Idle games are familiar territory, but the recent trend of “bottom-of-the-screen” games has kept me entertained. I initially overlooked Fish To Dish: Idle Sushi after adding it to my Wishlist until a community member (thanks, Draco) gifted it to me.
Fish To Dish: Idle Sushi is essentially a management sim that turns the fish you catch yourself into sushi for your customers to enjoy. Starting from a humble fishing boat and a simple restaurant, you will begin to build your empire. But there’s more to Fish To Dish: Idle Sushi than first meets the eye.
FEEESH
Four screens make up the different aspects of Fish To Dish, the most important being the boat tab. This screen features a vast seascape which runs the length of your screen and a boat from which your fishermen will reel in fish. Fishing is automated as your fisherman adds bait to the rod and casts the line, but you will have to collect the fish and top up your bait from time to time.
Collecting the fish is a bit of a pain if you leave it too long, but you only have to click and swipe over the pile until you can automate it. This, along with the occasional random bonus item to collect, kept me checking the game between tasks.
You can unlock new places for your boat to travel through the map, with each new location unlocking an array of new fish for you to capture. Although it felt like some of these unlocks were going to be impossible in the beginning, I unlocked them rather naturally once things started going well in the other tabs.
Tabbed For Success
The second tab is the home of your sushi bar. Here, your fish are processed into sushi and sold to restaurant customers for profit.
Your sushi bar levels up over time, adding new benches and staff unlocks. You can also “spend fish” to level up each of your sushi dishes to make them more cost-effective. This gave me a real incentive to collect the different types of fish to level up each of my dishes, and even more so once I unlocked dishes requiring multiple fish.
I didn’t see any incentive to spend my money on the cosmetics, especially when they are really expensive, but it was nice to know they were there. There are about six options for each decoration, but you can’t move anything around.
Upgrade Your Everything
The third tab houses the stores where you can upgrade and purchase the tools of your trade. There’s one shop for rods, one for bait and another two for cosmetics. The upgrades are all pretty simple, allowing you to get rarer fish, but I did like having the ability to stock lots of different types of fish.
Farm More Fish
Tab four is the hatchery, where you can breed two of the same fish to get babies. “Breeding” happens over time and takes longer as the fish become rarer. You then have to feed the “fry” different foods to hatch, with the chance of some foods hatching variant fish.
I was worried this section would chastise me for mixing herbivorous and carnivorous fish in the same pool, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Hatching is easy, but again, if you don’t check in on it for a while, there will be so many for you to collect that it will take ages to clear out until you automate it.
Even More Fish
There’s a final tab where you can build your own aquarium. It’s a simple mechanic with some decorating with simple items and a feeding mechanic. It generates income over time, which is pretty handy, and you can put fish in there to stop them from becoming dinner.
A Clever Hook
Although Fish To Dish: Idle Sushi has a simple gameplay loop, there is one addition that adds an additional layer to this little idler.
Typing and tapping on your mouse will boost the capture rates of your fishing rods, even when you are working on other screens. This means that you are essentially rewarded for doing your work, encouraging you to keep going to hit your in-game goals.
You can also upgrade practically every aspect of the game, making it easier as you go. It gains in difficulty naturally and in a way that didn’t feel like I was grinding away needlessly.
The Ultimate Fish Package
Fish To Dish is well presented. It’s simple, yes, but that’s what I want at the bottom of my screen when I am working. The animations are adorable, and the overall pixel aesthetic goes really well with the cosy, lo-fi soundtrack that encourages you to work. The quick hide hot-key is also a nice touch.
The UI is effective, and I found my way around the different screens without too much input from the game in terms of tutorials. You can also adjust many settings to better suit your workflow and needs. Although it includes some keyboard shortcuts, it still largely relies on point-and-click gameplay, which is not well-suited to general accessibility.
The Future Of Fishing
Fish To Dish: Idle Sushi incorporates many of my favourite management-sim elements. The upgrades and epic bestiary keep me loading it back up, and I appreciate any game that encourages me to focus. It doesn’t have Twitch integration, sadly, but it’s worth a look if you enjoyed games like Rusty’s Retirement and other bottom-of-the-screen games I’ve reviewed recently. There’s also a DLC supporter pack if you want more cosmetics.
Platform: Steam
Publishers: IndieArk
Developers: Kygua Tech
Played on: Steam
About the Author
As someone who’s been enjoying this game too I almost completely agree with this review 🙂
It doesn’t teach you certain things tho and you only find out by clicking everywhere. This is also the case with the point you made of picking up the fish, it can be done by dragging your mouse across them while holding down the button but click your cat (or dog) and it will do it for you; making it a lot easier!