Former Stardew Valley dev's upcoming life sim has a brilliant quality-of-life feature for its fishing that speaks to my completionist heart

Sunkissed City, the upcoming life sim game from one former Stardew Valley developer, Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee, includes – like any good cozy game should – fishing. However, one key quality-of-life feature now revealed by its creator is already making my completionist heart very happy.

In a short video posted on Twitter, Lee shares what fishing looks like in Sunkissed City. The minigame itself looks like a bit of a combination of mechanics seen in Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley – we see the bobber floating in the water, surrounded by the shadows of fish, which delicately nibble away until eventually grabbing firmly onto the hook. Then, the catching sequence commences, with a couple of bars appearing on the screen. The fish bobs up and down, and it appears that we'll have to match up the moving bar on the screen with its position for long enough to successfully reel it in.

It's the part after that which has really caught my eye, though. In this case, Lee reels in a mackerel, but as well as telling him this, the game also shows the silhouettes of all the other available fish he's not yet caught. The dev explains that this information is accurate to your current location, weather, and so on.

"Useful little QOL thing – when you catch a fish, the game will show you all of the other fish that are currently available (for the current weather, time, and location), which can be a big help if you're trying to complete your fishing collection," he writes.

Essentially, you'll never be sat wasting your time trying to catch all the available fish you can without realizing that you're not going to find anything new during your session. Equally, it can help highlight to you when you're missing something that you might not have been aware of – all great news if you're as keen as I am to contribute to a vibrant in-game aquarium.

I love a cozy game, but sometimes I find myself heavily relying on guides to point me in the right direction of certain collectible things like fish. This Sunkissed City feature sounds like it'll make that feel a lot less necessary, which I'm totally here for.

Lee worked on Stardew Valley for its 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 updates, first contributing to ConcernedApe's hit farming sim back in early 2019. More recently, though, he's been hard at work on Sunkissed City, which recently got pushed back to a 2026 launch after previously aiming to release sometime last year.

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