Luna's Fishing Garden

The review

I've played through Luna's Fishing Garden twice over the years, and I still absolutely love the adorable little bastard. It is cute, cuddly, and aggressively committed to making my brain produce the good chemicals. The world is colorful, the animals are precious, and everything feels like being wrapped in a warm blanket that occasionally hands me a fishing rod.

The gameplay is cozy without becoming boring as shit. I catch fish, plant trees, decorate islands, gather animals, and scoot around in my little boat like the world's least threatening aquatic landlord. There are more than twenty kinds of fish to catch, and the game lets me continue decorating after finishing the main story. Best of all, I cannot lose. Finally, a system designed around my happiness instead of kicking me directly in the emotional vagina. Steam's store page confirms those details.

At a certain point, however, good strategy completely destroys the economy. Once I know what to prioritize, I become obscenely wealthy well beyond anything the game requires. I start as a sweet girl planting trees and catching fish. Before long, I am Jeff Bezos with a fishing pole, staring across my island empire while money pours out of every goddamn bush.

That broken little money fountain does not ruin the experience. If anything, becoming unnecessarily rich gives me more freedom to build whatever adorable nonsense I want. The progression scratches all the correct cozy-game brain spots: numbers rise, plants grow, tasks disappear, and tiny animals move into the neighborhood. Every few minutes, my dopamine receptors receive another gentle pat on the ass.

Luna's Fishing Garden is short, peaceful, replayable, and almost offensively charming. It gave me fishing, gardening, cute creatures, unlimited decorating, and eventual financial dominance over an entire archipelago. What more could a woman possibly need? Nine out of ten plants. I would happily become a wholesome island tycoon for a third time.