I grabbed this and played the first two levels (of 10) last night. I did choose the normal difficulty, so the challenge was more how to set up the aquarium and keep all the fish happy, rather than “I have no money”. I’m liking it so far.
?
I’ve been on the mailing list for this for years now, but have mostly been ignoring it. Big Pharma was a bit of a let down do I’m letting this one sit for a while before I bother playing it. Hopefully by then the internet had figured out if it’s good or not for me! :)
Is it deep enough though?
I haven’t unlocked deep tanks yet.
First two levels are definitely tutorial, so I’ll play some more this weekend and then give a report. So far it’s been adding new mechanics pretty regularly.
This is how it looks after level2:
Mechanics:
Currently, fish go in tanks, which need filtering and heating depending on size of tank and number/size of fish. Filters and heaters need to be adjacent to the tank, but guests don’t like to look at machinery. Filters and heaters can instead be attached to a pump, which targets a tank at a distance, so if you want to put a tank out in the middle of your floor, that’s how you do it.
Fish eat different kinds of food (3 kinds so far), and you need to hire staff to feed the fish, fix equipment when it breaks, clean up after guests. You need to leave an open spot on the tank for your staff to feed the fish from.
Tanks, fish, staff, and fish-food all cost money.
When guests enter the aquarium, you get paid, when they look at a tank this generates Prestige / Ecology / Science points based on the fish and decorations in the tank. Prestige decays, so you need to keep making your aquarium bigger and better to rank-up. Ranking-up with Prestige unlock fish and research projects. Fish unlocks are paid for with ecology, and Research projects are paid for with science points. Most fish so far give either Ecology or Science but not both.
Meta:
So far it seems there are two primary tasks: tank composition (what fish and decorations are compatible and can go in a tank together and in what quantities), and aquarium layout (how to isolate the machinery from the guests, how many staff to feed the fish and maintain the aquarium, staff has skills and can have job priorities and operating zones). On harder difficulty levels there would be the money crunch of doing it all efficiently as well.
Nothing improper. She just really loves aquariums.
I got a chuckle out of what her “improper” relationship with Aquariums might be there :)
Speaking of which. I really enjoy her work and her tastes in games. I dont share her tastes, but like Tim Stone, her criticism and joy make me want to try them.
FTFY - hopefully it gets good games bumped up in google searches now!
Things keep unlocking for a long time in the campaign. I think everything* is open by mission 7. Mission 8 is interesting- there’s a limitation that you can only have 1 of each species, with prestige and income targets to meet.
@Sareln gave a good description, there’s more food types later (8 or so), and more complexity on keeping animals compatible. There’s also some consideration that needs to be given to how people will walk through the aquarium. On normal it’s extremely low pressure - I’m not sure what changes on the higher difficulties, I’ve mostly just been enjoying the theme. At least on normal, there’s no penalty for having the cash balance go negative briefly; which happens to me occasionally, your salary and animal food expense all gets taken out at the end of the day while income trickles in through the whole day.
It runs well too, except when zoomed in on someone giving a lecture - the prestige icons make a popping noise as they rise, and if too many are popping at once my computer stutters.
(*Edit-clarify - all mechanics unlocked. There are plenty of items and fish that haven’t been presented)
I didn’t like Big Pharma much at all - it felt too much like a puzzle game trying to fit the production lines into the available space. (I was going for something more like Factorio for drugs, I guess.) Is Megaquarium the same sort of space-constrained game?
There’s a hard limit to expansion in one direction (the wall with the entrance), but I haven’t found a limit in any other direction yet. You purchase individual tiles to expand, not pieces of a building like in BP. No competitors like in BP either.
Yeah I haven’t seen any building size constraints in the video’s I’ve watch.
Keeping this on the wishlist, just too much new stuff to play right now.
Cool, thanks. Onto the wishlist it goes!
Our very own Tom Chick will be streaming this tonight!
As an update, I’ve made my way to the last mission (10) and am still having a fun time. I actually find it relaxing. Also, I finally figured out that you can daisy-chain pumps…
Anyone still playing? I’ve noticed bi-weekly patches coming out.
I’m on the 10th campaign level and the scale is making it harder for my aging machine (3nd gen i5 (i5-3570K), NVidia 660 GTX Ti, 16GB RAM)
Lots of patches over the last year, now on a 40% off sale. Worth picking up?
It really didn’t grab me. Build a tank and put some fish in it. This fish likes rocks, this fish likes plants, you can’t put this fish with that fish. Build new tanks and add new fish with their likes and dislikes, and then try to make it so everyone walks by your tanks before leaving. I didn’t put much time into it, but it felt really bland. As an aquarium lover, I guess I wanted more fish and aquarium stuff, but they are just a resource in the game and not very exciting.
Sale and a new DLC dropped last month.
And the game is up to version 4.1! That is some serious support!
Apparently the mod scene for this game is amazing as well, making it a solid choice for this genre.