Adventure game Koi is all about fish, but it didn’t satisfy my fish fetish
Chinese game about a traveling fish gets new release on Steam
I'm going to be a weirdo now and admit something: I really like fish. I love watching them at aquariums and fish markets. I like them steamed, cooked, grilled, and made into sashimi. I actually considered getting a fish tattooed on my body. This is why I was probably the only person who was excited about playing a game about fish.
Koi, produced by Chinese game studio Dotoyou, follows a fish on a mission. It was actually the first game made entirely in China that went out on PlayStation 4 back in 2016. It also appeared as a mobile game on iOS and was released on Steam again recently.
Dotoyou says Koi is about saving the environment from man-made pollution. People have compared it to a crossover of the early stages of Spore and Flower. Now I'm gonna reveal my age because I actually played those games when they went out about 10 years ago -- and sorry, Koi is definitely no match for them despite its pleasingly soothing aesthetics and great music scores.
The game was actually quite short; but the puzzles were random and boring enough to make us feel like it was dragging on forever. Now, I'm not saying that games about fish need to be particularly gripping -- most people like watching fish because they don't do much. But Koi seemed like a missed opportunity.
Overall, the game mechanics were quite smooth but we did experience some slight problems with orientation and controls. This may be because the game was redesigned for mobile.
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