Birei Aquarium DS

[DeathAdder]

Picked this up today. In fact there are two versions - one with dolphins and whales, and one with your standard home fish tank fish. I got the latter.

Only had a quick play, but it seems very easy to understand. There's no English option, but as long as you can recognise the Kanji for Modoru - go back - you'll be fine. All I've done so far is decorate the tank, add plants and stones, then fill it with neon tetras and some other fish. The water temperature of your tank is always available, and there's an option I haven't tried yet but from the icon it looks like you use it to put fish in another tank, so perhaps they get sick.

There are lots of unlockables judging by the number of hidden options in the fish and plants menus. Plenty of background music too while you watch your virtual fish in their virtual tank.

I'm not sure this will be a success to the extent that Nintendogs was, but if you like novel experiences on your DS, it might be worth a look.

Will post more when I've played it some more.

[importaku]

Hmm tell me more, im intrigued (^_^)

[DeathAdder]

I've played a bit more on this now.

You can have up to five tanks, of different sizes. The bigger tanks allow you to put different types of plants and logs and things in them, and presumably they're suitable for different tropical fish as well.

The graphics and animation really are very good. You can scroll around the tank and zoom in on a particular area or scroll through the fish in the tank. They never build up any speed, but they do look great.

If you know anything about fish keeping, you will have more fun with this than if you don't, I think. I have never had a tank, so I am finding some stuff out by experimentation. I filled up a tank with a variety of fish yesterday, and then scrolling through them I saw that the neon tetras were all feeling scared of another sort of fish, so I moved them all to another tank. Another fish was feeling confused by not being in sea water. Information available to you is each fish's sex, health (as a percentage) and Theme Park style thoughts, as described above.

Health is replenished by feeding, but the descriptions of the foods are not the most user-friendly. When you select some food, it tells you some information about what fish it is good for, but doesn't actually say the name of the fish. It would be so much easier if it just said "neon tetras", but it doesn't, so I chucked shrimps, meat balls and all sorts into the tank until they started eating. Like Nintendogs, this is a "game" to be played regularly - after a day without checking them my fish were on the point of starving to death.

You can name each fish if you feel so inclined. You can also change the power of the lighting, and the water temperature. There is wireless play too - don't know what it does. Perhaps each copy comes with different fish and accessories. Also not sure if the fish breed, but there doesn't seem to be any money system in the game, so if the fish die you can just get new ones anyway without waiting for your own to reproduce.

I think I'll get the whale version soon as well.