I Am Fish
Buy from Steam
Released: 16 Sep, 2021
Developer: Bossa Studios
Genre: Adventure/ Simulation/ Physics/ 3D Platformer+
Xbox Game Pass is live in Australia! At the moment, my husband has a trial for the online subscription service. It is $1 a month for the first three months at the moment, and he can choose 200 games on the Microsoft platform. That means he can play any games that are available in Xbox, PC or Microsoft Cloud, and cast to the television. You can find the list of games here. Since it is school holidays, Prince Brat finds one particularly funny game to indulge in.
By the way, Final Fantasy XV is on the list, which is pretty cool!
What’s the Game?
4 fish friends, really. The first fish is just a normal gold fish, no special abilities to talk about. Then you can play the other 3 friends, a piranha, a flying fish, and a puffer fish. The goal: end up in the ocean. But if you think it’s easy, you are dead wrong. The game runs on Unity 3D platform. The graphics are pretty cool. There are a few finer details I appreciate as I play.
First, the game mechanic is difficult. Rolling in a glass bowl full of water is quite a hazardous practice. Then you have other containers like a jar (pic above) or the odd bucket. While Prince Brat can handle it, it takes a certain finesse to get it right. When you move the camera, you can hear the hustle and bustle above ground until the camera “sinks” into the water, then the noises muffle and dim. While it does not sound like a lot, it is difficult to have that level of detail, particularly when there are other elements around.
Little Details about the Fish
Like getting poked by a random syringe spells death to the fish, or the odd beer ring can stop the fish from swimming properly. Getting stuck in a cup might be funny, but getting stabbed in the eye by a needle is a pretty sad way to go. Then if you land the fish on land, there is only a few seconds before your fish dies and you have to respawn. Good news is that there are many checkpoints around each level. Bad news is you will die a lot.
The developer has a nasty sense of humor as well. The container has water, and the fish moves by pushing against the container. Problem with water in a container, reach enough speed and stopping will be an issue. This game has a good sense of physics, because the inertia feels real. I have had to push hard to stop if I go past a certain speed, so it is not a game you can just roll past and hope for the best. When you fly, you will crash and it will be bye-bye.
Then the other 3 fish have extra abilities. Flying fish can glide in the air longer, piranha chomps, and puffer… inhales air and rolls down hills (or floats upwards a little?). The game also has some sense of humor,
Verdict
I Am Fish is not a hard game to understand. However, it is a hard game to master, and a game that tests your patience and skill with the game controller/ keyboard. On one had, Prince Brat adores the funny parts like trying not to get run over by a car. The annoying parts are trying to pass a section so many times I get tempted to skip the part.
Overall, this is a light-hearted game I can play with the two Brats. It is funny to watch accidents, but it is also frustrating to watch fish bowls roll off a plank all the time. Consolation, this game teaches patience, physics inertia and momentum, and how you can have fun with just a fish.
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