Why How to Fish Has Players Gambling Their Catch
Expertise: Online casino, iGaming
Dazed Games released How to Fish on August 20. On August 23, the two-person Swedish studio announced that the game had reached one million “fishermen” in two days. The casino is not what players see at the start. Fishing pays for better equipment, bosses open the next stretch of the map, and eventually the route leads to an island where the catch itself can become a roulette stake.
At the Lucky Bait Casino, players can place a fish or another item on the table, choose a roulette color, and either lose what they brought in or receive a higher-value payout to sell back into the game. Steam itself calls the mechanic “gambling with fish”, while making clear that no real money is involved. How to Fish borrows recognisable casino mechanics, but every stake and payout stays inside the game.
Fishing, Fighting and Selling Your Way Home
Carl-Vilhelm Johansson and Melvin Olsson, the founders of Dazed Games, built the How to Fish game around a deliberately ridiculous boat crash. You and your friends have been drinking, the boat ends up wrecked, and getting home means catching creatures, killing them when necessary, selling the haul and buying equipment strong enough to reach the next island.
The fishing is only one part of the loop. Catches flop around after leaving the water and often have to be subdued before they can be sold. Better rods sit alongside knives, guns, dynamite and boat upgrades, while bosses control progress between islands. The game launched for one to four players, then Patch 1.0.4 added support for lobbies of up to eight the following day. Its regular Steam price is $7.99, after a one-week launch discount brought the opening price down to $4.95.
The Fast Rise of Dazed Games’ Fishing Hit
On August 23, Dazed Games announced one million “fishermen” in two days and confirmed that more content and bug fixes were already planned. A stream of patches followed during the first week, dealing with balance, multiplayer problems and roulette bugs while the audience was still growing.
Interest had already been building months before release. Johansson and Olsson had been posting weekly development clips, collecting several million views across TikTok and Instagram and building a Discord community around the project. That attention also helped them secure project investment from Landfall Games. The result was a small game arriving with an audience already familiar with its awkward fish, loose physics and multiplayer chaos.
The developers also kept changing the game after launch rather than treating the first build as finished. Support for eight-player lobbies arrived on August 21, private lobbies followed a day later, and later patches fixed several problems around saving, boss fights and roulette. Several patches landed during the first week, covering balance, multiplayer problems and roulette bugs. Launch-day guides can become outdated quickly when core details change between updates.
Inside the Lucky Bait Casino
The How to Fish casino appears on Island 4, after the player has already spent several stages learning what different catches are worth. By then, a fish can represent the time spent catching it, fighting it, cooking it and carrying it back to a seller, so putting one on a roulette table feels different from staking a token handed out at the door.
The How to Fish roulette table uses items rather than a separate casino currency. Drop a fish or another sellable item onto the betting area and its value becomes the wager. Red and black pay 2x the wagered value when they hit, while green carries the much larger 35x payout. A losing result removes the item. A win produces a higher-value item that can be taken back to a vendor and sold for coins.
Roulette is a side activity rather than a gate in the main route through Island 4. Players can walk past the casino, keep fishing and continue the boss progression without placing a bet. That makes the room feel less like a tutorial requirement and more like an optional use for value already built elsewhere in the game. Anyone who dislikes the risk can simply sell the same catch at a vendor and keep the guaranteed coins.
How to Gamble in How to Fish
The casino only becomes available later in the normal progression. By then, how to gamble in How to Fish is less about learning a separate system and more about deciding which catch you are prepared to risk.
Finding the Lucky Bait Casino
The route to Island 4 runs through the third island. Catch one of the endangered fish found there and give it to the tourist on the beach to receive Carrot Bait. Use that bait to hook the Pufferfish boss, defeat it, then return the Pufferfish Fin to the tourist. The reward is the coordinates for Island 4, which appears on the boat radar. The Lucky Bait Casino is on that island.
Placing a Roulette Bet
Inside the casino, take a fish or another item to the roulette table and place it on the marked betting area. The table reads the item’s sale value automatically. Choose red, black or green, confirm the selection and wait for the wheel to settle. If the color loses, the item is gone. If it wins, the returned payout item carries the multiplier attached to that color.
Roulette Payouts
Red and black provide the smaller payouts. Green is the rarer result and carries the larger multiplier.
| Roulette Bet | Payout |
|---|---|
| Red or black | 2x wagered value |
| Green | 35x wagered value |
The red, black and green setup borrows from online roulette, although the stake in How to Fish is an in-game item rather than real money.
Green also has a specific achievement attached to it. Steam’s global achievement list describes “All in” simply as “Bet on green and win at roulette.” The achievement does not require a high-value fish, so there is no reason to put one of the game’s best catches at risk simply to unlock it.
The In-Game Value Behind the Roulette Bets
A roulette wager carries more weight once the item on the table has taken work to acquire. A valuable catch may have survived a difficult fight, been cooked to raise its sale price and occupied limited inventory space on the trip back. Keeping it guarantees the value already earned. Putting it on the table exchanges that certainty for the chance of a larger in-game return.
The casino does not need real money to be immediately recognisable. There is a stake, an uncertain result and a multiplier attached to the win, but the value never leaves How to Fish. The coins earned from a successful wager go back into rods, weapons, lures and other equipment. A bad spin costs progress inside the game, not money from the player’s bank account.
Where How to Fish Fits in Gambling-Themed Gaming
Steam lists How to Fish as an Action, Casual, Indie and Simulation game, not a casino product. The developer still uses the word gambling in its own content description because the roulette and slot-style elements deliberately copy familiar betting structures. What they do not add is a real-money deposit, a cash withdrawal or a way to turn a casino win into money outside the game. The UK government’s review of in-game rewards identifies the ability to cash out as an important distinction when comparing in-game systems with gambling.
Mainstream games have used comparable systems for years. Reward wheels, simulated slots and other gambling mechanics in video games can reproduce the look and decision structure of gambling without creating a conventional real-money wager. How to Fish is a particularly direct example because the developer openly calls the activity gambling while also stating that no real money is involved.
