WittNet Waters — A Fishing Boat Simulator
A small 2D fishing boat simulation, compiled to WebAssembly and playable directly in the browser below. Steer out from the harbor, cast a line, and sell what you catch to afford better gear — loosely in the spirit of Dredge. A Lovecraftian turn is reportedly planned for a future update, but isn't reachable in this build yet.
Controls
- Arrow keys — steer the boat (up/down for throttle forward/reverse, left/right to turn)
- Space — cast the line, then strike (set the hook) once a fish bites
- S — give the fish slack line while it's fighting
- + / - — tighten or loosen the reel brake
- H — cast off from the harbor, or open the fish hall to trade once docked
- Enter — sell your catch at the fish hall
- 1–4 — buy equipment upgrades
Too little slack and the line snaps; too much and the fish tears free. Strike too late and it gets away on its own. The cargo hold has a fixed capacity, so anything caught past that gets thrown back. The harbor sits about 90 meters from the start of the world, at the pier on the left end of the coast — dock there (stop the boat, reel in the rod) to sell cod, herring, and mackerel and buy better equipment for the next trip.
The game's own on-screen prompts are in German, since it was never translated; the controls above describe what each key does, not what's printed on screen.
History
Fishing has been a recurring video game genre nearly as long as consoles have existed. Activision's Fishing Derby, designed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 in 1980, is usually cited as the genre's origin: two anglers racing to reel in the biggest catch before a shark could steal it. The genre later split into two branches. One descends from Sega Bass Fishing (1997 in arcades, 1999 on the Dreamcast), which shipped with its own rod-shaped controller and turned the cast-and-reel timing into the entire game. The other treats fishing as one part of a slower loop of sailing, trading, and upgrading a boat — WittNet Waters sits here, closer in spirit to Dredge (2023): chase cod, herring, and mackerel across open water, sell what you catch, and spend the proceeds on gear for the next, longer trip out.