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If How to Fish stays at the main menu and you can neither create a game nor join a friend, try the reversible restart and lobby checks below. They are troubleshooting suggestions, not confirmed fixes, and the available sources do not establish whether an official patch has since resolved this specific issue.
What the menu lock looks like
Here, “menu lock” means the game opens to its main menu, but both routes into play fail: creating a game and joining a friend’s session. The symptom description comes from a secondary troubleshooting guide updated August 23, 2026. It does not establish the bug’s cause, how often it occurs, or a resolution rate.
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Steam lists How to Fish as a Dazed Games release from August 20, 2026, with online co-op for one to four players. The listing identifies the game and its co-op features, but the available listing information does not confirm a fix for this menu issue. View the Steam listing.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsKeep this problem distinct from two other reports in the guide: items missing after loading a save, and a Linux right-mouse input issue. A symptom or workaround for either is not evidence of a menu-lock fix.
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Try these low-risk checks in order
The following steps are practical suggestions from the secondary guide, not guaranteed or officially confirmed fixes. Test creating or joining after each step so you can tell whether anything changed.
- Restart the game. Close How to Fish completely, reopen it, then try creating a game or joining a friend again.
- Restart Steam and check your status. Quit and relaunch Steam, and confirm that your account appears online rather than offline.
- Restart the game for every co-op player. Have everyone close and relaunch it before attempting another session.
- Test a new lobby or fresh game/save. Try a different session instead of repeatedly loading the one that became stuck.
- Let the host enter the world first. In co-op, have the host load fully into the game before friends try to join.
- Reboot the PC. If the session is still stuck, restart the computer and try again.
These checks do not identify an underlying cause. The available evidence does not show that the issue is necessarily a network failure, a corrupted save, or a particular game version.
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Why save editing is not a safe menu fix
Do not edit a save file as a way to get past the menu lock. The secondary guide describes a circulated edit that changed the spawn location to island 5; it says this was a route to the final island, not a menu fix, and that the developer had patched that route out by the guide’s August 23, 2026 update. Those details are the guide’s account, not independently verified official documentation.
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How to describe the problem in a support report
Report what you observed rather than guessing at a cause. Include:
- Whether creating a game fails.
- Whether joining a friend’s game fails.
- Whether a fresh save or new lobby changes the result.
- How many players are in the co-op session.
- Your operating system.
- Whether you previously experienced missing items after loading a save.
Useful symptom wording includes “stuck on the main menu,” “cannot create a game,” and “cannot join a friend’s game.” State the create and join results separately; that makes the report more specific without implying that the two failures have the same cause.
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What is known about patch status
The secondary guide’s August 23, 2026 update said there was no specific official patch or permanent fix at that time. The Steam listing does not, in the available information, provide a relevant update-history entry. As of October 7, 2026, whether an official fix for this exact menu lock has appeared remains unresolved. Check the game’s official update history or developer announcements for a current status before treating the issue as fixed.
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