This Wordle-like game makes you catch and guess Stardew Valley's fish
This is not the Wordle-like game I was expecting next.
If you thought every variation on Wordle had already been done, well you didn't have enough faith in the internet or videogames because there's now a Wordle-like for Stardew Valley. Specifically, it's Pufferdle, in which you guess the fish in Stardew Valley. Oh, and it makes you actually play Stardew's fishing minigame too.
Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone shared a link to Pufferdle himself this week, crediting Stardew forum user Sircactupus for creating it. You start off by attempting to catch a fish the same way you would in Stardew Valley: by clicking and holding to raise and lower a bar while following a bouncing fish icon. You can turn that part off in the settings, but the difficulty of the catch is itself a hint for those who spend way more time fishing than I do.
You'll then start guessing fish, seeing whether they partially or perfectly match the correct answer in categories of season, weather condition, location, and time of day when they can be found. As with regular Wordle, you get a set number of guesses and each category will report back as green, yellow or grey.
Only the most diehard of players are likely to have all these fish attributes memorized, so you can mouse over the fish selection to see their season, location, and so on. Though there's also a hard mode without the details given if you've fully memorized that eels are caught in the ocean during fall and spring only while it's raining after 4pm.
As with other Wordle spinoffs, it becomes more of solving a puzzle from a set selection of answers instead of the total vocabulary quiz of Wordle itself. It's a neat idea though, and the fact that it actually recreates the minigame is a nice touch.
You can cast your line out for a streak of daily fish guessing challenges over on the Pufferdle website.
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Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.