When your game(s) of the year largely consist of psychological horror and back-to-back, brutal boss fights — as mine did — you’ll almost definitely need something mindlessly relaxing to kick back with. Sure enough, as I wrapped up my time wandering around the streets of Silent Hill 2, an adorable, unsuspecting game began doing the rounds on social media: Webfishing.
Webfishing is simple. You fish. That’s it. After hours of deciphering Silent Hill 2’s ending conditions, fishing is all I wanted to do.
Sure, Webfishing does have a little more to it than just fishing. There’s a chat function, and ultimately, the idea is that you make friends — or hang with your existing friends — and chat while waiting for a fish to bite. There’s cosmetics, upgrades, and even gambling, but not the predatory type; Webfishing, fortunately, doesn’t require you to spend a penny beyond the £4.29 that the game actually costs.
Sure enough, myself and a close friend got to work catching fish and quickly spent most of our profits on scratchcards. Our newfound profits, which weren’t really profits at all, were quickly spent on cosmetics and better bait. Better bait means bigger fish, and the fish in Webfishing get really big…
And what happens when you catch those big fish? More often than not, you’ll find other folk — who all look like Animal Crossing characters, by the way — cheering for you in chat. I’ve had some of my nicest, most innocent of online interactions all year in Webfishing.
An incredibly simple premise with, for the most part, a lovely playerbase and community. In one random lobby that I joined, hoping to quietly fish while watching YouTube, I joined a group of people fishing from a toilet. One of the many things you can do in Webfishing that I didn’t know existed at the time. Another player brought out a guitar and began taking requests from others, while we all continued to fish from the same, small toilet.
On another occasion, myself and my friend decided to spend our Saturday evening having some in-game (and real!) beers while playing Webfishing and catching up on each other’s lives. Our server quickly went from just the two of us to multiple pixelated cats and dogs gathering on the pier to chat about anything and everything, get drunk on in-game wine, and of course, fish.
There were a few casualties to the wine, but all in all, logging into a game to fish with your friend and then finding yourself chatting to a whole array of like-minded, LGBTQIA+ people while doing so isn’t something I necessarily expected from Webfishing when I first installed it. I was pleasantly surprised, and it’s what keeps me coming back. That, and fishing, of course. There’s a real kick from catching a fish so big that it clips through the map. Though, not so much of a kick from then spending all of your profits from it on scratchcards, and losing most of them.
Webfishing is bizarre and surreal at the best of times, especially when you witness your friend parkour from one side of the map to the other — meowing frantically the entire time, because that’s a thing you can do — but there’s something just so lovely about it all. Webfishing is a small corner of the internet where — when hackers aren’t trying to ruin the fun — you can truly switch off and relax for a while. Fish, gamble, parkour. Push people into the ocean. Get wine drunk on the pier. Webfishing is an underrated gem and a rare place of respite for gamers who need a break from it all.