![]() You’re playing as the fish, not the bowl. If this was a game about moving containers around and you controlled the container, the controls would feel pretty sluggish and bad, but the idea of controlling the fish means that you understand why things feel delayed, and as a result the controls themselves don’t feel delayed. As it takes time for the fish to swim to the edge of the bowl, it means there’s a delay in moving, which you will have to calculate while maneuvering around. The dilemma is that you’re always controlling the fish itself, and the fish starts off in a ball. While Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread and other similar games are difficult due to purposefully bad (but still functional) controls, controlling the fish in I Am Fish is pretty simple and feels very responsive (although there is an option for a ridiculous control scheme). Although a bit of artistic license is taken and fish bowls in the game’s universe are perfectly spherical with a watertight lid. Three of them get purchased and taken to different homes, while the goldfish gets transferred into a small fish bowl and placed on a higher shelf. It’s a platform game with the “frustrating control” style of gameplay, hiding its difficulty behind an incredibly adorable graphics style, which looks way too nice for a game about fish that want to escape to the ocean.įour fish: a goldfish, pufferfish, piranha and flying fish, are fed magical bread while living in a pet store, gain intelligence and become friends. It’s a joy to see your plan executed and your fishy friend roll, sail in the air or shoot through a pipe to freedom (or at least the next conundrum).From the creators of Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread comes I Am Fish. Sometimes there is a bit of puzzle-solving involved in finding a way forward, but usually, the difficulty is in the execution. During the third and final level, you do a similar thing in a hospital albeit with a different fluid. You start in a kitchen, testing out your biting ability on taps and water pipes until the room is completely filled with water and spills out into the street. ![]() One great example is in the piranha levels. It starts with small novelties, such as finding fishbowl alternatives in the form of mop buckets and jars, before moving onto bigger set-pieces and more ambitious levels. Many of the levels are centered around set-pieces - it sets up the joke and you deliver the punchline with a successful run. This is because, in this game, the comedy doesn’t come from the struggle and subsequent failure, but from pulling off a successful maneuver. It’s not an especially easy game, you’ll spend a lot of time rolling past obstacles in your fishbowl (with a lid) Super Monkey Ball-style and timing leaps, but it’s not frustrating, not on purpose at least. You move with the left stick, camera with the right, swim up and down with the triggers, and use the shoulder buttons for your special ability. The default controls are fairly simple, though there is an option to select a scheme more in line with Bossa’s previous efforts. One big step is that you’re not going to be fighting against the controls. I Am Fish is still in the business of slapstick comedy and silly situations, but it also takes some important steps forward. You have the goldfish (the tutorial character), the pufferfish (who puffs into a rolly ball), the piranha (who bites), and the flying fish (who falls with style). It’s all very Finding Nemo and has a Pixar-esque look to match. In I Am Fish, you’re not attempting to become flake, but playing as one of four fish trying to break free of human confines and reunite with your friends in the ocean. That game saw the player control each corner of a bread slice with an aim to become toast. It’s a follow-up to Bread, going by the name but has little in common with it. I don’t think there’s a unified genre name for these games, but I like to think of them as slapstick comedy in video game form.īossa Studios, the UK-based developers behind two of these slapstick hits, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, have recently released I Am Fish onto Xbox Game Pass and PC. For myself, they were generally good fun for an evening or two then discarded. Their success banked on hooking in Youtubers like PewDiePie and getting them to do their loud, obnoxious shtick over them. These games, such as Goat Simulator, Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and Octodad, banked on comedy arising from tussling with the game itself as well as the silly central premise. ![]() T here was a moment in time where some of the most successful games in the indie game space were intentionally janky and loaded with cumbersome controls. ![]() ![]() Building on its intentionally janky and frustrating predecessors leads to a genuinely funny game ![]()
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