“Fish are friends, not food” is a great quote from a great movie about fish, and yes, you can have clown fish in Aquarist as well, although their jokes aren’t very good.

Developed by FreeMind Games, Aquarist is a simulator where you take on the role of an Aquarist and face the challenges of tending to fish and aquariums. Starting off small and working your way to the top is your true goal while tending to your fish friends and managing some tasks for your clients along the way will get you there.

Starting out in your bedroom with a small fish tank from your father as a present, you’ll learn the basics of how to tend to your aquarium and sea life with a pretty easy-to-follow tutorial. Not long after, you’ll be given some more challenging tasks to start earning money and beginning your adventure into the world of an aquarist.

As a game based around aquatic life, you want a decent variety of fish species, flora, and other additional features for your aquariums, along with customizations for your building interior. Aquarist does indeed offer a good variety that you’ll be able to unlock as you progress, which later, you can take into designer mode and express your creativity freely without cost.

Managing your fish and aquariums is vital to making money. You do not want your fish to die or make your clients unhappy, and checking your sea life’s stats and altering the tank’s environment is key to success. This can be achieved by changing the temperature of the water, adding or removing flora and more fish, and naturally, feeding them to keep them happy.

Why can’t I walk backwards? Now, for the most part, the controls are pretty standard and work alright, but for some reason, you can not walk backwards. This does not seem like much of a problem on paper, but for most gamers, it feels unnatural not being able to. Then we have the cursor in the shop menu, which is painfully slow and the click area on some options is not aligned properly. So it’s best to say the controls are kind of clunky for this PC to Console port.

There are some controls that are helpful though, especially when it comes to managing your fish and checking their stats. You’ll have to option to enter a free fly camera, and here, you’ll be able to move around inside and outside your aquariums, making it much easier to click on the specific items and fish you need, and thankfully, you can move backwards in this camera mode.

Aquarists doesn’t have a whole lot of flair to it, but the fish and most of the equipment and items you can put in the aquariums are decently detailed for a small indie simulator. The rest of the game isn’t as polished, with some strange-looking character models and animations.

Not a whole lot goes on as far as audio goes, with a peaceful jazz-like soundtrack playing in the background, and a few sound effects when placing objects and doing some actions tie together nicely. However, there is no voice acting, and is, instead, written out in text, which sometimes doesn’t translate too well as the developers are from Poland, so you can expect some discrepancies in the dialogue.

Aquarists is a pretty chill simulator. If you are really into your aquatic life and aquariums, it might be a nice cheap one to pick up. However, it could do with some more polishing for the console port as it seems a bit clunky and unresponsive control-wise.

Written by: MrVibeAU