Review: Insaniquarium Deluxe
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Reviewed Platform: Windows Mobile 6
Device Used: Verizon XV6700
Software Type: Game
Developed By: Astraware, under license from PopCap Games
I love Astraware for the simple fact that while I might not enjoy every single one of their games, I know they have a knack for picking diverse, easy to get into and ultimately challenging games to bring to mobile platforms. Insaniquarium is certainly no exception to that rule. I never would have thought an aquarium maintenance simulation would actually be entertaining let alone challenging, but once again Astraware has managed to surprise me.
There are three game play modes to Insaniquarium Deluxe, but for the purpose of this review I’m going to focus mainly on Adventure mode. In this mode you have five tanks that you must conquer, each tank having five levels of difficulty. You start each level of each tank with two guppies and up to three different specialty pets, which I’ll talk more about later. You’re goal for each level is to raise enough money to progress through the three stages required in order to hatch a new pet. Once the pet has hatched you move on to the next stage. Your main source of revenue is from the fish that you raise. As they get bigger they start dropping coins, and when they are full grown they drop diamonds. When you collect these items you increase your available cash, which you can use to purchase more fish or other items to help you keep your tank in tip top shape.
Insaniquarium Image 1
So what are these pets? Pets are special animals that help you raise your fish and that can’t be killed by lack of proper feeding or by aliens. I will get to the aliens later. The first pet you get is Stinky the Snail, who scoots along the bottom of the cage and helps you collect the coins your fish drop. Some of my other favorites so far include Prego The Momma Fish, who periodically births a new guppy to save you some expenses and keep the tank populated, and Vert The Skelton, and fish skeleton that drops coins just like it were an adult guppy. There are many others to be discovered as well, but that’s up to you when you play the game. The trick to these pets is that they all do cool and useful things, but you can only use three at a time. The decision of which three to use at any given time gets harder as you acquire a larger range of pets to choose from.
Now you’re probably wondering what I meant when I mentioned “aliens” in the last paragraph. Well, it would appear that your fish tanks are so popular that they often get raided by a host of different aliens that love a good sushi bar. The aliens come in many shapes and sizes, but the one thing they have in common is their taste in fish – yours. That is, of course, except for the robot, that is more than happy to just shoot your fish. Thankfully you have a laser that you can use to dispatch these aliens, and there are certain pets that will help protect your fish from the aliens as well.
In addition to everything I’ve already described, there are items that you can buy throughout the course of each level. The main item, of course, is fish. If your native fish population – not counting special pets – ever gets down to zero, you’ve lost the level. You start each level with the ability to drop one food pellet at a time, and the food that you start out with doesn’t fill your fish for very long. Have no fear, though: you can upgrade the quality of your food as well as the number of pellets you can drop at one time. Depending on which tank you are playing you will have the opportunity to buy either one or two special items that will help you earn money. Often these items either work in conjunction with each other or with other elements in the tank. For example, in tank 1 you can buy a piranha. To keep it alive you must feed it a small guppy every once in a while, but in exchange for the meal, the piranha will produce a gem every once in a while as long as it’s alive. I felt these specialty purchases were great if you wanted them, but what frustrated me about them was that in adventure mode, you had to buy them before you could get to the last two items available for purchase.
Insaniquarium Image 2
The penultimate purchase you can make is an upgrade to your laser gun. There are four levels of upgrade, and as the aliens get tougher I would highly recommend these upgrades whenever possible. Finally we’ve arrived at the purchase that denotes what adventure mode is all about: the special pets. For each level of each tank in adventure mode you must hatch a special pet. Each pet goes through three phases before it hatches, and the pet on each level for a given tank is more expensive than the last.
Now you should have a pretty good feel for what you do in the game. So how do you play the game? For those who are lucky enough to have a touch screen, it’s actually quite simple. Everything is driven with the click of the stylus. For the most part this makes the game a simple matter of clicking the right place at the right time. There are a couple instances where this simple interface can be a problem, however. The big one is when you’re under attack by an alien. At that point all you can do is fire at the alien, which in theory is fine. Unfortunately, your fish tend to be stupid and swim towards the alien instead of away. The only mechanism you have for “directing” the fish is dropping food pellets, which admittedly only works when the fish are hungry. However, you don’t even have that luxury when you’re in attack mode. Also, you have to be in “empty” water in order to drop pellets, which gets harder to do as your tank becomes more populated. Granted that also adds to the thrill and tension of the game, but it can get annoying sometimes none the less. There is also a keyboard mode, but unfortunately there is no mention in the help on what keys to use. The only thing I was able to figure out in keyboard mode was how to move a cursor around the screen. Thankfully my device has a touch screen.
Insaniquarium Image 3
As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, Insaniquarium Deluxe actually has three game modes. The other two are Time Trial and Challenge mode. In Time Trial you can play each tank once you’ve beaten it in adventure mode. In this game you get a certain amount of time to raise as much money as you can. What I like about this mode is that in addition to starting with 3 pets, you can actually buy more pets along the way. The egg that you must hatch in adventure mode has been replaced by a “random pet” egg, and each time you click on it you get another random pet from your collection added to the tank. Of course, the price of the egg goes up with each click as well. I really didn’t care for Time Trial with tank one, but I found it a lot more engaging with tank two. Challenge mode is only playable once you’ve completed adventure mode, so I have nothing to report on that mode right now – I’m only on tank four in adventure mode.
Graphically the game is gorgeous. Each sprite has its own animation, and they went out of their way to make sure that each pet and alien was fairly different from every other one in the game. When you consider that you’re looking at 25 pets (five for each of five tanks), plus at least ten different aliens that I’ve run across so far, and the specials that are available by tank, that’s a lot of character design for this type of game. Each tank also has a unique backdrop, which just adds to the diversity of the visuals. At first I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t really any background animations, but when you consider everything that’s going on in the foreground, that would probably be overkill.
Insaniquarium Image 4
The sound effects are also well done, and for as much of you hear of collecting coins and slurping pellets when the tank is full, they actually don’t get annoying over time. I have to confess that my favorite sound effect is when a fish dies. I always picture some cheesy eighties Tom & Jerry cartoon when I hear it. The music is decent, though nothing spectacular. It’s almost what I’d expect someone to play next to a fish tank to give the fish a serene atmosphere. You won’t be singing it in your head a week from now like you do the theme to Tetris, though. I did appreciate the fact that each tank had its own theme, which seems to be less common these days with musical scores.
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Installation Ease: 10
Fun Factor: 10
Usability: 9
Documentation: 7
Adjustability: 9
Addon Packs: NO
Suitable For Young Kids: YES
Online Support: YES
CONS:
- Documentation a bit weak in spots
- The “one click does all” paradigm doesn’t always work
PROS:
- Game play
- Graphics
- Sound
- Pretty much everything
OVERALL:
Insaniquarium Deluxe is the perfect game for the casual gamer who’d like to give action games a try. It’s also great for anyone with an itchy trigger finger that still remembers what playing games BEFORE 3D was like. The simulation elements are quite fun as well. Overall it’s a wonderful mesh of two different genres that should appeal to a wide range of gamers. It’s also one of the best games Astraware has turned out in quite some time. I really can’t see much of a reason for anyone to pass this particular gem up.
Overall Rating: 9
Available Platforms: Windows Mobile, Palm OS
Developed By: Astraware, under license from PopCap Games
Images: Clickgamer
