How to Fish Black Screen When Joining: Fixes That Work

The most detailed player report describes the classic version of this bug: starting a solo game works perfectly, but joining a friend's game produces a completely black screen. When that player pressed ESC and then ESC again, the menu stayed open but the mouse cursor disappeared, which suggests the game may be stuck in some kind of frame crash rather than simply failing to load. In other words, the game is running — it just never hands you control.

Other players in the same thread reported slight variants. One got no response at all when clicking join on a friend's game, as if the button did nothing. The reports span Windows 10 and Linux, and in one friend group only a single player was affected while everyone else joined normally, so this is not a universal outage — it depends on something specific to your machine, your session, or the lobby you are joining.

A second Steam thread covers a closely related startup variant. One player launched the game repeatedly and only got a black screen using about 0.1% of their CPU. Another reported that after update v1.0.6 the game stopped launching entirely: a grey screen with the spinning Windows wheel, a mouse that stopped working on the primary monitor, and no way to close the game except Task Manager and the keyboard — after playing eight hours over the first two days without issues.

Start with the fixes that take seconds, because two of them have direct player confirmations behind them. Work down this list in order before touching drivers or reinstalling anything.

1. Ask the host to create a fresh session. One player fixed the black screen by joining early instead of late: lobbies created roughly two hours earlier produced the black screen, while recently created sessions worked. The original poster joined about five minutes after creation and still black-screened, so "rehost the lobby" is the practical takeaway.
2. Restart the game and rejoin. The original poster reported that one of their friends got in after simply restarting the game mid-session, so close How to Fish completely and try again before assuming anything is broken.
3. Try both join methods. Players suggested attempting both the in-game ID join and the Steam friend join, since they may take different paths into the session. Nobody in the thread confirmed the result, so treat this as worth a try rather than a proven fix.

The most detailed fix posted in the Steam threads targets the startup variant of the black screen — the one where the game opens to a black window and sits there using almost no CPU. One player measured it at about 0.1% CPU usage, then got the game to boot by forcing it to run with administrator rights. The exact steps they posted:

1. Open Task Manager while How to Fish is running.
2. Right-click How to Fish and choose Open file location.
3. In the folder that opens, right-click How to Fish and open Properties.
4. Switch to the Compatibility tab.
5. Click Change settings for all users near the bottom.
6. Enable Run this program as administrator.
7. Click Apply, then OK.
8. Launch How to Fish again from Steam.

Results were mixed, so treat this as one attempt rather than a guarantee. At least one player replied that it worked, while another said it did nothing for them. It takes about two minutes, which makes it worth trying before anything more drastic.

A full uninstall and reinstall fixed the black screen for one player, but failed for another, so your mileage will vary. If you go down this road, back up your save first so a bad reinstall does not cost you your progress — our save file location page shows where How to Fish keeps it.

Driver changes have the weakest track record in the reports. One player with the joining black screen was already on the latest drivers, and another tried reverting to an older driver version without any improvement. Neither updating nor rolling back has a confirmed success in the sources, so do not start here.

The most sobering report came from a player who tried everything at once after update v1.0.6 broke their game: reinstalling, moving the install to a new drive, updating drivers, and running as administrator — and they still could not launch. That is strong evidence this bug is not purely a local configuration problem, and it is why the community fixes above help some players and do nothing for others.

Because solo play works and only the join fails, one player in the thread speculated that a firewall might be denying the connection and asked whether How to Fish uses a specific network port. No port information appears in the sources.

Even without confirmed port details, a few low-risk checks follow naturally from that theory. Make sure Windows Firewall or your antivirus is not silently blocking How to Fish, and confirm Steam itself has full network access, since the join handshake runs through it. If you are on a restrictive network — campus, workplace, or shared housing — test whether the same join works on a different connection.

Keep your expectations in check here. The stuck-menu symptom described in the first section points toward a client-side crash as much as a network refusal, and no player in the threads confirmed that a firewall change fixed their black screen. Treat network checks as one branch of troubleshooting, not the branch.

Everything players reported across both Steam threads, collected in one place so you can see the track record of each fix before spending time on it.

The pattern is clear: every fix has at least one failure report, and the two simplest ones — a fresh session and a restart — are the only join-specific fixes with a clean success behind them.

If you have run through every workaround and still get the black screen, your best move is to make the bug visible to the developer. Launch-week players were comparing notes in the Steam discussion threads and the game's Discord, and Dazed Games patches the game frequently — Patch 1.0.9 is the latest as of August 25, 2026. Check the updates page before and after reporting.

When you do report it, include the details that separated the failed fixes from the successful ones in the threads: your operating system, your GPU and driver version, how old the host's session was when you joined, and whether you used the ID join or the Steam join. Reports with that context are far more useful than "black screen, please fix."

Frustration is understandable — the original thread opener said they felt forced to refund, and some launch-week players did. If you would rather wait than refund, keep an eye on patch notes and our multiplayer page for any changes to how lobbies and joining behave in newer patches.