Deep Lake is a fishing game by Milena Sorokina, released in October, 2026.
While it may be not the most mechanically advanced Pico-8 fishing game, the narrative line going through this entire little fishing adventure stokes the player’s interest in the story that is told both through chapter cutscenes and gameplay.
The nicely animated title screen greets us with a beautifully painted lakeside view at the sunset. Then the game starts and you realize the rest of this journey will be leading you through this sweet mystery with a hint of sadness at the same spectacular level of artistic talent.
The story begins when Nora arrives to her grandpa’s seaside village on occasion of his unfortunate demise. All he left her is a house, a boat, a box of unsent letters and a pile of debts. Fishing, naturally, happens to be just the right kind of job to make some money while trying put together pieces of his long life.
The gameplay loop is quite straightforward. There are three different fishing spots — The Village Gulf, The Arctic and The Amazon. Every location offers you a choice of four options. You can cast the line and steer the hook to catch something, browse the shop to purchase or upgrade parts of your fishing kit, sweep through the pages of the album showing every fish and secret you have caught or uncovered, and finally you can reveal the code that tracks your game progress. Type it in at the main menu’s load game option and you’ll resume fishing right from where you stopped the last time, just like you often did on your old Nintendo.
Wherever you’re fishing, the goal of the stage is to catch the legendary fish at the very bottom. You’ll need to collect all three secrets scattered at different depths to make it happen and that in turn requires fishing for less sophisticated species that actually bring you money.
Get enough coins and the shop will let you purchase a longer line to go even deeper, upgrade your hooks to catch more fish in one go, get a better reel for better control the hook speed and have a special bait that only attracts more expensive species of fish.
Even though there’s plenty of room for a player to demonstrate their arcade fishing skills and reaction speed, you’re never in hurry. There is no timer or a limit on the number of times you can cast the line, so it is a very relaxed experience. You can try to collect every fish in the game or focus on the story objective instead — the choice is yours.
The only fail condition I can imagine is if you would gradually upgrade your bait without getting a longer line eventually locking you out of fish to catch and leaving you with no money for other upgrades, but I’m not even sure this is possible.
What I am sure of is that Deep Lake is always here to tell a simple yet touching story in a way that makes you care about the people around you, so it gets an Avarian thumbs up.
Play the game on Lexaloffle Pico-8 BBS.
Developer’s Pico-8 BBS profile.