41.4 hours played
Written 30 days ago
Sleeper game, [/b]far[/b] exceeded my expectations. Really, really good campaign & management. Fun challenges, not frustrating. Have an aquarium, look at fish. Chill and engaging. Good building, but some [/b]mild[/b] limits on creativity. Unbelievably addictive. Overall, deserves way more attention than it's gotten.
[/h1] Management [/h1]
Description -
The animal side is well fleshed out. Tanks have a temperature and filtering requirement that is based on the amount of animals, specific animals in the tank, and size of course. Animals have their own temperature and filtering need, and some have tank item needs (I do not have the DLCs yet, which add fish that have more requirements, although I likely will eventually). Each has it's own size in number, and tanks have a numerical amount it can hold. Some animals will eat other animals that are within a size range and/or type, some just don't like a certain animal. Additionally, some animals will grow over time, which allows you to move them around as they're a certain size. But be very careful with this. Ask me how I know :( Overall, there is a lot to the animal side that allows some fun problem solving. There are a lot of animals too. They are fun to look at and figure out where to put them.
The rest is mostly employees. You have a pretty simple income system. It is increased as your aquarium gets higher ratings, and bigger and better things get more expensive. The employees are skill-based. They do specific jobs, and have a set bonus for each job. As they work for you they level up. You can choose to have them hyper-skilled or be jack of all trades. You manage employees to work load. As you get more fish, you need more feeders. As you get fancier tanks, you need higher skilled employees, etc. They need to be properly told what to focus on, or you can just hire a bunch of them. Visitors are rather simple. They have needs that you need to meet, and they don't like to see equipment or stressed animals, which affects your rating.
Feelings -
At every turn something could be complicated, you could just spend money to not deal with it. Grow exponentially by maxing every detail, or chill and paint your walls until you have a few grand. I have not struggled with money and I prefer the do nothing choice. It's simple to wait until you have it. You are not randomly income punished. For the most part, if you can't do something right then, it will be fine to do in a second. Everything to manage is clear, I've never felt stuck or annoyed. The pacing is very well done - hits the perfect "Now I gotta do this, now I gotta do that..." spot. Heavier on the management than I expected - Pleasantly so far. It keeps you in the game. But building/design is a part of it, so don't expect to not deal with it. The management mechanics are greatly done. They're fluid - you can see what you need to do, you can see what you did changed. There is always something to mess around with. It goes much deeper than expected. That being said I would not consider it to be a large learning curve. It's all very nicely balanced.
[/h1] Building [/h1]
Description -
The game is free build, you can place and remove foundation to change the shape/size of your aquarium. You control where visitors/staff go, and what visitors can see. Tanks can be placed around as desired, and tank equipment can be hidden in different ways. There are a good amount of options for the style of the tank, as well as size. There are themed decorations for both the building and tanks, and you can place aquarium decorations in the building. There are many items for each category. Items are both multiple you can choose from, and some that you will likely pick the same one. You can also have themed areas via floor/wall changes. Overall, there are not a million decor options, but there are enough to make creative choices. You can spend as much time on decorating as you please, or not.
Feelings -
That being said, I wish the creativity was built upon as much as the management. It is not bad by any means, I would genuinely say nothing in this game is [/b]bad[/b], but limited. I think most of this (for me) comes from the guests' AI. A part of the building is working around them, sometimes for better or worse. Otherwise, creativity is really neither rewarded or punished. I think more decor would be a cherry on top for this game.
[/h1] Misc [/h1]
For this genre, the campaign is an outlier in how good it is. I usually just straight up don't play campaigns in sim games, I haven't even touched sandbox yet. I don't have 40 hours, I like to leave games open for some reason, but I'm at 7/10 chapters and I would guess 20 hrs. You could do it faster, but I can't stop myself from rebuilding my entire aquarium every 15 minutes. Essentially, you have a main goal that will progress or complete the chapter, and some optional goals that are rewarded with fancy fish and/or things that progress the main goal faster.
Additionally, the first few levels are the tutorial. I love a good tutorial. This game has a great tutorial. You are drip fed each aspect perfectly. As soon as you get it, it moves on to the next one in small increments. Very much helps with it not being too much at once.
