While I love great action games, shooters, racers, and more that are geared toward high-energy excitement, I’m also a fan of a great casual game that will help me relax in between those sessions. Given that I have a particular fondness for classic PC casual games like Insaniquarium, when I saw My Cozy Aquarium I was a bit excited, hoping that it would have some of that energy. Weirdly enough, even if it moved completely in the other direction, my mind also went to an old game on my Commodore 64 called Little Computer People that was an extremely early version of a fishbowl simulator, allowing you to observe and mildly interact with a little person living in his house with his dog. Sadly, with the anticipation that it could at least resemble either of those games, this title aims far lower than either of them.

The first thing to know out of the gate is that even though there’s very little for you to do or interact with in the game NOTHING at all is explained. I literally spent the first few minutes with an empty fish tank wondering precisely what I should be doing. There are a few UI cues on the screen yes, so you can get an idea of how to get to a specific screen, but nothing more. There’s not even general guidance for understanding what the game is supposed to be, whether just for observing aquarium dwellers going about their day, trying to breed them, or anything whatsoever. Considering just how unambitious and minimal as this experience is, and that it seems to be geared towards casual players, all of that points to a lack of care and consideration for the audience.

So, as far as I can gather, the goal is to buy packs of fish, respond to indicators on the UI that will let you know that they’re hungry, that the temperature is off, that the tank needs cleaning, etc, and then sit there. A lot. Considering that I could find no means of speeding things up that makes for simply being bored quite a bit since once you set things up they’ll be fine for a little while. OK, sure, so maybe it’s meant to sort of be a fish tank for you to enjoy by relaxing and observing. Too bad that they have next to no personality and essentially just slowly float around, doing nothing of interest. I guess that makes it easier to sell them when they grow bigger, which you’re expected to do in order to get money to buy new packs and get more fish. Once again, we’re in shovelware territory, and it feels like another opportunity missed to at least make something marginally interesting.