A thing that was quite endearing, perhaps the main appeal even, about the early internet was how it was a place you could go to, with lots of other, unique places to go through, be they forums, chatrooms, or oddball social games. The last item in the list there kind of faded away for a while, replaced by MMOs and live service games like Fortnite, but these smaller scale, social-first games, or hangout games, are making a comeback, with games like Webfishing. And soon, for the more aquatic amongst you, there will be Coral Social Club.

On its surface (pun very much intended), Coral Social Club certainly looks like a Webfishing-esque game where simply hanging out is the main goal, with a few fun things to do along the way. It’s even fish oriented! Or I guess mermaid oriented, you’re a mermaid, not a fish (I do not want to get into whether a mermaid is a fish or not). In it, you can design how your merperson looks, and the main goal is to just swim about, hang out with or make friends, and sing to rescue lost fish. Which in a way is also fishing, just without the violence aspect.

That’s all that’s really been announced so far, apart from the fact you can blow bubbles which is cute. The main thing that I’m coming away with from this reveal is how alongside the trend of more involved affordable hangout games like Peak or Lethal Company, is that there are these similarly cheap games that are even more about hanging out than the others. Webfishing, this, the recently released On-Together: Virtual Co-Working which is literally a game designed to be a digital social hub you hangout in while you work.

It feels like an interesting counter to the more dominant world of live service, which similarly has many games that could be deemed hangoutable. And it isn’t lost on me that such games continue to be popular with young people in a post-lockdown world. I’m certainly curious to see where we get to hangout next! I request space, prospective video game developer. I’d like to just hang out on an asteroid, or the sun perhaps (please also provide digital sunglasses, please and thank you). You can wishlist Coral Social Club on Steam right here.