Fish Lab

As a visual experience, this is a super cool atmospheric experience oozing with polish. As an incremental game, it falls short in almost every respect. To start on a good note, I want to be absolutely clear that the atmosphere is top tier. The fish swarms and all of the UI polish and interactions are the saving grace for this game and why I picked it up despite playing the demo (Based on the demo, I expected many of the issues I bring up here). To a person like me that really likes this type of polish and looking at all the pretty details, I consider it worth the ~$5. Unfortunately, for most people who consider that a "nice to have" and care more about the gameplay. I found the experience pretty lacking. The game took me roughly 3 hours to complete. I could absolutely have gone faster if I was paying attention the whole time. The reason I wasn't though is unfortunately a large portion of the game is rather boring. There are very few actually mechanics the game provides across your playthrough, and most feel entirely redundant by the time you get to them or only come into their own much much later when there is so little game left that it doesn't matter (the mines and the bubble thing and the upgrades they got never really felt super impactful). The demo felt much more balanced than the full game when it comes to activating those mechanics as well. In the full game for the first half of any stage the robots feel horrible to use because they take forever to charge and while it is the optimal to spend the time to activate them, that means you pretty much spend a large portion of some stages just tracking a dot with your cursor. In the mid game I felt a bit of synergy build up, and I got to the point where I could get robots activating other robots fairly reliably. Specing further into the robots (with the fish research perks) just made that loop more and more reliable, however, at the end of the stage, I was annoyed to find that the next stage (and each stage going forward) functionally reset the progress on that synergy by making the bots harder to activate. This not only made my choice investment into the bots useless, it also felt like you start from scratch with zero compounding returns. Each stage felt more like a punishment than a new level, back to track the dot jail. For an entire stage the most optimal strategy was just wiggling my mouse on and off the fan button so it would be on most of the time and never run out of energy. A less efficient but more enjoyable experience was just leaving my mouse over the button and zoning out to watch a video on the side. That should highlight the balance issues clearly. It's expected for an incremental game to have these boom and bust cycles, where one second you feel unstoppable then the next challenge comes to put you back in your place, but for this game the cycle felt entirely inverted. You would ramp up your lethality over a stage, only for the next stage to feel like it set you back to 0 despite the "climax" being getting to that next stage. The investment never felt like it paid off, or that a bigger challenge emerged. Just the same fish, made artificially harder at every stage. Put a bit differently, you never felt your investment rewarded or any of the "boom" cycle, because by the time your realized you even had it it was already over. Another element that did not help this situation was the upgrades and progression being incomprehensible. Even with reading the "Fish OS" guide, I understood almost none of the upgrades outside of the straight up "adds more lasers" type upgrades. Even the more abstract upgrades I did understand didn't feel impactful. Why do I care if I have more tanks or more processing? What does that do? I get some passive upgrades for researching fish, but they all mostly felt useless (outside of the robot ones for that small mid game section where I had synergy). So why do I care about more tanks for more fish for more useless upgrades? At the end of the day, by the final few stages, it functionally became a game of just trying to collect all the upgrades to 100% it for my library and move on. The one area of the game I did feel was well designed progression wise was the loadout. I enjoyed moving around the orbs at various times to increase my efficiency, and checking how different setups functioned. It had the same problems as other areas though were some buckets were not well explained at all. Overall, I would not recommend picking up this game unless you are really looking for the atmosphere elements. I was intrigued to see it has a sandbox and zen mode where you just get to play with the fish, so I may pop back in from time to time just to enjoy that element. But its highly likely I will never do another playthrough.

thought the demo is better... the full game isn't, bad fih... 🐟

I'm not too sure how to rate this game.... For a incremental game, it's solid. It has a frustratingly linear path to upgrades but really scratches that itch for "More upgrades = More Power, More Power = More satisfaction". I was able to 100% the game in less than 4 hours, which is by no means a feat (Only 10 Achievements). For it's current non-discounted price I would NOT buy this game. But if it's down to around $5, I would recommend it if all your looking for is to turn your mind off for a while. All in all, the game is visually stunning but lacks in its mechanics and replay ability, its short and offers no way of alternative playstyle. It's roguelike function feels unimpactful and doesn't affect gameplay. For it's current price point ($6.99) I would expect a lot more from this game.

This is a game that is very visually pleasing, However the problem is, that's it. This considers itself an incremental game, with upgrades that act like they impact how your interact with the game changes how much money you make throughout your own progress. But sadly the upgrades do not seem to have any sort of impact on how much money you gain. It just always gives you enough money to buy one or two upgrades after each round. So if you are looking for a fun and well balanced incremental game, this is not the game you should settle for.

progression is extremely boring. its nearly impossible to get enough money for 2 upgrades in 1 round even if you do everything in your power. but at the same time its super easy to get 1 upgrade as long as you put in a bit of effort. its as if theres very little correlation to the amount of fish you catch and money you make. its like theres some kind of hidden cap for the amount of money you can make each round which is a stupid idea for the incremental genre and makes it super annoying for anyone who is interested in incremental games.

meh. playable. okay-ish. demo was more fun

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