When talking about older board games, particularly those that emerged in the 1980s, there is often a mix of nostalgia, curiosity, and disappointment. Some titles from that era still shine today as clever designs that pushed boundaries, while others serve more as curious artifacts of their time. One such title is Fishin’ Time, a game published in 1986 by Distinctive Games. On paper, it seemed like a novel attempt to capture the leisurely but unpredictable pastime of fishing. In practice, however, it turned into something far more infamous—a design that prioritized theme over functionality and ended up being remembered more for its flaws than its triumphs.
To understand why this game still pops up in discussions of quirky or failed titles, it helps to begin with its context. The mid-1980s were a transitional period in board gaming. While family staples such as Monopoly, Risk, and Clue dominated households, smaller publishers were experimenting with niche themes. Not every designer wanted to follow the familiar patterns of property trading or world conquest. Instead, many sought inspiration in hobbies, professions, or cultural trends. Fishing, as a pastime deeply ingrained in many people’s lives, was an obvious subject. It combined an outdoorsy feel, a sense of luck, and a competitive streak that lent itself to translation into cardboard form.
Unfortunately, turning fishing into a compelling tabletop experience is trickier than it sounds. Real-world fishing involves patience, skill, equipment choices, and above all the thrill of the unknown. Translating that mix into dice rolls and decks of cards requires not just enthusiasm but also a sharp understanding of game balance. This is where Fishin’ Time ultimately stumbles. But before diving into the gameplay itself, it’s worth considering how the game was presented and how a collector might encounter it decades later.
The copy in question was acquired second-hand through a local game collector. Priced at just five dollars, it represented one of those impulsive purchases where curiosity outweighed expectations. For someone who had never before owned a fishing-themed board game, this seemed like an opportunity to fill that gap in the collection. More importantly, the seller had warned that the game was “horrible.” That in itself can be a kind of selling point. In the hobby of board gaming, people often seek out notorious designs not for their brilliance, but to experience firsthand the odd decisions that made them infamous.
The box itself, as with many titles from the 1980s, showed its age. It bore the signs of wear and tear familiar to anyone who has handled vintage cardboard: dishing on the lid, softened corners, and general scuffing. More intriguingly, the front carried a piece of masking tape with the handwritten label “Edward C.” For some collectors, such marks might be considered blemishes. Yet there is also a charm in knowing that this game once belonged to a specific person who felt the need to lay claim to it. In an era before neatly catalogued digital collections, a strip of tape and a ballpoint pen were a simple way to say, “This one’s mine.” Every second-hand game carries such ghostly reminders of past owners, and that gives each copy a small layer of personal history.
Less charming, though equally familiar, was the discovery of deteriorated rubber bands clinging stubbornly to the back of the board. Anyone who has handled vintage games knows the frustration of these relics. Over time, rubber loses its elasticity, crumbles, and adheres to surfaces in sticky fragments. In this case, scraping the remnants away was necessary, though fortunately no permanent stains were left behind. It is a reminder of how these games survive not in pristine vacuum-sealed states, but as objects that lived through closets, basements, and attics where people stored them for decades.
This condition report may sound trivial, but it is actually quite telling. The physical state of a game often reflects how it was valued by its owners. A well-loved game might be worn from frequent play, while a poorly regarded one might show similar signs simply because it was poorly stored and rarely opened. Fishin’ Time seemed to fall somewhere in between: handled enough to need labeling and rubber bands, but perhaps not treasured enough to be carefully maintained.
All of this sets the stage for the moment when the game is actually opened and its contents examined. The first impression is that the designers clearly poured effort into making the theme visible. The components feature fishing boats, cards that reference various species, and terminology that reflects the culture of anglers. For someone unfamiliar with fishing, the game might even come across as educational, offering tidbits of information about different fish species and the kinds of challenges one might face on a lake or river. This thematic devotion is commendable, because it shows that the creators were not merely slapping a fishing logo on an unrelated set of mechanics. They genuinely wanted to simulate the activity in some fashion.
However, early impressions also raise doubts. The central mechanic is built around decks of cards that govern nearly every outcome, from catching fish to losing equipment to dealing with wardens. Dice determine movement, while strict rules about turning boats limit even the small amount of control players might hope to exercise. This creates an uneasy first glance: the theme is rich, but the agency appears limited.
Before diving deeper into rules and gameplay in later sections, it’s worth pausing to reflect on why people are drawn to such unusual finds in the first place. For many hobbyists, discovering a game like Fishin’ Time is not about expecting excellence. It’s about collecting a slice of design history. Games like this remind us that publishers once took risks on niche hobbies, that designers experimented with translating everyday pastimes into cardboard adventures. Whether the result was successful or not almost becomes secondary. The very attempt is what makes the object fascinating.
Think of it as akin to flipping through old cookbooks and finding bizarre recipes that never caught on. They tell us something about the culture of the time, about what people thought would be appealing, and about how trends shaped even the most ordinary activities. In 1986, when fishing was still a prominent leisure pursuit for families and individuals alike, a board game about angling may have seemed like a clever way to connect with that audience. That it turned out awkward and frustrating only adds to its curiosity value today.
The personal history of acquiring this particular copy reinforces that sense of curiosity. The low cost, the handwritten tape, the rubber band residue—all these elements highlight how games are more than rules and components. They are cultural artifacts that pass through hands, carry marks of ownership, and often outlive the expectations of their creators. In that sense, Fishin’ Time already earns a place in any collection not because it is a great game, but because it is an interesting one.
As we continue exploring this title, the focus will shift from the physical box and historical context toward the way it actually plays. What begins as a promisingly thematic design quickly unravels into something much less satisfying. The journey from “setting the hook” to “reeling in the catch” is unfortunately one that leaves players tangled in nets of frustration. Yet understanding how the game handles its mechanics requires patience, just as in real fishing. And that will be the subject of the next section.
Casting the Line: Gameplay Mechanics and Theme Exploration
If the first encounter with Fishin’ Time centers on its history, box condition, and collector’s charm, the natural next step is to explore how the game actually works. Board games live and die not by their covers but by the systems inside them. What makes this title especially intriguing is the way it wholeheartedly embraces its fishing theme while simultaneously undermining it with mechanics that reduce nearly everything to blind luck. To appreciate why players often describe the game as frustrating, one has to examine both the setup and the turn-by-turn structure in detail.
Preparing the Lake
The game begins with players choosing a boat and a fishing license. This decision has no bearing on strategy—every boat functions identically—but it does establish a sense of identity. Much like real anglers who proudly select their vessels before hitting the water, here the player’s boat serves as their avatar on the board. Each boat is placed at a “launch site,” which acts as the player’s home base for the remainder of the game. The rules emphasize that once chosen, this site does not change. It anchors the player to a starting point, a design choice that perhaps intended to mimic the reality of launching from a dock and returning there after a trip.
Each player also receives a Life Vest card. On the surface, this detail is a nod to realism. Safety gear is an important part of actual fishing expeditions, so its inclusion in the game reflects the designers’ devotion to theme. In practice, though, the life vest is little more than a placeholder waiting to be taken away by a card effect later. Its presence feels less like a tool for enhancing gameplay and more like another opportunity for misfortune. Still, at this early stage of setup, the vest at least provides an illusion of preparedness.
Once everyone has their boats, licenses, and vests, the group must agree on how long to play. The rules suggest thirty or sixty minutes as standard durations. This time limit is not just a casual guideline; it is a core victory condition. Instead of racing to a certain score or fulfilling a specific goal, players are essentially competing against a clock. When the timer runs out, the winner is whoever has accumulated the heaviest combined weight of fish. The inclusion of a timer is unusual for its era, especially in family-style board games. It creates a sense of urgency, but it also makes the game feel oddly disconnected. Real fishing is measured by patience, not by minutes ticking down. Here, the tension of the clock often clashes with the slow, random nature of the gameplay.
Moving Across the Water
A player’s turn begins with a die roll. This roll dictates how many spaces the boat moves across the map. Movement is not entirely free-form; players are restricted by a peculiar rule that allows only one turn during their move. That means a boat cannot zigzag or double back to hover around a lucrative spot. Instead, it must follow a straightforward path, adjusting direction once before continuing on.
This restriction might have been intended to simulate the difficulty of maneuvering boats in real life. Steering a vessel on water is not as simple as darting left and right like a pawn on a checkerboard. The limitation, however, feels more like an arbitrary roadblock than an inspired design choice. It prevents players from exercising tactical control over their routes. More importantly, it often strands them in blank water spaces with nothing to do. Ending a turn on an empty space means exactly that: the turn ends, no fishing attempt, no card draw, no event. It is pure downtime, and depending on die rolls, it can happen often.
When a player does manage to land on a marked space, the situation becomes more interesting. These spaces, called “Hot Spots,” represent areas rich with potential catches. Landing on one gives the player an opportunity to fish, which introduces the heart of the game: the Master Fishing Card Deck.
The Master Deck
The Master Fishing Deck is both the centerpiece of the design and its undoing. Every time a player attempts to fish, they draw a card from this deck. The possibilities are wide-ranging. Some cards inform the player that they have caught a particular species, instructing them to draw from the corresponding fish deck. Others impose setbacks: broken lines, lost equipment, interference from game wardens. Still others merely shuffle the player around the board or force another roll.
The idea is thematically clever. Fishing, after all, is unpredictable. One day you might haul in a prize-winning catch; the next you might spend hours battling weeds or losing hooks. By packing this variability into a deck of event cards, the designers clearly hoped to replicate that uncertainty. Unfortunately, the ratio of outcomes tilts heavily toward the negative. Roughly a third of the cards strip players of progress or force them to lose turns. Another third are neutral, moving boats or causing redraws without meaningful impact. Only the final third actually deliver fish.
This imbalance turns fishing into a punishing exercise. Players spend much of their time drawing cards that do little or actively harm them, and far less time achieving the core goal of catching fish. Instead of providing tension or excitement, the deck often creates groans. The feeling is not “I wonder what will happen,” but rather “I wonder how the game will punish me next.”
The Fish Decks
When luck finally grants a fish card, the player draws from one of seven specialized fish decks. Each deck corresponds to a species, complete with illustrations and short descriptions. These cards also provide a weight, which becomes the player’s score contribution. The system is straightforward: bigger fish mean better chances of winning.
From a thematic perspective, these decks are among the game’s strongest features. They highlight the designers’ commitment to authenticity, offering educational tidbits about the fish themselves. For younger players, this could even serve as a gentle introduction to freshwater species. However, the excitement of catching a fish is dampened by how rare the opportunity arises. After a long string of setbacks, finally securing a modest catch feels less like a reward and more like a reprieve from constant bad luck.
Life Vests and Risk
The presence of Life Vest cards introduces an additional wrinkle. In theory, these cards symbolize safety precautions. In practice, they act as targets for negative events. Certain master deck cards remove vests, leaving players vulnerable to harsher penalties later. The rules even suggest optional modifications where players can exchange fish for new vests, as if bartering catches for survival gear. While thematically logical, these mechanics add yet another layer of randomness without enhancing decision-making. The vests serve as reminders that bad luck can always escalate.
The Weight of Victory
At the end of the agreed-upon time, all players tally the weights of their fish. The heaviest haul wins. This scoring method is elegantly simple, echoing real-world fishing tournaments where size and weight matter most. It avoids complicated math and ensures that even one large fish could swing the outcome. Yet the problem lies not in the scoring itself, but in the road to get there. By the time the clock runs out, many players find themselves empty-handed, not because they lacked effort or clever play, but because the deck stripped away their progress. The victory, when it comes, rarely feels earned. It feels handed down by fate.
Theme Versus Function
It is worth reflecting on how thoroughly Fishin’ Time embraces its theme. Few games of its era devoted so much energy to recreating the minutiae of a hobby. From licenses and vests to wardens and tangled lines, the designers clearly loved fishing. They wanted players to feel the highs and lows of being on the water. Unfortunately, in translating that experience into game form, they leaned too heavily on misfortune. Real fishing involves patience, but it also rewards skill and preparation. Here, those elements are absent. Instead, the game simulates only frustration, not triumph.
This disconnect between theme and function is what makes Fishin’ Time fascinating to dissect. It demonstrates how passion for a subject does not automatically translate into enjoyable mechanics. A good thematic game balances authenticity with playability. It asks: how do we capture the spirit of the hobby without making the game tedious? In this case, the balance tipped too far toward realism in all the wrong places.
The Player Experience
Sitting around the table, players quickly realize how little control they possess. A die determines movement. A card determines outcomes. The only real choice occurs when steering during movement, and even that is restricted. This lack of agency breeds a sense of helplessness. While luck-driven games can be fun when the randomness creates surprise or tension, here it mostly generates irritation. Players watch their progress vanish through no fault of their own, repeatedly, until the timer mercifully ends the ordeal.
Despite all this, there is a strange charm in watching the game unfold. The artwork, the quirky events, the specificity of the fish species—all of it reflects genuine enthusiasm. It is as if the designers wanted to share their love of fishing but forgot that board gamers also want to make meaningful choices. In this way, Fishin’ Time becomes almost endearing in its failure. It stands as a testament to how much a theme can drive a design, even if mechanics lag behind.
The Ones That Got Away: Critical Analysis and Player Experience
By the time a session of Fishin’ Time has unfolded for thirty or sixty minutes, most players have already formed strong opinions about its mechanics. These opinions are rarely glowing. While the game captures fishing’s unpredictability, it does so in a way that emphasizes frustration over enjoyment. A closer analysis of the experience highlights why it has become a cautionary tale in board game design, and why people still talk about it decades later as an example of how not to structure play.
Randomness Without Reward
Randomness is not inherently a flaw in board games. In fact, many beloved titles rely heavily on dice rolls, shuffled decks, or hidden outcomes. What separates good use of randomness from bad use lies in whether players feel they can influence the results or recover from them. In Fishin’ Time, randomness governs nearly every aspect: movement, card draws, fish catches, and penalties. The problem is that players have almost no meaningful way to mitigate that randomness.
Consider the Master Fishing Deck. Roughly one in three cards delivers a fish, while the rest either punish players or shuffle them around without purpose. Catching fish should be exciting, but because it happens so infrequently, it feels more like a lucky accident than a reward for effort. Worse still, negative cards often erase progress entirely. A single bad draw can wipe out every fish a player has accumulated, leaving them back at square one. This transforms randomness from a spice that keeps the game lively into a blunt instrument that resets the experience repeatedly.
The analogy often used by critics is that Fishin’ Time plays like a game of Russian roulette dressed up as a day on the lake. Every draw is a gamble, and most gambles leave the player worse off. Unlike true push-your-luck games, where players weigh risk against potential reward, here the risks are compulsory. You draw because the rules demand it, not because you choose to tempt fate. That difference is subtle but critical: when risk is imposed rather than invited, frustration replaces excitement.
The Illusion of Choice
Agency is the heart of engaging gameplay. Even in lighthearted family games, players want to feel that their decisions matter. Fishin’ Time offers very little of that. The single rule about boat movement—allowing only one turn per move—stands as the only consistent decision players make. Beyond that, their fates lie entirely in the roll of a die and the flip of a card.
Imagine two players beginning a session. Both start at different launch sites, both roll their dice, and both end up on empty spaces. Their turns accomplish nothing. On the next round, one lands on a Hot Spot, draws a card, and is told they lost their fishing gear. The other lands on a Hot Spot, draws a card, and catches a heavy fish. Neither player made choices that led to those outcomes. Yet the trajectory of the game is now dramatically tilted in favor of one. This lack of causality undermines engagement. Players may laugh at the absurdity at first, but after repeated swings, the humor wears thin.
Punishment Overload
One of the most striking aspects of Fishin’ Time is how much it seems to delight in punishing its players. Negative events abound. Tackle can be lost, fish stolen, boats moved away from promising waters, and turns skipped. While occasional setbacks can create drama in a game, constant setbacks erode motivation. When players feel as though progress is fleeting and fragile, the incentive to invest emotionally dwindles.
The role of the Game Warden card exemplifies this. Thematically, the warden represents regulation and authority on the water. In practice, the card often removes all fish a player has caught. This can happen multiple times during a session. Few mechanics in board gaming are more demoralizing than losing everything repeatedly without recourse. It is akin to climbing a ladder only to have it pulled away again and again. After a while, players stop trying, choosing instead to wait for the clock to run out.
Time Limits as Structure and Burden
The inclusion of a timer is another feature that initially seems innovative but quickly becomes problematic. Unlike many games where the end is triggered by in-game events, here the session ends when real-world time runs out. This design choice has two consequences.
First, it ensures the game does not drag indefinitely. With so many empty turns and repeated resets, a natural conclusion based on points alone could take far too long. The timer guarantees closure.
Second, however, it creates a looming sense of futility. Players who have lost their fish near the end of the session often realize they have no chance of catching up before time expires. Unlike in more dynamic games, where dramatic comebacks are possible, here the window of opportunity is narrow. If you are unlucky early, the timer locks you into that misfortune. The clock becomes not just a structure for pacing but a barrier that magnifies inequality.
Missed Opportunities for Strategy
What makes Fishin’ Time especially disappointing is that opportunities for more interesting design were right there. Imagine if the launch sites allowed players to “bank” fish, securing them against loss. This single rule adjustment, suggested even in the original instructions as a possible variant, would transform the game into a push-your-luck experience. Players could risk staying on the water longer for bigger catches or return to safety with modest hauls. Suddenly, decisions would matter.
Another possibility might have been allowing players to choose their fishing locations rather than relying solely on dice. Perhaps different areas of the lake could offer different probabilities of success, forcing players to weigh risk versus convenience. As it stands, the map is little more than a backdrop for random movement. Its potential as a strategic landscape is wasted.
The Life Vest mechanic could also have been more engaging. Instead of being a token waiting to be removed, it might have served as a resource players could actively use to mitigate risk. Spending a vest to avoid losing fish, for example, would give players a choice in how they allocate limited safety. The bones of such ideas exist within the game, but they are buried beneath layers of punitive randomness.
Emotional Arc of Play
From a psychological perspective, Fishin’ Time charts a peculiar emotional arc. At the beginning, players are curious. The theme is novel, the components colorful, and the promise of competition appealing. Early turns, though uneventful, build anticipation. The first fish caught sparks brief excitement, a glimmer of potential.
Then the negative cards begin to surface. One player loses their vest. Another loses all their fish. A third is forced to skip turns. Laughter may follow the first couple of setbacks, as misfortune can be amusing in moderation. But when the pattern repeats, laughter fades into exasperation. By the halfway point, most players recognize that outcomes hinge entirely on luck, and enthusiasm wanes.
The final stage is resignation. Players go through the motions until the timer rings, tallying weights with little investment. The winner rarely feels triumphant, since victory stemmed from fortuitous draws rather than clever play. The losers rarely feel engaged enough to demand a rematch. This emotional trajectory—from curiosity to resignation—illustrates why the game fails to sustain long-term appeal.
Comparison to Real Fishing
It is instructive to compare the game’s simulation of fishing to the actual experience. Real fishing is indeed unpredictable. Hours can pass without a catch. Equipment can fail. External factors such as weather or regulations can intervene. Yet real fishing also allows for skillful choices. Anglers select bait, adjust techniques, move to different spots, and respond to conditions. Even when luck dominates, the sense of agency remains.
Fishin’ Time strips away those elements of skill and leaves only the unpredictability. It becomes a caricature of fishing, capturing only the frustrations without the satisfactions. For non-anglers, this may serve as an introduction to how patience is necessary. For anglers, however, it likely feels like an insult to their hobby, boiling a nuanced activity down to little more than arbitrary setbacks.
Despite its many flaws, the game has not been completely forgotten. Collectors seek it out because of its notoriety. Hobbyists sometimes bring it to the table as a curiosity, a way to experience one of the more infamous missteps in design history. In these contexts, the game is not played for genuine enjoyment but for the shared amusement of enduring something broken together. It becomes a social experiment, a way to bond over groans and laughs at the game’s expense.
There is also a certain value in examining failed designs. They teach lessons about what not to do, about how important balance and agency are, and about how even the strongest theme cannot save weak mechanics. In this sense, Fishin’ Time has educational value. It illustrates vividly why randomness must be tempered, why punishment must be balanced with reward, and why players must always feel that their choices matter.
Final Thoughts
By the time the final minute ticks down in a session of Fishin’ Time, players are often left staring at their handful of fish cards, shaking their heads at how much effort—or rather, how much randomness—went into earning them. Some sessions end with laughter at the absurdity of it all, others with frustration, but almost never with genuine satisfaction. Yet despite its flaws, the game continues to hold a strange place in the tapestry of board gaming history. To close this exploration, it’s worth considering why Fishin’ Time is remembered, what it teaches us about design, and how it reflects broader patterns in the hobby.
The Nature of a Cult Oddity
Every hobby has its oddities: books that are beloved for their eccentricities, films that are “so bad they’re good,” and games that earn notoriety rather than acclaim. Fishin’ Time falls squarely into this category. Few players recommend it as a genuinely fun experience, but many still talk about it. Its reputation has grown precisely because of its failings.
This phenomenon happens because communities often bond not only over shared enjoyment but also over shared suffering. When a group of players endures a game where every card seems designed to strip them of progress, the experience becomes memorable—even if not enjoyable. Stories emerge: the time someone lost their entire haul to the Game Warden at the last moment, or the evening when every die roll seemed to strand boats in blank water. These anecdotes circulate, building the game’s reputation as a quirky relic worth trying once, if only for the story.
That reputation explains why collectors still seek it out. A game doesn’t have to be good to be collectible; it merely has to be unusual, scarce, or memorable. Fishin’ Time checks all three boxes.
The Value of Failure
If Fishin’ Time demonstrates anything, it is that failed designs can be as instructive as successful ones. In studying this game, both hobbyists and aspiring designers gain insight into pitfalls to avoid.
One clear lesson is the importance of agency. When players have no meaningful choices, gameplay becomes an exercise in watching randomness unfold. Even games built primarily on luck, such as dice-chuckers or party games, typically offer moments of decision: when to press your luck, which option to pursue, or how to respond to setbacks. Stripping away those decisions leaves only passivity.
Another lesson is balance between punishment and reward. Games thrive on tension, and setbacks can heighten that tension—but only when players also feel a fair chance at success. In Fishin’ Time, the ratio skews so heavily toward punishment that progress feels futile. Designers can learn here that every negative must be balanced with an equal or greater potential for positive outcomes. Otherwise, players disengage.
Finally, Fishin’ Time illustrates the dangers of pursuing authenticity at the expense of fun. The designers clearly wanted to reflect real fishing’s frustrations: tangled lines, lost equipment, and unlucky days. But in stripping the activity of skill and highlighting only its hardships, they ended up creating an experience that resembled a parody of fishing. The lesson is clear—the theme should enhance gameplay, not suffocate it.
Nostalgia and Context
It is also important to situate the game in its historical moment. The mid-1980s were not yet the era of modern Eurogames or the rich blend of thematic and strategic designs we enjoy today. Many publishers operated with limited resources, experimenting with themes that diverged from the tried-and-true formulas of property trading or world domination. In that sense, Fishin’ Time deserves credit simply for trying something different.
Nostalgia plays a role here as well. For those who grew up during that period, the sight of the game’s box might conjure memories of childhood fishing trips or evenings spent with family. Even if the gameplay was frustrating, the act of gathering around the table with siblings or parents created moments that outlived the rules themselves. Sometimes the value of a game lies less in its mechanics and more in the memories it facilitates.
What Might Have Been
Speculating about how Fishin’ Time could have been improved is more than an idle exercise. It helps highlight design possibilities that remain relevant today. A version that allowed players to bank fish at their launch sites, for instance, could have transformed the experience into a push-your-luck game. Players would then face the delicious tension of deciding whether to risk staying out for more or return home with what they had.
Alternatively, the fish decks could have been designed with varying probabilities, giving players reasons to pursue different areas of the lake. Some spots might have promised smaller but more reliable catches, while others offered rare but heavy fish. That simple change would have layered strategy onto movement and made the map meaningful.
Even the Life Vest mechanic could have been salvaged. Rather than serving as a token waiting to be removed, it could have been a resource that players actively deployed, such as discarding it to prevent losing fish. By turning passive elements into active decisions, the game could have empowered players rather than punishing them.
These speculative changes show that Fishin’ Time wasn’t doomed by its theme—it was doomed by its implementation. Fishing as a subject still has potential for engaging design. In fact, modern games have tackled the concept successfully by emphasizing collection, resource management, and choice. Fishin’ Time simply happened too early and leaned too heavily on luck.
Cultural Reflection
Looking at the game as a cultural artifact, it reflects broader patterns in leisure culture of the 1980s. Fishing was an immensely popular pastime, symbolizing relaxation, self-reliance, and connection to nature. The game tried to capture that in cardboard form. That it failed so spectacularly may say less about fishing itself and more about the difficulty of translating slow, contemplative activities into board game mechanics.
It also reflects the era’s willingness to experiment. Small publishers could produce quirky titles without the layers of playtesting and community feedback that shape modern games. Some experiments succeeded, while others, like Fishin’ Time, ended up as footnotes. Yet together they pushed the boundaries of what board games could be about, paving the way for the diversity of themes we see today.
Legacy in the Hobby
Within the hobby, Fishin’ Time holds a peculiar legacy. It is rarely, if ever, cited as a classic. It has no modern reprints, no expansions, no thriving fan community clamoring for a revival. Instead, it lives on as a reference point for discussions about poor design. It is the kind of game reviewers mention when illustrating how randomness can go wrong or how punishment-heavy mechanics alienate players.
Yet its very obscurity also makes it valuable to collectors. Owning a copy is like possessing a strange artifact from gaming’s adolescence—something that sparks conversation and curiosity. To bring it out at a game night is to invite an experiment: can the group survive an hour of arbitrary setbacks and still laugh about it afterward? In that sense, it serves a purpose, though not the one its designers intended.