Aqua Fish Demo

Regardless of how long or short might a fish's memory be, they are still rather interesting and fascinating creatures, especially since they can sometimes live in the harshest of environments and thrive, despite the conditions. On the other hand, they can also be colorful and cute, which makes them the best kind of protagonist for animated movies and video games.

Aqua Fish is an arcade game in which you play with a funny-looking little fish, whose only purpose is to collect the stars that decorate the reef in which he lives. However, he must also avoid making contact with the other, less peaceful species of fish, otherwise he gets eaten and you have to go back at the finish line. While it is fairly obvious that the game is by no means complicated or deep, it wasn't designed to be anyway, but rather to give you something fun to do while you are bored.

As anyone with a bit of gaming history might be able to recognize from the first few seconds, Aqua Fish is basically a redesigned Pac-Man, only it takes place underwater and the main character has been replaced by a fish. Moreover, the candy has also been replaced with stars in stead and the environments are in three dimensions, for a change. Other than that, the gameplay is almost exactly the same, with some minor differences that are not very noticeable anyway.

Just like in Pac-Man, there are differently colored fish out there, which patrol the maze and kill you if you touch them. However, by collecting the big stars spread around the levels, you can become immune to their effects and even disintegrate them instead, which is very helpful when it comes to dealing with annoying portions of the maze and getting rid of the enemies at the same time.

Visually, there aren't too many things to say or praise about the graphics engine, other than the fact that it's in 3D, which is a welcomed sight in a Pac-Man clone. Unfortunately, the developers did not make full use of the technology and the levels are very difficult to distinguish from each other when it comes to design. The environments are also almost copy-pasted most of the time, thus reducing the variety even further.

While Aqua Fish is not exactly bad, it certainly lacks what it takes to be a successful and addictive game, mostly because of the annoying level design. Other than that, the mechanics have been nicely transposed into 3D and everything works as intended.