What players praise in How to Fish: 100 reviews counted
Contents
We took the 100 most helpful English positive reviews of How to Fish and counted what they are about. The result is unexpected: fishing itself is mentioned by two out of a hundred. The praise is for something else entirely.
What people praise: 11 themes across 100 reviews
| Theme | Out of 100 |
|---|---|
| friends and co-op | 41 |
| guns, shooting, explosives | 39 |
| funny, absurd, chaos | 21 |
| price and value for money | 21 |
| progression, upgrades, content | 18 |
| chill and relaxing | 10 |
| short, not enough content | 9 |
| runs on anything | 7 |
| addictive | 7 |
| bugs | 5 |
| fishing itself | 2 |
Themes are not mutually exclusive — one review can land in several rows. The scan is keyword-based on the English text, so it is a rough cut, not hand coding.
The pattern is immediate: friends (41) and shooting (39) beat everything else. The game is praised not for being about fishing but for not being about fishing.
The top review is a joke
The review with the most “helpful” votes (1,549) is 111 characters long and carries 695 “funny” votes. It is a one-line joke about a seahorse. The second-most upvoted is 87 characters. The third describes a group of friends catching three fish and committing seventeen crimes.
The numbers behind the effect:
- median length of the top 20 reviews: 126.5 characters;
- 14 of the top 20 are under 200 characters;
- in the top 20 there are on average 0.36 “funny” votes per “helpful” vote;
- in 12 of 100 reviews the funny votes are at least half the helpful ones — these are openly comedic texts;
- the 100 positive reviews together collected 2,991 funny votes, against 1,122 in the 100 negative ones.
The practical takeaway for a buyer: the top of the positive reviews on this game contains almost no evaluation of the game. To learn whether it suits you, scroll further down, or read the negatives — they are longer (median 215 characters against 153.5).
The same complaint hides inside the praise
The fourth-most upvoted positive review (705 votes) praises the price and then asks for progression after the campaign, more islands and gear upgrades. It is not an outlier: 18 of 100 positive reviews mention progression, upgrades or missing content, and 9 of 100 say outright that the game is short.
So the loudest complaint in the negative reviews — not enough content — is present in the positive ones too. It simply does not outweigh the rest there.
How long the praisers and the critics played
| Sample | Median, positive | Median, negative | Under 2 h out of 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 most helpful, English | 4.9 h | 3.6 h | 15 vs 33 |
| 100 recent, all languages | 6.4 h | 4.5 h | 2 vs 19 |
Two independent samples point the same way: the people who gave a thumbs up had played longer. Among the most helpful English reviews, 15 positive authors were inside the two-hour refund window against 33 negative ones.
This does not prove that playing longer causes a positive review — the causation may well run the other way. But the common claim that a game is praised by people who have not yet figured it out is not supported by this data.
More from the author profiles
- 84 of 100 positive reviews come from people who bought the game on Steam.
- 2 of 100 received the game for free.
- 2 of 100 played mainly on Steam Deck.
- 0 of 100 had refunded.
- The shortest positive review in the sample is 51 characters.
What we are not claiming
This is not the whole audience: the sample is 100 English reviews out of roughly 15,660 in English and 43,902 across all languages. A keyword catches a word, not an opinion — a review containing “bug” may well be saying there are none. And we did not measure whether these themes shift over time: everything here was captured on 31 August 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What do people praise How to Fish for?
Co-op with friends (41 mentions out of 100) and shooting (39). Fishing itself is mentioned by only 2 reviews out of 100.
Why are the positive reviews so short?
Because the top positive reviews are jokes. The median length of the top 20 is 126.5 characters, and the 100 positive reviews collected 2,991 funny votes.
How long did the positive reviewers play?
A median of 4.9 hours in the most-helpful English sample, and 6.4 hours in the recent all-languages sample.
Is the game praised only by people who barely played it?
No. Among the most helpful English reviews, 15 positive authors were under two hours against 33 negative ones.
Do positive reviews contain complaints?
Yes. 18 of 100 mention progression, upgrades or missing content, and 9 call the game short outright.