Aquarist Review – Xbox

I have put hours into Farming Simulator, I have landed on the Mun and returned home safely in Kerbal Space Program, and I have even power washed an entire miniature golf course in PowerWash Simulator. I have great patience for clunky and tedious games, but nothing could prepare me for how frustrating Aquarist is as a simulator on Xbox. It is currently in Early Access on Steam and it really should have stayed there before a full release on the Xbox Store.

I only made it a handful of hours before giving up because of how unfinished this game is on console. Here is what is stated on Steam that should have been stated in the Xbox Store: “This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.”

I will keep this brief as I wasn’t able to see very much of this game due to crashes, controls, design issues, UI bugs, audio glitches, assets disappearing, and achievements not popping. The story mode consists of a fish-loving aquarium family, and you play as the child whose father is empowering you to maintain the family’s passion for aquariums. You quickly learn that not only is your own father quite neglectful, but you have to clean up his blunder of dead fish in the living room not to mention what’s in store for you in the basement.

The premise is only to gradually introduce you to larger ecosystems and more complex habitats of fish. While it does its job, and thematically is on-brand of the goofy nature of the world, it feels clunky trying to move around in the house as your father has finished his animation for the day and stands lifeless in the living room. Meanwhile, your mannequin of a mother sits lifelessly on a couch, not watching a tv but a tank of dead fish.

The systems at play seem realized and the game quickly communicates what’s expected for a healthy tank of fish, however achieving that is all but impossible by how badly the controls wrestle you out of keeping the damn fish alive. It is painfully apparent that the interface is built for a mouse and keyboard. From trying to select a fish, navigating with a mouse on a controller, or needing to have your hands attend a yoga class just to hit the buttons necessary to scale up a decoration you want to place in a fish tank, every aspect of interacting with this game through a controller ranges from frustrating to impossible.

If the controls weren’t frustrating enough, I had multiple crashes and found a glitch when scaling up certain items, either my tank lowered to the ground, or my perspective got taller. There was text so large it spilled out onto other UI elements making them illegible. However, to balance it out, the item names are so small I physically had to get out of my chair to read them on the TV. No doubt an issue with text size as you sit closer to a monitor but sit farther away from a television.

My favorite bug was when the shovel I used continued to shrink the more I used it! While I started with a hand shovel, I ended with a teaspoon. There were audio bugs and collision bugs when trying to place items in the tank. I won’t go on, but needless to say, it was a comedy of errors.

This game is $14.99 on Xbox. Please save your money and go buy a goldfish. If I were one of the eight developers credited with this (two of which are marketing and PR), I would have a serious conversation with whoever pushed this to release on console. This game needs QA testers, not reviews. To make sure I’m not crazy I downloaded the demo on Steam, and it is a completely different experience.

I am an aquarium-half-full gamer who has enormous grace for small teams and if you’ve made it this far, I’ll leave you with this. Cyberpunk was delisted from PSN for over six months because of quality issues. I’m guessing there were hurdles on PSN that aren’t currently on the Xbox’s storefront. I would love to be proven wrong, and I would love to rearview this when I can control my character, but for now, this fish is belly up.

 

Author: David Fox
In video game terms, I am Wing Commander on DOS years old. I have a degree in Journalism and Entertainment Media from a school you've never heard of and am steadily getting worse at competitive shooters. For that reason, I humbly submit my thoughts on video games to you.

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