Fishy Business. Fishy Television.
A fishing programme that slowly loses its mind, and never mentions it.
Viewers write in. The presenter fishes wherever they ask.
Angler is a fishing programme on regional television, 2003. A lake. A pond. A bath. A sofa. A television. The internet. Every catch is a creature. Nobody on the programme finds any of this unusual.
Thirty seconds, trout to Notflox.
The store trailer is a channel promo trail: the ident, the lake, then one cut per episode, each catch a beat stranger, then the closedown, the presenter, and the box set. All of it captured in-engine. Every trailer, screenshot and capsule on this page is a frame of the real build, not a mock-up.
Keep the ring on the fish. Hold to reel. Let go when it runs.
One input everywhere: a thumb on glass, a mouse button, or the trigger on a Deck. Fifteen seconds for a trout, forty for a pike. The fight has to be fun on plain water before any joke is allowed near it. That is pillar one.
Fish
Cast, wait for the dip, hook, fight, land. Analog reeling on the Deck's trigger, trackpad haptics, thirty seconds to a catch.
Fill the guide
135 species across twelve locations, every one an animal, each with its own fight and a line from the presenter.
Get the next letter
Clear a location and catch its key fish, and a viewer's letter arrives on air. The letter is the unlock. It says where the programme goes next.
Twelve episodes. Catch Fish and other Fish.
Each place is one step stranger than the last, and the presenter's face never moves. The player never notices the exact moment it stopped being about fish. That is the design. Below, the rung and the letter that sends him there.
Lake
Trout, perch, a pike that looks at you. The programme starts here, and starts serious.
Park Pond
"My son claims to have seen a fish in The Pond wearing a hat, but fish don't wear hats. Please settle this." Mrs B. Codsworth, Chester
Harbour
"The Harbour is usually full of junk, but I could have sworn I saw some of it swimming away." F. Fillet, Harbourmaster
Storm Drain
"I saw something in The Sewer Drain with an umbrella, but there shouldn't be anyone down there." Number 42, Bass Road
Fountain
"Back in 1998 I threw a coin in The Fountain and wished for a wish. Could you see if it came true?" Anonymous
Swimming Pool
"My nephew won't get out of The Swimming Pool, please remove him!" The Deep End
Bathtub
"I watched your show and a Trout ended up in my Bathtub somehow. I don't know whether to get in with it or not." Flat 63
The House
"I lost my TV remote a while ago. I thought I saw it moving around in my sofa. Please come to my House." G. Fisher
The TV
"Every time your show is on, my TV gets cloudy, and I could swear I see a fish swimming around in it. Please fish my television." Mr and Mrs Hook
The Router
"Us again, thanks for fishing in our TV, but ever since you did our Router has been playing up. Maybe it's related?" Mr and Mrs Hook, again
The Internet
"The Internet is all fish now, I can't search my websites like this. Do something about it!" Sent from my Desktop
The Void
No letter. The channel closes down for the night, and nobody tells him to stop.
The broadcast goes wrong at the same rate as the fishing.
A typo in a super. A stuck caption. A camcorder timecode. Picture in picture. Buffering at 56k. Static. Flavour only. Nothing ever changes what a button does.
Pineapple Cat. He has fished all twelve places and thinks nothing of it.
One line per species, about five hundred lines in all. He is the tutorial, the guide and the tone. He is also the merch.
The episode: the host reads four letters.
Eighty seconds, for the page and the press. The start-up, then the park pond, the bathtub, the television and the internet, each opened by its letter, each with a catch, then the closedown and the box set. Nothing to spoil except the order.
Between Webfishing's hook and Thank Goodness's tone, at Webfishing's price.
Nobody has made a fishing game that is a fishing show. Review counts are public and move weekly; they are left for the week of sending.
| Game | Why it is a comparable | Reviews | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webfishing | Proved a cosy fishing game with a strange streak sells at a low price. | verify | ~£4 |
| Thank Goodness You're Here! | British absurdist comedy, straight face, short, premium, found its audience. | verify | ~£15 |
| Inscryption | The game that turns into another game; the escalation is the marketing. | verify | ~£17 |
| Frog Detective | Deadpan, small, cheap, loved. The tone comparable. | verify | ~£4 |
Not a vertical slice. The game, before art, audio and polish.
You can play to the credits today. Twelve locations, 135 species, the full channel, the ending. Godot 4 on Windows, macOS, Linux and Steam Deck.
Brandon, Stray Pineapple
Level Design Team Lead at Moon Active, with Zen Match (43 million downloads), Hole Stars (7 million) and Jelly Busters (2 million) shipped. A long-standing passion for ecology and animals in games; this project is a love letter to all things fishy.
Solo. The build is playable to the credits with no art budget spent: the low-poly look, the graphics package and the placeholder sound were all made in-house. The one part a programme needs that a one-person team cannot do well is the sound of it, so the ask is a proper audio designer and composer. The key art is in-engine, like everything else on the store page.
Three shapes of deal. Pick the one for the publisher in front of you.
Marketing partner
Self-funded to launch. Looking for marketing and store expertise, Next Fest support, creator outreach and console porting after PC. Revenue share on marketing spend only.
Small advance
one number, most of it for the audio: a composer and sound designer to give the programme its theme, its idents and stings, the fight and the ad break, and a bed for each of the twelve places. The rest covers localisation into languages and external QA on Deck. No living costs: the developer is not asking to be paid to finish. Recoupable, then standard split.
Full publishing
As B, plus console ports (Switch first: it is a couch game) and the physical box set as a limited run, because the box set is already designed.
| Line | About | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Key art and store set | Done in-house, in-engine. | £0 |
| Composer | The theme, the idents and stings, the ad-break jingle, the closedown. The channel's music is the era's, and it has to be real. | £ |
| Sound designer | A full sound pass: the cast, the bite, the fight, the landing, the card, and an ambience bed for each of the twelve places, replacing the placeholder sound. | £ |
| Voice | The continuity announcer, a day's session. Pineapple Cat stays on captions. | £ |
| Localisation | Per language. | £ |
| QA | Deck, PC, Mac. | £ |
Every date after the fest moves with the money. Before it, nothing does.
Launch at £5.99 with a launch-week discount. Series Two episode packs at £1.99 after. Console after that.
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Sep to Oct 2026 | V1 playtest. Key art done. Steam page live. Thirty-second promo. |
| Nov to Dec 2026 | Art and audio pass begins. Publisher conversations. Demo build of the pilot. |
| Jan 2027 | Demo locked and submitted. Press kit as a listings-magazine spread. |
| Feb 2027 | Steam Next Fest: Angler: the pilot. |
| Q1 to Q2 2027 | Launch on PC and Steam Deck. Q1 with a publisher in place by January, Q2 without. |
| After | Series Two episode packs. Console. |
Brandonbrandon@straypineapple.co.uk · Steam page linkBuild on request: Windows, Linux, Deck zip.
Angler. Tuesdays at seven.