November 17, 2023 - Day 321 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 340

Game: I Am Fish

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 16, 2021
Installation Date: Jul 18, 2022
Unplayed: 487d (1y3m30d)
Playtime: 18m

I Am Fish describes itself as a physics-based adventure. It's a game about four fish, in a full 3D environment.

I don't normally talk about the developers behind a game, because I like to take each game on its own merits.

However, I Am Fish has a callback to at least one of Bossa Studios previous games, but also takes a particular gameplay cue from them as well.

In I Am Fish, you start out as a goldfish. The game opens in a bakery, where the baker hands two loaves of very wriggly bread to a customer for free, one of which ends up at a pet store, where you are currently swimming with three friends (a puffer fish, a flying fish, and a piranha).

The bread is wriggly because it's sentient bread, a callback to Bossa Studios' previous game "I Am Bread". When fed to the fish, the bread seemingly makes them far more intelligent, and after your three friends are captured and removed from your tank, you awake the next day in a round, sealable goldfish bowl, and it's time to escape... by rolling your bowl along the handily placed shelves to ground level, and then to freedom.

This is an utterly gorgeous game. The lighting is incredible, the fully realised 3D levels are wonderful, and the music is delightful.

The control scheme was designed by a sadist.

Bossa Studios are also responsible for Surgeon Simulator, and if you've played Surgeon Simulator or I Am Bread, what both of these games have in common with I Am Fish is that the games are designed with the most incredibly frustrating control schemes.

I played -and gave up- on both of these earlier games in sheer frustration. Much like platformers that require pinpoint accuracy, and playing well known guitar licks, I lack the fine motor control necessary to achieve the required goals.

There are games that are designed to reward the most dextrous & skilled players who can build up the required muscle memory to make the right moves at exactly the right time; if a player can't do that, they just become a source of frustration, and even self-recrimination.

It's why I can enjoy Forza Horizon in single player mode, but am left behind in virtually every race in online mode.

It's why I was hostile towards platformers for decades, with everything from Super Mario Bros. to Celeste just winding up my frustration levels until I feel like my brain is melting.

This is also why, as much as I want to play I Am Fish (it's just so beautiful), I probably won't end up persevering much longer, when there are so many other games I can just play and enjoy.

I Am Fish is a gorgeous, frustrating conundrum of a game, that I simultaneously want to give every rating, which averages out to:

3: OK

#IAmFish #3D #Physics #Adventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365
#NewPlay