How to play
Fish Hunter is a fishing-arcade game with a casino pay table underneath. Eight fish drift across the sea in seven lanes, each wearing its multiplier on its side (×2, ×12, ×100 and so on). A cannon sits at the bottom of the screen.
You start with 1,000 virtual credits.
- Pick your bet per shot: 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 credits.
- Tap a fish. The cannon swings round and fires one shot at it, costing your bet.
- If the fish is caught it pays its multiplier times your bet and leaves the sea. If not, the message says it got away, and it keeps swimming.
There’s no aiming skill and no way to miss the target: tapping open water does nothing and costs nothing. The only question for each shot is whether that particular fish is caught, and that’s decided by its catch chance. Fish that swim off one edge reappear later; while they’re outside the sea you can’t tap them.
Fish and catch chances
The table is also inside the game under “Fish and catch chances”, and each fish’s chance is read out if you use a screen reader.
| Multiplier | Catch chance per shot | How often it swims in |
|---|---|---|
| ×2 | 47.5% | 30% of new fish |
| ×3 | 31.67% | 22% |
| ×5 | 19% | 16% |
| ×8 | 11.88% | 11% |
| ×12 | 7.92% | 8% |
| ×20 | 4.75% | 6% |
| ×30 | 3.17% | 3% |
| ×50 | 1.9% | 2% |
| ×100 | 0.95% | 1.5% |
| ×300 giant | 0.32% | 0.5% |
The giant is drawn much larger than the rest, so you’ll know when one turns up; that happens for about one new fish in 200.
How long fish stay
This part surprises people: fish don’t leave on a timer. Each one arrives with a number of shots it will stay for, somewhere between 6 and 19, and that number only goes down when you fire. Any shot counts, not just shots at that fish. So if you put the phone down, the same eight fish are still there when you come back. When fish leave or get caught, new ones swim in so the school is always eight.
That means there’s no hurry. A giant that shows up will stay for at least six more of your shots no matter how long you wait between them.
The odds
Each fish’s catch chance is exactly 95% divided by its multiplier. Multiply the two and you always get 0.95: a ×2 fish pays 2 times its bet 47.5% of the time, a ×100 fish pays 100 times its bet 0.95% of the time. So every shot returns 95% of its cost on average, whichever fish you pick. The return of the whole game is exactly 95%, and no choice of targets changes that.
What does change is how the wins come. Shooting ×2 fish, you catch nearly half of them and your credits drift down slowly. Chasing ×100 or the giant, you’ll fire long strings of shots with nothing back, then occasionally land one big catch. Same average, very different ride.
Strategy
- Pick targets for fun, not for value. All fish are mathematically identical per credit. Choose the ones that give you the kind of session you want.
- Fish don’t weaken. A fish you’ve hit five times has exactly the same catch chance on the sixth shot. There is no hidden health bar.
- Size the bet to the target. Hunting the giant at 20 credits a shot burns through 1,000 credits in 50 shots, and even if all 50 went at giants, the chance of landing one would be only about 15%. At 1 or 2 per shot you can afford the long wait.
- Following the giant until it leaves rarely pays off. It stays for 6 to 19 of your shots; firing every one of them at it catches it only about 4% of the time on average. Expect it to swim away most times.
- No rush. Fish leave by shot count, not time, so you can take a breath before each tap.
For another aim-and-win game with a pay table behind it, try Claw Machine.
If you enjoy Fish Hunter, try Five Aces Poker or Five Card Draw next.
