Get hooked on angling and decorating in Luna's Fishing Garden
Populate your archipelago with plants, animals, and giant spirits
Fishing is my absolute least favorite activity in any game that includes it. I say that, and yet Luna's Fishing Garden looks absolutely adorable. This super sweet angling and collecting game has an archipelago of islands to decorate, a bunch of massive animal spirits, and the style of fishing minigame I do actually enjoy in spite of myself. I may well wind up hooked, especially since it's just launched today.
"Progress at your own pace and enjoy catching fish, planting and watering trees, and settling animals on the islands," explain Coldwild Games. "After you have completed the main plotline, you are welcome to stay and build your garden any way you want to."
Before we even talk about fishing, just look at the animals—the regular sized ones and the giant ones. The massive fish spirit is hard to miss, of course, but I've spotted some little kiwis near the end of the launch trailer here, and capybaras too. Ah, and you can catch axolotls, it looks like. Folks like axolotls.
As for the fishing itself, you can spot part of it in the trailer up there. I went digging for some extra fishing details, despite my complaints about it, and return with good news. Coldwild explained here in a video about Luna's accessibility features that there is a simple fishing mode option.
The simple fishing mode has you hold a button to reel the line in and briefly release it whenever the fish is struggling. The standard mode looks to be familiar to anyone who's gone fishing in Stardew Valley. It's a bit more arcade-y, having you keep a colored bar over top of a fish as it bounces up and down until it's sufficiently caught.
Yup, that's me hooked. I do begrudgingly enjoy the fishing in Stardew, and I quite like the option to set Luna's fishing to an even more relaxed variant when I'm not in the mood even for that. As for other accessibility options, Luna offers a mouse-only control mode and also allows you to change the speed of the fishing minigame itself.
Aside from all that fishing, Coldwild Games say that Luna's Fishing Garden has a main storyline of about three to four hours, after which you can kick back and enjoy the sandbox qualities of decorating your little islands with plants and buildings how you please.
You can find Luna's Fishing Garden over on Steam. It's currently 10% discounted until June 23 for £6.29/€7.19/$7.19.