A Nice Day for Fishing is a cute take on the whole parody bit in games. Based on Viva La Dirt League, a YouTube channel I’ve never heard about until now, it riffs on MMOs, especially World of WarCraft, by having you play as a NPC who for some reason was turned into a player character after all adventurers were banned from the game world.
Now, as an ex-nobody fisherman NPC, it’s up to you to, well, fish your way into saving the world from an evil entity that has been unleashed by a good-for-nothing arrogant wizard. In the game, combat takes place as you throw your line into ponds, lakes, rivers, and even the sea. While sounding pretty tame and boring at first, the way developer FusionPlay has mixed in a sort of minigame into the proceedings, it’s far from being repetitive and actually kind of fun to engage with.
Another great draw to the game is the humor. Yeah, it actively tries to be funny, but not in an overbearing way, so it ends up coming off as endearing. From the little that I’ve looked into Viva La Dirt League, that seems to be their M.O., and it comes off well in A Nice Day for Fishing. The main character is a doofus, and the others seem to acknowledge and just overlook that which makes it all the funnier. The guy only repeats the same line every time, and truth behold, it is always a nice day for fishing when the only thing that you do in the game is exactly that.
Graphically, the game also shines. The pixel art puts its super-deformed style to great use by having it all look like a kid’s game, with colorful backdrops and the type of animation you’d find in Terraria. The end result is something that could easily run on just about any configuration. I also love the epicness of the soundtrack, which makes every single one of your initially menial tasks feel like historic accomplishments every time you finish them by turning in a quest.
Thankfully, there’s enough depth here to make it much more than a simple pick up and play, throwaway experience. As you level up, you gain access to better and more complicated fishing equipment that allows you to catch bigger and more dangerous fish, and with each new addition, the gameplay grows as well, by having you do more involved actions during fights. At first, it’s only a matter of button mashing, but it doesn’t take long before you’re required to pull away, defend yourself, and even parry and riposte attacks. Wait, is this Dark Souls? Wasn’t it supposed to be a fishing game? What the heck.
A Nice Day for Fishing came out of nowhere and left me absolutely floored. It’s incredibly charming and full of life in ways I did not expect. Sure, its humor might be a bit too much for some, but for someone like me who happened to be an MMO adventurer for almost a decade, it hit just the right spot. With simple but evolving gameplay to boot, after having a great time with Dave the Diver and Dredge a couple of years back, this is surely THE fishing game of 2025 for me.
