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Fish Tycoon

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Developer: Last Day of Work Publisher: Last Day of Work Genre: Simulation > General Released: Nov 14, 2005 Players: 1 Website Download Purchase

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Mike Hommel: 8

The real-time nature of this game makes is interesting. I do enjoy the overall process it offers (and have become semi-addicted. yes, I made a chart), but it's very very slow going. And I set it aside for a couple days and come back to a tank of corpses. That's kind of a selling point - it certainly makes the game compelling. But it also limits your freedom. It's a little bit like work. you have to come in and feed them or give them medicine whether you want to or not, assuming you want to succeed. But I suppose you have to click on matching gems whether you want to or not in other games. It's just that this one imposes its own schedule on you! (Note: you can pause it, but that doesn't change the fact that the 'action' in it takes place over hours of real time).

Seth Robinson: 7

Going a step beyond the traditional fish tank simulator this also lets you run a store and see little people come in and buy your aquatic pets. I like the aspect of needing to feed your fish daily in "real-time". Graphically it's a mixed bag; the images of the fish themselves are a small and grainy. I'm having a hard time making money, my fish don't want to procreate. Maybe because I had to flush their friend? Nice take on a fun theme.

Mike Kasprzak: 8

Excellent! Animal Crossing style realtime. Way back, some co-workers and I were trying to come up with some game uses for mass storage (i.e. hard drives). Then this little gem called Animal Crossing came out. In our discussions, we were apparently oblivious to the idea that you could compare a stored date/time and a current date/time, and generate a bunch of crap for the time that's passed to create the illusion of a realtime world, thus not requiring a mass amount of storage to do a game like it. Well, I'm glad to see someone else has picked up on the idea. This ones an aquarium store simulator. Simple rules. Feed and Breed fish. Play for a bit, shut it down, and come back tomorrow to grown up fish. Quite cool. I'm hardly and expert when it comes to fish, but what I find really odd is the breeding here. It's a good gameplay liberty mind you, but the way things work here is any fish can breed with any fish, even a pregnant fish can impregnate another fish. Yeah, I find that strange, and I apologize to any life-form that may be offended by that. Err... what does this mean for the birds and the bees?

Russ Carroll: 8

Long before there was Game Tunnel there was Fish in the .Net a website dedicated to tropical fish. I am a big fan of fish and was excited for this game. It is really a great game focused on cross-breeding fish to create new breeds. The game, like Nintendogs, forces the 'leave it alone for a day and come back' approach. The only complaint is that you have to keep track of your breeding outcomes on your own. A big master chart in the game that fills in as you went would be really a nice addition. Otherwise a hard to beat game fish fan or no!