The GOTY contender you’ve never heard of
My review of DopplerGhost’s Don’t Sleep with the Fishes.
If you’re trying to keep up with all the great games coming out in 2026, you’ve got your work cut out for you. But I’d urge folks not to overlook Don’t Sleep with the Fishes, which hit Steam on June 26.
Made by solo developer DopplerGhost and first published on the indie platform Itch.io, this clever little survival-horror title is one of my favorite games of 2026 thus far. Like a lot of people, I’d imagine, I first became aware of it by watching the popular streamer CaseOh play it on Twitch—but unlike a lot of the smaller, jankier horror games he spotlights on his channel six nights a week, Don’t Sleep with the Fishes grabbed my attention immediately. This was a game I had to try for myself.
Some weeks later, I found myself discussing complex techniques with competitive speedrunners on Discord and submitting my own survival runs for verification at Speedrun.com. My personal best, 60 days survived at sea, beats CaseOh’s record by a single day. (The world record, meanwhile, stands at 136 days as of this review.)
Clearly inspired by other survival-horror games—and one called 60 Seconds in particular—Fishes puts the player in the role of a sailor on a sinking ship called the Dorothy. Strange things lurk out there at sea, and it’s up to you to see just how long you can last before the ocean claims you. At the start of a run, you have 60 seconds to grab every bit of nautical gear, food, fish bait, and everyday essentials you can carry and get to the sole lifeboat in time. Each item in the game has its own unique set of applications, and you won’t believe how handy an umbrella or flashlight can be when used at the right moment.
You have the option of saving one of three available crewmates, each with their own special support ability and various personality quirks. I favor Laurel, who seasons your catches to make them more filling toward your hunger meter and has a chance to do things like heal you, make you a snack, or fashion a makeshift fishing net. There’s also a cat, Captain Whiskers, who grants an invisible bonus to your luck when fishing; you can pet him, which triggers a meow or a purr, and he gets to nibble on any fish that are too small for you to eat.
But this is so much more than a fishing game. After the 60-second scavenging phase, it’s essentially turn-based, with a day-and-night cycle. During the daytime, it’s the player’s turn to make repairs, go fishing, talk to your crewmate, go scuba-diving, and so on. At night, things get a bit more interesting, with a whole mess of random and not-so-random events trying to steal your sleep or straight-up kill you. In some ways, this plays like an old-school arcade game, where you roll with the punches for as long as possible till, inevitably, you perish against an unforgiving computer. Yet its first-person point-and-click interface and leisurely tabletop structure ensure that it’s a fairly relaxed experience beyond the minute-long scav sequence. The game is filled with danger and the fear of the unknown, but, despite the occasional jumpscare, it doesn’t play much like a horror game at all. It’s chill; it might even qualify as cozy. And I can’t get enough of it.
When I’m not playing this game, I’m often watching the world-record holders play it on Twitch. It’s the first single-player game I’ve ever had a desire to play in any kind of competitive capacity. Which I think is because it so plainly mirrors our historical moment, the zeitgeist, the everyday reality of 99-percenters like me. Since November 2024, I’ve been laid off from my job twice in the span of 17 months; the cost of living is astronomical. Tomorrow is never certain, and whether we’re talking about a big wave of layoffs, the start of another pointless war, another politician excusing a genocide, or protestors getting sentenced to 50 years in prison, we’re in uncharted waters.
In Don’t Sleep with the Fishes, eldritch horrors peer out from the deep, the kraken demands sacrifice, and humanoid figures claw at the underside of your boat, which is constantly, gradually deteriorating. Will you ever find dry land? Get rescued by a passing cargo ship in the night? Or, in the end, are we all doomed to starve at sea, one way or another? While you’re taking on water and navigating across the waves, I have little doubt you’ll find a great deal of meaning in this lovely, eminently replayable game from DopplerGhost.