A newly released Steam game is already a huge success less than a week after its launch, with How to Fish attracting more than 200,000 players. The indie Steam game has seen strong early reviews since its release on August 20.
Steam has become a haven for indie games looking to reach a wider audience, with many of the most popular independently-developed games coming to the marketplace. Games like Stardew Valley, Hades, and Hollow Knight have achieved monumental success on the platform, selling millions of copies and revolutionizing their respective genres. Steam also regularly promotes its large quantity of indie developers with different events, offering widespread sales and visibility for indie games through its Indie Festivals. Now, a brand-new indie fishing game on Steam is absolutely blowing up, with hundreds of thousands of players trying out the game.
New Indie Game How to Fish Breaks 260,000 Concurrent Players
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image via Dazed Games -
image via Dazed Games
New indie fishing game How to Fish has become a huge success just days after its initial launch on Steam. The game is a comedic take on a fishing simulator, allowing up to four players to fish together, sell catches to earn money, and buy new gear to catch better fish. How to Fish sets itself apart with the increasingly humorous weapons players can utilize, with players able to use a mix of normal fishing rods, knives, and even a sniper rifle to catch and kill fish in the game. Fans made How to Fish an overnight sensation on Steam, amassing a peak of more than 260,000 concurrent players three days after release.
Drag weapons to fill the grid
Drag weapons to fill the grid
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How to Fish‘s comedic take on fishing has already been a hit with fans, currently sitting at “Overwhelmingly Positive” status on Steam. The game boasts plenty of tongue-in-cheek reviews from fans joking about the sheer ridiculousness of its premise, quipping about getting attacked by piranhas and crustaceans. Some fans jokingly compared the game’s boss fights to the Dark Souls franchise, using similar principles with pattern recognition and dodging attacks, which result in some unexpectedly difficult challenges.
The impressive early performance of How to Fish should help it to stand out amongst a vast array of “friendslop” games. The genre has seen massive growth in recent years, with more indie developers creating games aimed at bringing groups of players together for one common goal. Meccha Chameleon has been a huge recent success story for the genre, with the game passing 10 million units sold in June. Other popular co-op games like Among Us and Lethal Company have often been attributed as part of the friendslop genre as well for following a similar formula.
2026 has been a big year for indie games on Steam with several new releases achieving massive popularity. Tactical role-playing game Mewgenics, developed by the creator of The Binding of Isaac, has been one of the highest-rated games of 2026 and is now planned to receive ports to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. Fan-favorite indie deckbuilder Slay the Spire also finally received a sequel in 2026, with Slay the Spire 2 releasing in early access and adding multiple new features and characters to the game. How to Fish looks to fit in nicely amongst some impressive competition already making waves on Steam.
