From farming to fishing, idle desktop games have been making a massive comeback over the last year, and Idle Waters is the next one that you should definitely pick up.
Every so often a game comes along and does something so clever that you immediately get a wave of developers pushing into the space it created, either directly copying the progenitor, or innovating on it. Just over a year ago, Rusty’s Retirement happened. It was big. There’d been games that ‘didn’t use the whole screen’ before, and there’d been virtual pets, but it came at such a time, and in such a way, that it really resonated with people. Idle Waters, is an innovation on that, a well-crafted, idle, desktop-hogging little game all about fishing in unknown waters and exploring a relaxing, largely-oceanic world.
You play as a red panda, specifically one that very clearly loves fishing. Unlike the recent sub-genre progenitor, Idle Waters is closer to a fishing RPG than anything else, which is massively to its advantage. It’s also packed with a massive variety of fish, fish varieties, treasures and upgrades… as well as a kind of ‘area clearing’ quest system which powers another upgrade system.
Idle Waters‘ world consists of over a dozen worlds which each have their own combination of creatures and treasures to be fished. Each of these has a value and a rarity level, the latter meaning that you won’t simply be going from one area to the next as you clear them. Instead it’ll be a journey from island pools to volcano tops as you level up and complete your collections.
The quests that I mentioned, alongside the different ways to level up and buy upgrades, are what give it its RPG feel. You’ll have to complete collections, or sets, of fish and treasures from certain areas in order to satisfy the needs of NPCs that litter the world. It’s not a massively in-depth system, basically requiring you to methodically catch one of each fish-type from an area, then deliver them to another area, however it does give you something more to do than simply watch your little panda catch fish infinitely. It gives you a reason to explore the vast variety of settings that Idle Waters has to offer, and it’s really, really well balanced and paced.
Add to that how beautiful and peaceful the various rooms are, and its actually, really, a masterclass in how to make this kind of game. In fact, I think I’m going to be mentioning Idle Waters in the place of Rusty’s Retirement as I work my way through future idle desktop games.
Idle Waters is available now for Windows PC via Steam.
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