How to Fish can be beaten in under an hour on an optimized route, but a relaxed first clear and full achievement cleanup take much longer, because gear farming, bosses, the Collector and Fishipedia grinds, and roulette RNG add most of the time.
How to Fish, the physics-based co-op fishing game from Dazed Games on Steam, is deceptively short if you know exactly where you’re heading and much longer if you want the whole achievement sheet. It’s a fishing game and a shooter at once — you fish creatures up, kill them, sell them, upgrade a boat, and fight a boss on every island — so “how long does it take” really depends on which finish line you’re chasing. Here’s the time spread by goal.
What beating How to Fish actually means
| Goal | Time |
|---|---|
| Optimized ending | Under 1 hour |
| Documented duo optimized run | 28m 33s |
| Full 28-achievement completion | Highly variable (RNG grind) |
Beating the game means working through all five islands — the fifth being the volcano — and reaching the ending. Concretely, that’s killing the lava whale (the final boss), taking the tail it drops back to the scientist for the RHIB keys, starting the RHIB, and watching the credits roll. Everything before that is quest-and-boss progression: each island gates the next behind a boss trophy, and the first boss’s shell buys your boat keys the same way the last boss’s tail buys the RHIB.
Key The optimized time is short and it’s meant to be — the game ships a Bean achievement specifically for finishing inside an hour. A relaxed first clear has no fixed number, since how long it takes depends entirely on how much you fight boss patterns and farm gear along the way.
How the completion time splits by goal
The sub-hour figure isn’t a fluke run — it’s a designed target, which is exactly why Bean exists as an achievement for clearing the game within an hour. Once you know the route, the whole main path is a fast, tight loop.
A relaxed first clear sits above that because you’re still learning where each island’s boss is, how it attacks, and how much gear you need before the next fight is survivable. Push in the other direction — a coordinated team running a known route — and the times drop hard; that documented duo finish shows just how low a practiced pair can go. Full completion is a different animal entirely: clearing every one of the 28 achievements is a separate, much bigger commitment that stretches well past the ending, covered further down.
The levers that speed up or drag out a run
Playing with others is the single biggest time-saver — the game is 1–4 player co-op, and a team can farm gear and money at the same time instead of one player doing everything in sequence. After that, it comes down to your money loop. Early on you throw dynamite in the water, cook what floats up, and sell it; once you have a shotgun, trick-shot multipliers raise a fish’s value before you sell, which is the real cash engine.
Weapon and boat upgrades are the other pacing gate. You climb from brass knuckles and a shotgun to an Uzi or sniper and finally a fully kitted assault rifle, and the boat engine upgrades let you move between islands faster — both directly decide whether a boss fight is quick or a grind. Boss difficulty scales too, and only one fight is a genuine wall: the lava whale on island five, which rolls, stomps, and rains lava meteorites across a two-phase fight. Once you reach the volcano, the money accelerates sharply, because lava cooks everything at a clean 1.5x value with no timing risk at all — so late-game selling is far faster than anything on the earlier islands.
Before either whale fight on island five, stockpile as many cooked fish as you can carry and drop extras on the ground nearby — they’re your only healing in the game’s hardest fight, and you genuinely cannot over-prepare for it.
The main path to the ending
Island 1 — crab and boat keys
Fish up the spider crab with a beer-baited rod, kill it, and take its shell to the lighthouse keeper for the boat keys that actually unlock travel.
Island 2 — engine and the piranha
Upgrade the boat engine, then find the forest lady’s leeches, fish up the piranha boss, and bring its tail back to her to open the route forward.
Island 3 — grill and pufferfish
Bring the grill master a shark to unlock cooking, help the tourist with an endangered fish, and beat the pufferfish boss.
Island 4 — better engine and the seagull
Buy the top boat engine, then fish up a tuna as bait to start and win the terrorizing seagull boss fight.
Island 5 — the whale and the lava whale
Give the scientist five fish for whale bait, kill the whale and throw it into the volcano, then beat the lava whale final boss it spawns.
The ending — return the tail and start the RHIB
Take the lava whale’s tail to the scientist for the RHIB keys, start the RHIB, and watch the ending.
Why 100% completion runs so much longer
| Achievement goal | Time factor |
|---|---|
| Collector | Find and kill every creature — hunt island by island, no location tracker |
| Fishipedia | Kill every rare drip variant; they respawn, so it’s pure patience |
| GOLD GOLD GOLD | Gamble drip creatures at the slot machine for a legendary skin — RNG |
| All in / Rich! Millionaire | Land green on roulette with a high-value cooked fish — RNG |
| Handyman | Beat the final boss with bare hands — a dedicated skill run |
| Bean | Finish the whole game inside an hour — a dedicated speed run |
Beating the game and completing it are two very different time investments. After the credits, the run keeps going, and full completion means clearing every achievement — which pulls in long hunts, a couple of dedicated challenge runs, and a few pure-RNG unlocks. The Collector and Fishipedia grinds alone ask you to track down every creature and every rare drip variant across all five islands. And because the roulette green bet and the legendary-skin slot machine are chance-based, exact completion time varies heavily from one player to the next — there’s no clean total to promise.
Related How to Fish guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you keep playing after you beat it?
Yes. After the credits you wake up back on island 1 with everything you owned, and all five islands are open to travel freely. That post-game state is exactly where the achievement cleanup happens, since you can revisit any island safely with your full endgame gear.
Is How to Fish faster with friends?
Yes. It’s 1–4 player online co-op, downed players can be revived by teammates instead of respawning, and a team splits the work — one person handles fishing and luring while another shoots, sells, and upgrades — so money and gear come at the same time. The fastest documented times are team runs, not solo ones.
Do you need every achievement to beat the game?
No. Beating it just means reaching the ending — the We are so back achievement — after killing the lava whale and starting the RHIB. Collector, Fishipedia, Bean, Handyman and the rest are optional; they’re what separate a finish from full completion.
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