When your recreation(s) of the 12 months largely encompass psychological horror and back-to-back, brutal boss fights — as mine did — you’ll virtually positively want one thing mindlessly enjoyable to relax with. Certain sufficient, as I wrapped up my time wandering across the streets of Silent Hill 2, an cute, unsuspecting recreation 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 situations, fishing is all I needed to do.
Certain, Webfishing does have just a little extra to it than simply fishing. There’s a chat perform, and finally, the thought is that you just make pals — or cling along with your present pals — and chat whereas ready for a fish to chew. There’s cosmetics, upgrades, and even playing, however not the predatory sort; Webfishing, thankfully, doesn’t require you to spend a penny past the £4.29 that the sport really prices.
Certain sufficient, myself and an in depth buddy set to work catching fish and rapidly spent most of our income on scratchcards. Our newfound income, which weren’t actually income in any respect, have been rapidly spent on cosmetics and higher bait. Higher bait means larger fish, and the fish in Webfishing get actually huge…
And what occurs once you catch these huge fish? As a rule, you’ll discover different people — who all appear to be Animal Crossing characters, by the way in which — 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 stunning 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 buddy determined to spend our Saturday night having some in-game (and actual!) beers whereas enjoying Webfishing and catching up on one another’s lives. Our server rapidly went from simply the 2 of us to a number of pixelated cats and canine gathering on the pier to speak about something and every thing, get drunk on in-game wine, and naturally, fish.
There have been just a few casualties to the wine, however all in all, logging right into a recreation to fish along with your buddy after which discovering your self chatting to an entire array of like-minded, LGBTQIA+ individuals whereas doing so isn’t one thing I essentially anticipated from Webfishing after I first put in it. I used to be pleasantly stunned, and it’s what retains me coming again. That, and fishing, after all. 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 all your income from it on scratchcards, and dropping most of them.
Webfishing is weird and surreal at one of the best of instances, particularly once you witness your buddy parkour from one facet of the map to the opposite — meowing frantically the complete time, as a result of that’s a factor you are able to do — however there’s one thing simply so beautiful about all of it. Webfishing is a small nook of the web the place — when hackers aren’t making an attempt to break the enjoyable — you possibly can actually swap off and chill out for some time. Fish, gamble, parkour. Push individuals 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.