Changelog

What's shipped so far, cast by cast.

Say something, then settle it

23 August 2026

Stickers & emotes

  • The wheel opens at your cursor, four slots you fill.
  • Jump, lie down, or mime a cast. Everyone sees it.
  • Hold a pose until you walk away.
  • Arrange it all in Style, Wheel.

Fishing contests

  • Anyone in a hub can call a contest.
  • Hit the shrinking shoal. Most points wins.
  • Play for a pot, or for nothing. Sitting out is free.
  • The champion wears the title until someone takes it.

Fishing together

  • Your party list says which water each friend is at.
  • A great catch goes up on the wooden board.
  • Friends on your dock now draw in front of it, not behind.

Fixes

  • Buttons no longer stay highlighted after you click away.
  • Hover labels no longer stick to the screen.
  • Skills that do nothing yet can no longer be bought.
  • Deep Lure works: better odds of rare fish in deep water.

Hubs with friends

20 August 2026

Fish together

  • Host a hub and invite friends straight from Steam.
  • Browse open hubs and join one from the Connection panel.
  • Walk the village together, or fish while they wander.
  • Friends see the outfit you are wearing.

Say something

  • Hover your character in the hub for four emotes.
  • Everyone in the hub sees them pop over your head.

Your hub, your rules

  • See who is in your hub, top left.
  • Kick someone out, or ban them for good.
  • Lift a ban whenever you like, from the Bans tab.
  • When a hub closes, everyone lands back at their dock.

The hub

19 August 2026

The hub

  • Step off the dock into the hub: a village you can walk around.
  • Your angler walks to the pier and the screen fades across.
  • Nothing fishes while you are away from the rod.
  • Every building tells you what is coming to it.

Menu & quality of life

  • Menus scale up in the bigger hub window.
  • The left menu follows you in, as a single column.

Steam & tools

  • Groundwork for fishing alongside friends, still in testing.

Music & polish

19 August 2026

Music

  • Music comes to the coast: six tracks across six genres.
  • Pick a genre to hear it on repeat, or let every track play shuffled.
  • A new Music tab in Settings holds the volume, and the music quiets down while you work elsewhere.

Menu & quality of life

  • Release notes now live in the game: a badge in the top right when an update lands, then a Changelog tab in Settings.

Your angler

  • Shoes show up properly in the wardrobe preview again, instead of a sliver under your feet.

Steam & tools

  • The two Early Access achievements show their icons in the in-game Achievements panel instead of a broken image.

Early Access

14 August 2026

Balance & economy

  • A full economy retune: the early game stays generous, the long game is a real chase.
  • New exotic rarity above legendary: four ultra-rare fish, one per zone, for near-maxed anglers.
  • Two special lures beyond the Aurora Rod: the Abyssal Lure and the Moonshine Lure open the exotic pools.
  • Fish now sell at the rod: the coins land as you catch, and your cooler keeps the best specimen of every haul.
  • Shop upgrade prices climb steeper at the top, so late levels are savings goals.
  • Offline catches taper the longer you stay away; checking in daily earns the most.
  • Skill points arrive a little slower past the early levels; the full tree is a long journey.
  • New Master Smith skill: forge every trinket you can afford in one click.
  • Wardrobe prices retiered: cheap first looks, mid-tier everyday picks, and prestige pieces worth saving for.
  • Level and skill points are one thing now: fill the bar, gain a level and a point, fast early and slower later.
  • Chests are rarer but chunky: each pays a big pop scaled to your income, plus a bonus from the coins you have saved.
  • Chests can also drop crafting materials and the odd rare fish, all shown in a reward window when you open one.
  • Chest and seagull payouts scale with your earning power, so they never fade to pocket change late game.

Core loop

  • Idle fishing simulation: time-based catches, weighted rarity rolls, currency and inventory.
  • Active fishing: manual casts before you own a rod, hands-free once you do.
  • Four zones (sea, deep sea, pond, deep pond), each with its own fish pool and rod-tier gate.
  • Offline progress: a "while you were away" summary waits for you on launch.

Progression

  • Rod tiers from a driftwood cane up to the Aurora Rod, plus catch-rate and value upgrades.
  • A skill tree across three branches (Tideline, Stillwater, Shorecraft) with milestone-gated nodes.
  • Beach foraging and a net tool for hands-free collecting.
  • Loot chests wash up on the sand, and seagulls you can shoo (or reward) for treats.
  • Dismantle junk into materials and craft trinkets worth more than the raw catch.

The coast

  • A hand-authored map: sea cove, dock, pond, palms, a burning torch.
  • A day and night cycle with a warm torch glow after dark.
  • Layered rendering and a collision grid so critters, chests, and characters sit correctly on screen.

Your angler

  • Character creation: a layered, animated avatar (hair, eyes, clothes).
  • Salon and Boutique shops with a daily rotating stock and seasonal items.
  • A new Effects tab beside the Wardrobe: a second cosmetic axis for auras and seasonal one-offs, separate from what you wear.
  • Founder rewards for Early Access anglers: a Founder's Cap for casting a line during the window, and a gold aura for logging 25 hours in it.
  • Your aura shows on the coast too, glowing around you at the rod, not just in the menu.

Inventory & shop

  • Full inventory: gear, fish, forage, materials, trinkets.
  • A shop with Buy, Sell, Scrapyard, and Forge tabs.

Menu & quality of life

  • Almanac fish pages: tap a fish for a bigger portrait, its rarity, where it lives, and a written blurb.
  • A new Achievements page lists the full catalog with each one locked or unlocked.
  • The left menu is icon-only now, with a tidy tooltip on hover.
  • Settings is split into tabs: General, Stats and System.
  • A Stats page for your whole career: time played, hauls broken down by rarity, coins earned and spent, and your best-ever pile.
  • The widget keeps fishing at full rate even while it sits behind your other windows.
  • An opt-in global tally: add your catch counts to a running total shared by every angler, with no account and no name, and watch it on the website.

Steam & tools

  • Steam achievements, with First Catch live and more on the way.
  • Two Early Access achievements, Founding Angler and Salt in Your Veins, each granting a Founder cosmetic when it unlocks.
  • Steam Cloud saves: your progress follows you between computers.
  • Steam overlay support, opened straight from the in-game settings.
  • Now on Windows and macOS.
  • Saves are encrypted and tied to your Steam account.
  • Hardened saves: an unreadable save is never overwritten, and a local backup is kept.
  • Lifetime stats are recorded and now shown in Settings, groundwork for leaderboards down the line.
  • Crash logs and a Report a problem button, so any hiccup is easy to send our way.
  • SteamPipe build and upload tooling, with store art and banners generated straight from the real game.
  • Electron + Phaser shell in TypeScript, versioned save schema, CI, and smoke tests.
  • This little site, now with a roadmap.