So You Want to Feed Your Fish
Aquarium games are a major genre on Facebook – it seems like just about everyone is keeping a virtual fishtank and posting all about it. But which game should you play? Neighborly Games is here to help you decide, with a comparison of four of the most popular aquarium games out there.
Fishville
Made by: Zynga
Popularity Very High
Kid-friendly: Yes
Need lots of friends: Most games encourage you to invite your friends, but some make it really hard to play if you don’t have lots of friends playing.
Spammy: Facebook has taken steps to make game spam less insistent, but some games build their systems around posting status updates or sending gifts.
Need to buy in: You can expect the most interesting fish and decorations to require real money.
Zynga is, as usual, the big dog in this arena, with a game that’s polished and has a ton of content – lots and lots of fish, decorations, tank themes, and reasons to interact with your friends. Even so, though, it’s got very simple gameplay, particularly right at first. Your only options are feeding your fish, scrubbing your tank, and buying and selling fish and decorations. There is an “arena,” where certain fish with various stats compete, but the first of these takes several days to mature.
Fishville ends up being the simplest of the games, although by far the most polished.
Happy Aquarium
Made by: Crowd Star
Popularity Medium
Kid-friendly: Yes
Need lots of friends: The group game, Expeditions, is not unlocked until level 20, but that system does require friends.
Spammy: No.
Need to buy in: Facebook Credits and/or Pearls are used primarily for tank decoration, with very few fish requiring them.
The graphics in Happy Aquarium are by far the lowest-quality of this group, but the interface is actually easier to use than some. Gameplay is a little more minigame-heavy than usual, with games to train your fish to teach them tricks and various exploration minigames to get you more money and items. You can breed your fish to get new ones as well as buying them, and the little guys have a lot of personality – they’re all individually named, and you can ultimately teach them to follow your mouse pointer around.
The music is peaceful and the individuality of the fish counterbalances the frankly primitive graphics to a surprising degree.
Fish World
Made by: Tall Tree Games
Popularity High
Kid-friendly: Yes
Need lots of friends: There are fish-finding and building features that require friends, as well as “employee” requests.
Spammy: You can post “I found your stuff” messages to people’s walls, and ask people to help you with group tasks via updates, as well as send gifts and invites. These options come fast and furious if you leave the window open.
Need to buy in: Some of the cooler features are reserved for FishBucks
Fish World has the standard feeding, selling, and tank-decorating game, plus a number of additional fillips. You can breed your fish to make new types, spend FishBucks to custom-build a fish, play a little minigame to train them (and increase their value,) and coordinate with friends to get a number of neat items (although the barn is frankly baffling.) You can also revive your friends’ dead fish, which is handy.
There’s a lot to do, but the bubble noise is a little frenetic and the constant popups totally destroy any peace you might find watching the fish swim around.
Ocean Party
Made by: Gaia Online
Popularity Medium
Kid-friendly: Yes
Need lots of friends: More friends means more Scrubbles, and the actual “Ocean Party” feature requires friends as well.
Spammy: Facebook has taken steps to make game spam less insistent, but some games build their systems around posting status updates or sending gifts.
Need to buy in:
Ocean Party has a different emphasis than the other aquarium games – it’s more a promotion for Gaia Online than a full game in itself. That being said, it’s got some things going for it. The Peggle-esque algae-cleaning minigame is actually quite fun, and the cartoony fish with big grins and monkeys in bubble-helmets are a nice change from the hyper-realistic styles of most of the other games. Currently the game is having technical issues with the “Ocean Party” feature itself, so it’s not available to report on.
This will be most attractive to Gaia Online players who want to take advantage of the cross-promotion, but it’s worth a look in itself if only for Scrubbles.
The Conclusion:
These four games represent a pretty wide range of styles, but fairly similar gameplay. For graphics, Fishville and Fish World come out far ahead, but for minigames, Ocean Party and Happy Aquarium more than hold their own. They all have the key element of fish that need to be fed and maintained, though, so any one of them might suit someone’s tastes the best.
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