Where it all began...

While it may be his passion, he lacks some skill.

Inspired … from failure.
Inspired as a young child by your fathers love of being an attempted (and failed) aquarist, you take up the mantle- offering your services not only to your own family and friends, but others in need of your finesse with aquatic life. With a new passion in you set alight- the whole premise of Aquarist unfolds. Take your fathers "passion", and making it your life dream- becoming one of the best and most respected Aquarists known. 

Humble basement beginnings.

Working Your Way Up
In earlier parts of the game, you are given a store (that you start out of your basement) to create aquariums that can be sold or bought out of by customers. Create fresh, saltwater, and black water aquariums, stocking them with plants, fish and decorations. Install filters and heaters to keep your fish friends content, all the while slowly tucking aside savings to move onto bigger-“better” (read: More of the same, but not quite sure what kind of game we are) endeavors. While a majority of the game is working within the confines of your store, and exhibitions- you do get chances to go out and work directly with some unique customers. 

How this makes you a better aquarist is beyond me.

Odd Jobs
While the core of this game is, in fact, working with aquariums- here and there you may stumble upon the occasional odd job, helping people who have caught wind of how skilled you are. Wild, wacky, unhinged and crammed full of shameless self promotion-these tasks can leave you wondering if you are actually playing a game about building and maintaining aquariums, or if you may have accidentally stumbled into Viscera Cleanup Detail, or House Flipper. This point’s a large, glaring finger at what seems to be one of the largest flaws in the game:

It seems to not entirely be sure of WHAT it wants to be.

Aquarium simulator? Small business simulator? Home Renovation Simulator?
Where do you even learn all these skills? With so much to do over time, you start to forget this is even an aquarium simulator at all. For the better? For the worse? While some people might not mind the change in pace, others my find it frustrating.

The shameless self promotion is staggering.

About as fun as watching paint dry
While the over-arching build of Aquarist should be fun and enjoyable, it is unfortunately bogged with tediousness- simulator games like this must ride a very fine balance, and unfortunately this one misses the mark. Terrible graphics, poor localization, and generally awful graphics (sans the actual fish and aquariums themselves) plague a vast majority of the game, as well as an agonizingly slow pacing that makes reaching farther into the game a complete slog. While in general the idea of this game is lovely, as well as the control that they give you within the game to customize tanks to your liking- it simply cannot outweigh how trite, dull, and clonky other pieces of the game are. While there are, absolutely, parts of this game that are appealing, many of them end up over shadowed due to overall quality issues.

Unfortunately, the cut corners can be very obvious, at times.

Closing Time at the Aquarium...
While in later parts of the game, the sheer strangeness can be enough to drive minimal enjoyment, overall the loop gets dull very quickly, sucking any fun from what could have been a quite solid simulation game. Simulators either need to be tuned to perfection, or simply be "so bad/strange that they're good". Unfortunately this one seems to miss the mark in all regards- being surprisingly good in some aspects, while being unbearably terrible in others. That being said, if you can tolerate some of it's more unique quirks, and fight past the absolutely dull first few sections of the game, it can give some enjoyment- if only for the amazing tanks you can create.

One of the larger projects you get to work on.

Overall, for aquarium enthusiasts, I think there will be quite a bit of enjoyment to be had, if the poor localization and tacky graphics can be overlooked. Simulator finds may find a fun place to land as well- but it may not be such an enjoyable experience for casual gamers, or people more inclined to other genres. While not a flop, a fair amount of polish would really be needed to make this game shine like it COULD- though that could be in the works, with the likes of some expansions on the horizon. Perhaps it may help turn the tide.

Aquarist is available for PC, Nintendo, and XBOX.