Fishing games API: fish shooter games for Asian lobbies

What are fishing games?

Fishing games are arcade shooters played for real money. Several players sit around a virtual aquarium, each with a cannon at the edge of the screen, and fire at fish swimming across it. Every shot costs a small stake; every fish caught pays a multiple of that stake, from a couple of times the bet for small fish to hundreds of times for a boss creature. Skill feels central, while the payout odds for each target are set by the game maths.

The genre was born in Asian arcade halls and moved online with the mobile boom. Today it is one of the few casino categories that is bigger in Asia than in Europe, and operators targeting the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia or Chinese-speaking players are expected to carry it.

Why players in Asia love fishing games

A fishing table does not feel like a slot. The player aims, chooses the cannon power and decides which fish to chase, and a group of players shares the same sea. That sense of control and company is exactly what the audience likes.

• Social play. Up to four players share a table. A boss fish dying under several cannons, with coins flying to the winner, is a shared moment.
• Visible progression. Cannon levels, special weapons and stage bosses give the session a structure, closer to a video game than to a reel spin.
• Control of the pace. The player decides when to shoot, how much each bullet costs, and can switch to auto-fire or lock onto a target.
• Short, bright sessions on phones. Most rounds are played in portrait-free landscape mode on mid-range Android devices, often on mobile data.

In the Philippines and Indonesia the genre is often presented in its own lobby tab, beside slots and live dealer tables. Vietnamese and Thai players tend to prefer titles with Chinese mythology themes (dragons, golden toads, the God of Wealth). Chinese-speaking players expect the classics that grew out of the original arcade cabinets.

How the mechanics work

Under the arcade layer, each shot is a bet and each fish is a prize with a fixed multiplier and a probability of being caught. The game is resolved shot by shot.

• Cannon level = stake. A higher level costs more per shot and pays proportionally more. Players often raise the level when a boss appears.
• Fish values. Small fish pay a few times the stake, large species pay tens of times, and bosses such as dragons, whales or crocodiles pay the most.
• Special weapons. Lasers, drills, bombs and chain lightning hit many fish at once. They are triggered by catching specific creatures.
• Stage events. Fish tides, bonus waves and boss arrivals change the rhythm every few minutes.
• Auto and lock. Auto-fire keeps shooting at the current level; lock follows one target. Both multiply the number of bets per minute.

Studios publish the return in the game rules. Because the genre is shot-based, the published RTP is an average across all targets and weapons, not a promise per fish.

Studios operators ask for

The category is concentrated among Asian studios that grew up with it. The names below are industry references that operators ask for by name when they plan a fishing tab:

• JILI — Jackpot Fishing, Mega Fishing, Dinosaur Tycoon, All-star Fishing and Boom Legend, very popular in the Philippines.
• KA Gaming — a large fishing range alongside its slots, with many themed shooters.
• Spadegaming — Fishing God and Fishing War, long-standing names in Southeast Asia.
• CQ9 — Paradise, Lucky Fishing and other titles for Chinese-speaking audiences.
• Fa Chai — a newer studio with a strong position in the Philippines and Latin America.

Players rarely stay with one title. A fishing tab with several studios and several themes keeps the table full, and a table full of players is what makes the genre feel alive.

Integrating fishing games through one API

Fishing titles come through the very integration used by our casino aggregator API. In the getGameList response they carry the normalised value game_type: fishing, which saves you from guessing: studios label the same kind of game “arcade”, “fish”, “shooting” or even “slots”. Build the tab on that single field and every new fishing title appears in it automatically.

1. Filter getGameList on game_type: fishing; keep provider_name and image for the tiles.
2. Register the player with createPlayer in the right currency, then open the table with getGame, device=mobile for phones and lang set to the player’s language.
3. Answer the wallet callbacks — balance, debit, credit — sent as signed GET requests.

Methods, fields and error codes are described in the SoftAggregator API reference.

Wallet throughput: the real integration test

A fishing table is the most demanding game type for a seamless wallet. With auto-fire running, one player can generate many bets per minute, and four players at the same table multiply it. Depending on the studio, shots are sent to the wallet one by one or grouped, but in every case the volume is far above a slot session.

• Keep the debit path short. Read the balance, write the movement, answer. Anything slower is felt as lag between the tap and the bullet.
• Accept credits without a preceding debit in the same call sequence. Weapon and bonus prizes can arrive as wins with no bet attached; de-duplicate on call_id only.
• Index on call_id. At fishing volumes, a missing unique index turns every duplicate check into a slow query.
• Reconcile per round. getPlayerHistory returns one line per round rather than one per shot, which is much easier for support than scrolling through hundreds of shots.

Operators who pass the fishing test usually find that every other game type feels easy afterwards.

Currencies for Asian fishing audiences

Fishing players bet small amounts per shot, so a local currency with sensible cannon levels matters more than in most categories. Natively available: PHP, VND, THB, IDR, MYR, CNY, KRW, JPY, SGD, INR, BDT, as well as USD and EUR. Serving a currency outside that set? Your account then operates in USD or EUR, with conversion handled in your own cashier; tell us your currency at signup and we set it up with you. The list evolves continuously, and the current one is returned by getCurrencies.

Setting up a fishing tab that performs

• Separate tab, landscape thumbnails. Fishing players look for the genre, not for a title in a slot grid.
• Mix studios and themes. Ocean classics, dragons and dinosaurs, and a few fast-paced newer titles.
• Localise. Launch with the player’s lang; Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian interfaces are widely available among fishing studios.
• Cross-sell with slots from the same studios. A JILI fishing player often plays JILI slots too. Our online slots API page covers the slot side.
• Add the other Asian favourites. Sic bo, dragon tiger and fan tan tables complete an Asian lobby; see the Asian live games API page.

Everything runs through one integration: the fishing tab, the slots and the live tables share one wallet, one player account and one report. That is the practical value of taking the category from a game aggregator with 40,000+ games from 200+ providers rather than signing each Asian studio separately.

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