Sidebar Sea: Idle Fishing for Your Taskbar

He was here before you installed anything.

Sidebar Sea is a narrow strip of ocean that lives on the edge of your desktop. There is a dock, some water going down into the dark, and an old man who fishes. He will keep fishing whether you are watching or not.



Look over between two emails and the bobber is just going under. Look again after lunch and there is a Copper Bream in the hold, slowly going green. Everything else in the game is built around that second look.

Your clock is the game's clock.

Dawn at your desk is dawn on the bay, wherever your desk is. Night species bite in your real night. The moon follows the actual lunar calendar, so full-moon fish are catchable seven nights a month and no others. Weather rolls through on its own schedule, and the Storm Belt is water you can only set out for in the rain, where most of what lives there bites only in foul weather.

Forty legendaries, and every one is a riddle.

Every one asks you to be somewhere, at some time, with the right gear. Bites in the hour after rain stops, but not while it falls. Full moon, and only the nights the moon is truly full. Nine strikes on the hull, then it takes. Count them in the dark. You read the rumour, work out what it means, and go and be there. Solve the ones on the charts and water opens up past the edge of the survey.

Click if you want to. He manages either way.

When the bobber dips you get three seconds to grab it. Win the catch bar and the fish pays double, rolls heavier, can jump a whole rarity band, and keeps your line warm for five minutes. Miss it and the fish still lands, in your index, at its honest price. Watching pays extra. Looking away costs nothing.

A harbour of up to fifty real players.

Their boats cross your strip on their own schedules. Wave back when one passes. The Night Market's prices move on what your harbour landed today, so "everyone is dumping herring" is something people did this morning. Now and then the tide brings in a bottle with a hint about where the rare ones hide. Nine all-time leaderboards, scored on the server.

It will still be there in month four.

Sixty levels and three perk lines. Five mastery ranks on each of the 120 species. Twelve relics pulled up on the line, about one cast in nine hundred. Four hundred and eighty field studies. And sixteen almanac species, four per season, each catchable only within its own three months. Filling that page takes a year of real calendar however good you are.

It runs quietly and keeps to its edge.

Under 1% CPU. No pop-ups, and no notifications asking you to come back. Close the game and he keeps fishing on the harbour server, with the catch waiting when you return.

Requires an internet connection. Your fisherman, your catch and the boards all live on the harbour server.