Free demo · Windows · itch.io

A river at the bottom
of your screen

À Deriva keeps fishing while you work. It lives in a transparent strip above the taskbar — or behind your desktop icons, as wallpaper. You look when you feel like it, click when you can, and the river keeps running on its own.

Download on itch.io

From the Araguaia to Fernando de Noronha in a minute. No narration — the game's own labels are in Portuguese here, but the game itself is fully playable in English. Watch on YouTube

What playing is like

It fishes by itself

The fish bites in its own time. Clicking at the right moment pays more, but walking away to do something else has never been punished.

Five places in Brazil

From the Araguaia river to the sea off Fernando de Noronha, by way of the Rio Negro, Furnas and the Santa Catarina coast. Each with the fish and the bait that belong there.

The weather is in charge

Rain, storm, tidal bore, blood moon. It arrives slowly, changes what is biting, and leaves the same way.

One animal per map

Caiman, giant otter, jabiru stork, river dolphin and sea turtle. They show up rarely, stay with you, and each one helps in its own way.

The river changes its mood

Starry night on the Araguaia: light rain, macaws crossing the sky and a pink river dolphin leaping beside the boat — Midnight on the Araguaia, raining. The macaws and the dolphin come and go on their own.

A storm over the hills: heavy rain and the rowboat rocking — The storm arrives slowly and leaves the same way.

Blood moon: the night sky turns red and purple over the river — Blood moon. The sky turns, and what is biting turns with it.

An epic surubim hooked in the dark flooded forest of the Rio Negro, with the perfect-hook notice — A perfect hook in the flooded forest: +50% and a new species in the collection.

Bright open sea, with a large trawler and a seagull overhead — Open sea, at the end of the line — and a boat to match it.

Sixty fish, one by one

None of them is a recolour of another. Every species has its own drawing — from the riverbank catfish to the open-water marlin.

The sixty fish in the game, each with its own drawing

Six boats

The last one is nearly three times as tall as the canoe.

And the river has other residents

A caiman on the bank, a snake at the water's edge, a frog on a lily pad, a macaw crossing the sky, a pelican skimming the sea. They are worth no points, give no bonus and ask for no clicks — they pass because rivers have animals.

And every so often a cat on a life ring drifts by, or a rubber duck. Those two we cannot explain.

Caiman, snake, frog on a lily pad, cat on a life ring, rubber duck, macaw, pelican and butterfly

Latest version

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How to get it

Download on itch.io

The demo is free and has the first two maps — the Araguaia and the Rio Negro —, four of the seven boats and every rod. Everything else still shows up in the shop and on the map, with Unavailable where the price would be: you can see what exists, you just cannot buy it yet.

It is Windows, it runs loose in a folder and installs nothing. Your saved game lives in your Windows data folder, so moving the folder around does not lose your progress — and the full version, when it comes, picks up where you stopped.

What is coming not yet

Two things are already built inside the game and there is no way to reach them from outside — both are waiting on the same thing, which is the game reaching Steam.

Hats for the fisherman

Twenty-five hats drawn, from the straw one to the boi-bumbá. Each one changes the way you fish a little, and the best of them is worth less than the weakest pet — decoration with a little nudge, not a shortcut.

They drop while you fish: every now and then a stork crosses the strip carrying a sack, and you have to click it before it goes by. What comes inside becomes a real item in your Steam inventory — tradable and sellable on the Market. The guide explains how it works, with the table of effects.

Pirate's Pack

A founder's edition, for anyone who wants to back the project and take something along. Two items, and neither of them is a piece you can already buy with coins:

The Pirate Parrot — a boat ornament, with a bandana and a skull on its hat. It was made to be the exclusive one: the seagull is not in the pack, because it stays at 500 coins for everybody, and taking back what people already bought would be a betrayal of the people who bought it.
The Flying Dutchman — the ghost ship, which is the finest art in the game. Expensive for what it does, and on purpose: whoever wants numbers buys the Ocean Trawler. This one you buy to look at.

While the pack does not exist, both are on sale for coins inside the game, like everything else. Nothing was locked away waiting for it.

Before you download

It is free. No shop inside, no ads, no "watch a video to continue". You download it, you open it, and the river starts running.

It is also not the finished game: maps are missing, things are half-built, and there is almost certainly a bug I have not seen. It is a test — and whatever strikes you as odd is what helps fix it.

If you find something broken, send the logs folder with it. It lives in %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\À Deriva\ and already reports the version, your Windows and your graphics card.

The plan is to reach Steam, with the new maps and the rest of what is still being built. If you want to help the project get there, this way.