Luna’s Fishing Garden
Fishing for a Fox
Developer: Coldwild Games
Publisher: Coldwild Games
Genre: Fishing, Idle
I love this game. I love it so much. I love it so much that right after I beat it, I realized I missed one achievement and immediately went back in to play it, and beat it again. It is a very, very short game, maybe a couple of hours.
What a beautiful couple of hours it was.
You play as Cassie, a fisherwoman who was caught up in a storm and whisked away to a mysterious island with a fox spirit.
The game is part fishing game, part idle game. You start off with just your little boat and your little fishing pole, and as you do quests for the residents of the garden, you unlock more of the map, as well other features such as plants and animals you can populate the little islands with.
Fishing allows you to choose two possible modes, Challenging or Relaxing. Relaxing is easy and calm, and is what I personally chose for my playthrough. Challenging is similar in gameplay to Stardew Valley’s system. I enjoyed the Relaxing mode and am very happy they had options! You can change this in the menu anytime you want.
The idle game part shows up once you get the seed bag and are able to start planting plants for the garden. You can then harvest them and sell the items to Luna, or you can automate it by placing Capybaras, and later Kea parrots. You also sometimes have to wait around a little bit for plants or trees to grow and produce fruit for quests.
As I mention in the screenshot, 10/10. I loved this game, it was so cozy and made me feel so at peace for a short time. Definitely give it a try if you’re looking for something calm and chill. It has wonderful art, fun characters, and nice music, what’s not to love?
I mean, in between writing this review and formatting it for the site, I replayed the game in full again. There's something just very replayable about it with its simplicity.
Fun fact, the game’s artist, Illufinch, says that this game was what got them interested in capybaras. I even messaged them on tumblr to say how much I loved the art (I’ve been a follower of theirs for years because I love their pixel art) and how adorable Cassie’s happy fish dance was, and they said the fish dance was one of their favorite things to make in the game, then posted this absolutely precious animated GIF! I felt so blessed.
Review posted 2023/12/16