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.
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.
