Overall most helpful review

Posted on: September 14, 2018

Skirlasvoud

Games: 72 Reviews: 8

For the management fan who needs a break

When it comes to management sims, Megaquarium is relaxing, intuitive, easy to get to grips with and immediately gratifying. Running a zoo for fish is a novel concept and I have to applaud it for how streamlined the game is. The lay-out and aesthetics are very crisp and plonking down new piscine pastures is a joy. There are a few minor oddities in user interaction that are different from other management games - like info panels and door placement - but the Zen times to be had are worth getting used to. That said, Megaquarium did fail to meet certain expectations I had diving in, and I think it's worth elaborating. I thought this was a so-called "Ecology Puzzler", but Megaquarium fumbles a bit at that. Anyone played a little game called "Reus"? In it, you were the god for a 2D world, tasked with creating life. You'd create your own biomes and in them, put down flora, fauna and minerals. The cute thing was that all these things would support each other. A tile of wolves produces more resources when there's a tile of prey animals nearby. In return, the wolves would increase the wealth of mineral tiles in their territory. It took some puzzling with all tiles being interdependent, but you'd soon create a sprawling ecological web. You'd think Megaquarium - with its different fish species with each their different preferences - would be the same, but it doesn't quite clinch it. Since the game's most important resource is gained from getting visitors to spot a certain fish and it isn't awarded for repeats in other tanks, it veers oddly enough towards a playstyle that seperates species in their own tanks. There are apparently formulas and ways in which diversity is rewarded, but this feedback isn't as evident as I would've liked. But I feel min/maxing in the end, belies Megaquarium. Coming off other games in the genre where every decision is a life or death matter, just feeding the fish is a nice change of pace and Megaquarium presents it in a very accomplished package.

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Posted on: September 14, 2018

SonataFanatica

Games: 343 Reviews: 14

Perfect for Bullfrog "Theme" games fans

2018 seems to be a great year for fans of the old Bullfrog "Theme" classics. First we got "Two Point Hospital" by Two Point Studios, which turned out to be the perfect game for fans of the old "Theme Hospital", and now there's "Megaquarium". Why this is relevant? Well, back in the day, after the success of "Theme Park" and "Theme Hospital", there was a third game in the making, which would have been called "Theme Aquarium". It was made by Electronic Arts Square, K.K. and the Japanese company Tose Co. Ltd. (Electronic Arts Square, K.K. was a collaboration of EA (70%) and Square (30%), but when Square merged with Enix in 2003, EA bought back the remaining 30% from Square.) Shintaro Kanaoya, who worked at Bullfrog from 1997 to 1999 (being the lead designer of "Dungeon Keeper 2", for example) said in an interview that "Theme Aquarium" was completely made by Tose and didn't have anything to do with Bullfrog – except for the fact that management used Bullfrog's "Theme" brand. (The "Theme" brand was successful in Japan, so EA were very eager to use that name.) In the end, "Theme Aquarium" was made exclusively for Playstation and wasn't considered good enough to be released as a Bullfrog "Theme" game outside of Japan. The Windows port of the game only happened two years later, in 2000. The "Theme" title was scrapped, the Bullfrog logo removed, the game's logo redesigned, and the game was released as "Aquarium" on the western market. And let me tell you... it REALLY wasn't a good game. The controls were awful and the menus were ridiculously nested and convoluted. The whole thing SCREAMED "console port". (The screen for negotiating wages was reused from "Theme Park", by the way.) It was a complete mess. But rejoice!! "Megaquarium" is here and THIS is the real "Theme Aquarium" we've all been waiting for! It's relaxing, it's fun, it's intuitive! If you want a good old colorful management sim, this is it!! I don't have any gripes at all. Thank you so much, Twice Circled!!

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Posted on: September 15, 2018

lacktheknack

Verified owner

Games: 659 Reviews: 14

Twice Circled, Refined

I really liked Big Pharma, but had a few issues with the minutiae in the game. But with this second round, Twice Circled comes back through swinging for the fences. The charm of Twice Circled's games, so far, is that they pick a small concept and execute it well. Megaquarium has a very simple conceit: Run a tourist aquarium. It's not complex, the finances are streamlined as hard as they possibly can be, and the only real thinking you have to do is "what will my aquarium's layout be?" and "which fish can I mix together in a tank without any tragedies happening?" There's not a lot of depth, but this game doesn't need it. There's an unexpectedly large array of fish (an improvement on Big Pharma's overly slim 15 ingredients) and tank types to put your fish into, as well as a good array of themes and decorations. There's no micromanagement, which is what lands it that fifth star for me. Everything takes care of itself as long as there's a worker with a food bin and sponge sink available. While you could just dump fish into their own tanks with no mixing of species (like a lot of aquariums in real life), you limit yourself a lot by doing that. Half the fun of this game is optimizing the resources you get from each tank (received by having the tank viewed by a customer), and instead of having three large identical fish, you can have complete ecosystems of six to ten fish that net you much more nature (needed to buy more fish) and science points (needed to get more advanced equipment). Obviously, different fish have different needs - one needs rocks and another needs plants, and one fish will eat a certain other species in the same tank - which is where the natural puzzle element comes in of trying to get the best mix of fish into the fewest, most impressive tanks possible. It's a great management game - relaxing, intuitive and fulfilling. It's guaranteeing that I'll be buying the next Twice Circled game on day one - they're turning out to be a gem of a dev.

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Posted on: March 16, 2019

Kaydra

Verified owner

Games: 299 Reviews: 2

fun but lacks detail

I had fun playing this game tho there are some things that are missing that I do miss. Some examples: - sorting/filtering system: sometimes you need a certain type of fish (cold water/bully/active swimmer) for an objective and you have to scroll through all your fish as there is no way to browse only through certain types - staff: doesn't need to be looked at as soon as they got a task and zone. There's no staff room, they don't need breaks, they don't get mad from working hard (and they have to work hard I'll tell you that as staffmembers are in my opinion seriously limited). - themes/decoration: you can paint your floors and walls but apart from that there's not really anything to make your aquarium prettier (apart from one palm tree and some decorations that are more suitable for your tanks) - I wouldn't have mind an actual gift shop and cafetaria/restaurant that also requires some management - if you use a plant or fish more than once (and you just need to re-use plants/rocks/...) visitors will drop your rating because "they've seen x before" Also I don't get why a tank needs X temperature and you place a heater or chiller that has a larger capacity than the tank requires, that you only see the number barely increase. You can't see by eye what heater or filter you need to place that will actually suffice for that tank. So it's buy, sell if it's not good enough, buy larger, sell, buy even larger, ... after a while you just start buying the largest thing you have to start with. So all in all it's entertaining but if you look at other games of this type then this is just really really simple and for me I think the game doesn't offer enough :)

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Posted on: September 17, 2018

BlueFireDC

Verified owner

Games: 26 Reviews: 4

Fun game but still need polish

First of all the game is pretty fun, theres several clever mechanics. I would totally recommend it for people that like management games and numbers, you will be doing a lot of math to complete the puzzles that are the aquariums requirements for some fishes. But theres still several performance problems with large aquariums (ver 1.07) and the UI could get some work, specially with the staff one. At least the developer has been working with the game and the performance is way better now that it was a launch.

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Highlights

Featured

Close, but not an exact hit

Megaquarium

A living simulation

Design your exhibits

The right staff for the job

Research new animals and technology

Manage your finances

Manage your guests!

Curator school

Dive into the sandbox

Easy to learn, difficult to master

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