Developer: Freemind SA, 100 Games SA
Publisher: Freemind SA, Ultimate Games, PlayWay
Platform: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Aquarist – Review
Ever wanted to own an aquarium, but you were not allowed to have it at home or you did not have the budget? Aquarist looks like the game that might make this wish come true. This game is a sandbox simulator game from FreeMind. From what we have seen, it looks like a good and easygoing game. Let’s dive in with the fish and see how this game will play.
Story
You just turned fourteen and your dad decided that it is time you take some responsibility. He gives you an aquarium and some cash, and with that, your journey as an aquarium owner starts. When you are doing a good job of breeding and keeping your fish alive, your father comes back up asking to help him with the aquarium downstairs. This is a dirty aquarium with dead fish floating on the surface. You then help him with cleaning the aquarium and getting new fish. This continues a bit further, until you get to open your very own shop in the basement.
The story is straightforward: it’s a basic rags-to-riches narrative where you start with hardly any resources. This further evolves into a neverending list of tasks, rather than a fleshed-out narrative. That being said, it works for a game such as this.
Graphics
Aquarist’s graphics aren’t the prettiest. The characters are poorly made and look like wooden dolls when moving around. The toilet in your home has red water, for some reason. Some props don’t look that bad. The fish look better than the NPCs and so do the decorations. Everything is easily recognizable, and with some polish and better textures, things wouldn’t look too bad. Even so, everything concerning the actual aquariums looks decent enough. The UI is also decent enough, even though the control prompts could stand out a bit more. The menus were clear, and that’s already one of the most important aspects for a game such as this.
Sound
The game’s background music consists of relaxing jazz music. This choice of backdrop is actually fitting for this kind of game. We felt relaxed when designing our favorite fish tanks, and we never were under the impression we had to rush. SFX of the other elements are simple and not bad for most situations. Some SFX feel a bit overused and a bit more variety here would have been nice.
Gameplay
Aquarist is a first-person game about keeping an aquarium, breeding fish, and selling them. The first aquarium that you get is a tutorial on how you can keep your fish alive, how they breed, and what is needed to keep them happy. The second one is more focused on cleaning and keeping saltwater fish. Explaining this way is interesting to show us different ways to keep an aquarium. Even though controls were visible on the screens at times, we would have loved a more clear way of displaying certain controls at times.
For the decorations in your aquarium, you can choose the size before you buy, but that function is useless as you can adapt the size once you place it in your aquarium. You do pay extra for this, however. An annoying point of the shop is that you have to use the cursor. If you use the arrow keys, it will change the category and not select which item you want. This way of selecting items shows that it is a port from a PC game. Once bought, the items will just appear on a table nearby. It was annoying that we didn’t see our bought items immediately. The game could have been a bit more clear with a visual notification. Picking up items will fill your inventory bar under the screen. When all six slots are filled up, you need to drop something to pick that up. Dropping items can cause a mess of course. We also encountered a few minor bugs, such as items we weren’t able to pick up, or filters not working properly when activated.
Keeping the fish isn’t as easy as just putting them in the water and feeding them sometimes. You have to look at what PH level your water is and you’ll need to check the temperature too. Each of these factors can be easily changed. The filter is one of the important items to install first, and it needs to be turned on first. The same can be said about the heater, which regulates the temperature. We struggled a bit with this at first, as we didn’t clearly see that we had to turn these items on first. We also learned that plants also need to be taken care of, as these can also perish in your fish tank.
Outside of the story mode, there’s also a so-called Designer mode. This is basically a sandbox setting for those who immediately want to skip all tutorials and just want to do their own thing. It’s a nice addition, but we still quite enjoyed playing through the story mode. All in all, the gameplay loop of both game modes was enjoyable, but we would prefer playing the game with a mouse and keyboard setup. The controls weren’t too bad, just a bit too finicky. We sometimes struggled with more precise actions and even at times we simply threw away items we did not mean to drop or throw away. It was a matter of getting used to the controls, but it still felt a bit rough around the edges.
Conclusion
Aquarist is a casual game that does a good job of allowing fish enthusiasts to keep their own digital aquarium. To us, the game did feel like a poor port of the PC version, and this feeling for even worse when looking at the horrendous-looking NPCs. The gameplay was better than expected as it gave us options to customize our aquarium and had some interesting information about taking care of fish, and ultimately breeding them. All in all, the overall experience wasn’t too bad, but we could see ourselves rather playing this with a mouse and keyboard setup.
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