' at me with them big ol' eyes!", a quote spoken by the Flying Dutchman in "Your Shoe's Untied".
- The Anomalocaris having "Doing its best :)" references a popular VRCHAT meme involving a user with an Anomalocaris avatar👁 Image
. - The lionfish's flavor text states "Well I ain't callin' you a truther!"
- The flavor text for the sunfish says "Here it comes!", a reference to the song "Here Comes The Sun".
- The view distance options labeled "Low" and "Scary" adds in an Ominous Fog, that could be a reference to the iconic fog of Silent Hill and 👁 This example contains a TRIVIA entry. It should be moved to the TRIVIA tab.
how it was used to mask the graphical limitations of the earlier games. - The bucket hats have the flavor text of "There's more", referencing a famous scene from Team Fortress 2's Expiration Date.
- The flavor text for eels go "Eel? EEL!"
- The goldfish's flavor text is a simple exclamation of "We're rich!"
- Sizeshifter: Some of the vending machine drinks under the Special Category alter the your character's size. As their names suggest, Shrink Soda decreases size by 10% whereas Big Beverage increases size by 10%. Meanwhile, ordinary Water will reset the player's size back to the default. It's all cosmetic anyway and your size doesn't even get saved if you quit and rejoin a server.
- Springy Spores: There are blue mushrooms scattered around that can be used to bounce a massive distance across the land.
- Take That, Audience!: An odd example in that it's a ''specific'' subset of audience. The game comes with a variety of LGBTQ+ titles to wear, each available for the low cost of $75. The "straight" title, which was added in an update to address complaints over the lack of heterosexual representation, costs a whopping $9999, isn't even capitalized, and comes complete with Scare Quotes, as if the game itself doesn't believe you for a second.Description: mhm
- Work Info Title: It's a fishing game that emphasizes hanging out online/on the web with others.
