webfishing is such a breath of fresh air honestly. i feel like every vaguely "cozy" title wants to be minecraft or animal crossing or stardew valley, but the bloat of all the obligatory timesink systems has been smothering the joy of the low-stakes open-ended lollygagging. i can never just hang out in games like that, because everything is locked behind so many layers of heirloom mechanics included purely for trendiness (via blind imitation of the big name games) and not because they actually improve the gamefeel or streamline the gameplay loop. i can't just play ten minutes of a game like that because those ten minutes are gonna damage my tools/armor or run down a timer or use up a crafting resource or some other chain reaction of unfun grinding garbage.
meanwhile, webfishing has no crafting, no survival, no item breakage, no stamina meter, no food meter, no jumpscares... the physics-defying out-of-bounds void area doesn't beat you over the head with the creepypasta shlock and mostly just exists as a fun convenient hangout spot to catch basically every fish in... and best of all there's insane griefing potential (meowing/barking, punching people into the water to drown them, playing guitar badly, drawing stupid shit all over the ground at spawn) yet zero consequences for actually getting griefed. if someone drowns you it literally does not affect you for longer than like five seconds.
also you can buy scratch offs and get drunk. i really appreciate that. i dislike the way a lot of cozy games seem to be stuck in a kid friendly tone owing to their origins in E and E10+ games/websites, only ever vaguely referring to adult topics, even while being marketed heavily towards nostalgic adults who grew up on the original ds or played a lot of neopets. just because i want a simple gameplay style doesn't mean i want to be babied; i want the simplicity because i'm an adult with realass adult responsibilities and don't have time/energy to grind, not because i'm still mentally ten years old and blanche at mature topics. and so i really appreciate the way webfishing will scratch that itch for "wild world if it was just fishing and able sisters" while also letting you have bloodshot eyes, wear a hat that says "i love peeing", and then blow all your money on beer and scratch offs. like honestly truly who else is doing it like webfishing