‘Fish are friends, not food’, as Bruce so nicely puts it in ‘Finding Nemo’. Now, I have never considered fish friends necessarily but they are an awesome pet for anyone who has a busy life; they are easy to maintain and extremely calming to watch. Luckily, in ‘Aquarist’ by FreeMind S.A you can start up your own aquarium business and sleep amongst the fishes.

Aquarist is the first simulation game I have played in a while that does tap on a loose narrative. As a young person, you have always had a keen interest in maintaining an aquarium. From the moment your father purchases you your first goldfish tank, you are guarded with keeping everything in working order. As you develop your skills you will start your own business working your way through clients and assessing and fixing all their aquatic needs. It is all very typical and generic for a simulator, but I appreciate it being there as some sims just leave you to your own devices with no driving reason to keep coming back. I definitely couldn’t wait to grow up and start my own business though, just to get away from the creepy father model but I digress.

You progress through the game by opening up your shop and by doing challenges for customers. This will earn you cash as they buy supplies, buy fish you have bred, buy whole aquariums you have set up, or by completing challenges such as breeding certain fish for scientific research, for example.

You will need to manage things like the happiness of the fish and other animals in your tank with things such as PH level, temperature, amount of plant material, etc. You will also sometimes have to completely overhaul tanks and clean them in a restoration process. It is all a pretty relaxing experience as you scrub away or decide on the types of pebbles you place in the bottom.

The mechanics are pretty simple to master. You can walk around the many environments you are presented with and can access a shop menu using the R3 stick. This can be hard to navigate the cursor to as it moves so slowly, but thankfully there are quick buy options that utilise the triangle button. You can bumper between a range of supply types from marine life, to tools, and decorations to plants; you have everything needed to maintain an aquarium of any size. As you progress you unlock more and more things to put into your tanks which is great for someone like me who likes ultimate customisation.

Unfortunately, I ran into a game-breaking bug that would only let me proceed a little further than starting my initial business. For the life of me, I could not paint my walls, stopping me from progressing further. I uninstalled and reinstalled it, but nothing. I started a painstakingly new save, again, nothing when I got back to that point worked; each time kicking me to the PS5 dash with a ‘reporting error’ screen. This was infuriating as I had to watch most of the gameplay afterwards from videos on YouTube to complete this review.

Graphically, it is quite outdated. While the environments are sound, and the small features like the equipment are brightly coloured, fresh and saltwater marine creatures are bordering decent, the player NPC models are dismal. The father is particularly gruesome to be around and is a mess of proportions and polygons. You can even build some bright and colourful aquariums with neon lighting, or even move to environments such as a Space Station but when the zombie-like NPCs shuffle in it can be such a mood killer.

The sound effects are decent enough, with splashes of fish and satisfying plops as you drop stones into the tank. These sound effects though are very generic, much like the jazzy music that plays through each area and the main menu.

Overall, I did enjoy some of my time with ‘Aquarist’, so much so that I waited till now to mention I then went and bought it on Steam to progress further because it was a nice serene experience. This review, however, was for the PlayStation 5 and as it stands, it was a dismal escapade with very poor optimisation, crashing, and a game-breaking issue. This game has some glimmers of promise though, and a severe update would do wonders. Just buy it on Steam!

Written by: Stacey