Dazed Games’ absurd fishing co-op How to Fish has taken Steam by storm, and the two-person indie studio is working overtime to keep up. After the game hit one million players in just two days, developers Carl-Vilhelm and Melvin have been rolling out a rapid succession of patches that address everything from griefing exploits to save corruption — all while adding the multiplayer features players have been demanding since launch.
The latest update, Patch 1.0.9, introduces selectable difficulty modes. Easy mode cuts creature health by 25% and damage by 50%, while hard mode bumps both stats up by 25%. The update also includes a Steam connection debug tool in the main menu to help players diagnose relay failures, and hopefully squashes the save file corruption that has been plaguing some users since launch.
But the real story is how quickly Dazed Games responded to the avalanche of feedback that came with 340,000 concurrent players flooding in over the weekend. Patch 1.0.5, which dropped shortly after the initial surge, added private invite-only lobbies — a critical feature for players tired of random strangers joining their sessions. The same update fixed a bug that allowed griefers to instantly end games upon joining, along with resolving an exploit that let players travel to locked islands without completing prerequisites. The studio also lowered the minimum locked frame rate from 50 to 30, opening the game up to more hardware configurations.
Between those headline changes, Dazed Games pushed two smaller patches: 1.0.6 corrected fake server displays and improved the save system so progress is written on Save, Main Menu, and Quit rather than only on crash, and 1.0.8 addressed PlayStation controller glyph rendering and linked the fire sizzling sound effect to the correct volume slider.
The momentum behind How to Fish is remarkable for a game built by a small team. Players steer cursed worm-people on boats, catch hostile sea creatures, and fund their expeditions by selling the catch — all rendered in a deliberately janky physics engine that makes every catch feel like a slapstick routine. It is currently on sale on Steam for $4.95 USD, down from its regular price of $7.99 USD.
For Steam players, the takeaway is clear: Dazed Games is actively listening. The studio has promised more content updates are on the way, and with a community that has already grown this large this fast, How to Fish looks like it will be sticking around longer than a novelty flash-in-the-pan.
Developer Patch Notes on Steam Community
Lena Nakamura begins every review with one question: what is this game doing that nobody else would attempt? She covers roguelikes, narrative experiments, striking art direction, and games willing to risk failure in pursuit of something original. Familiar ideas do not bother her, but safe execution does. If a game is beautiful, strange, and slightly impossible to explain, Lena is already interested.
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