Bitfish: Hollow County

Hollow County has ten waters in it and a hundred and twenty fish. You start at Willow Pond with a cheap rod, six-pound line and ten worms, and you work your way out to the trench.

Cast. Wait. When it bites you get two seconds to set the hook — then hold the reel and find out what you hooked.

THE FIGHT Tension climbs while you reel and falls when you let off. Push into the red and the line frays, and it does not mend. A fish that runs hard for a long time costs you more line than a heavy one that gives up early. Rod power, line strength, hook size and what you tied on all change the math, and you feel every upgrade.

TEN WATERS A farm pond, a cedar creek, a granite lake, a blackwater bog, a copper river, a harbor pier, a tidewater marsh, coral shallows and a kelp forest — and off the shelf, a trench that will not take you until you are a Rank 8 angler with a deep rig in the bag.

120 SPECIES Twelve in every water. Bluegill and pumpkinseed in the weeds, tarpon and permit over the flats, something with teeth in the bog after dark. The Fishdex remembers every fish you have landed and every one that broke you off, with your personal best beside it.

DAY AND NIGHT The clock runs while you fish. Some species only move at dawn and dusk, some only after dark, and the bog is a different place at night.

THE TANK Anything over the trophy weight goes in the trophy tank. Everything else goes in the bucket and gets sold at the shack, and what the shack pays buys the next rod.

NO ACCOUNT. NO SERVER. Your save lives on your device. There is no sign-in, no cloud, no leaderboard, no tracking and nothing collected about you. It works with the phone in airplane mode.

TACKLE SHOP The tackle shop runs on coins you catch, and that part of the game is free and complete. A separate coin shop sells coins for real money and can remove the ads — you can lock it behind a PIN in about ten seconds from the tackle bag, and turn it off again the same way.

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