What began as a small pixel-based fishing RPG grew beyond itself when the New Zealand sketch comedy troupe Viva La Dirt League and publisher Team17 came on board. Overall, Nice Day for Fishing was the biggest success for Leipzig-based studio FusionPlay.
FusionPlay has been around since 2014. It originated as a brand within the games department of IT Sonix, a software company based in Leipzig, Germany. Following a management buyout in 2021, FusionPlay became its own legal entity (FusionPlay GmbH). "Today, we are a small but very creative team of five full-time employees, including myself. Working together in the same room allows us to operate as a highly efficient unit," says CEO Konrad Kunze. Their first project was an NFC card game containing RFID chips, for which they filed a patent in 2014. They stayed close to contemporary trends. In 2016, they ventured into the world of VR with their debut video game, Konrad's Kittens, which they self-published in 2018 on Steam, PlayStation VR, Viveport, and the Oculus Store. Staying in the VR market, their next major project was Across the Valley, a VR farm simulator released in 2023 for PSVR2, Steam, and Meta Quest. In this game, players tend to crops and animals using their own ‘virtual' hands.