▲ Recommended
40 hrs
Disclaimer: I got this game for free.
Overall rating: 10/10, easily the best free Sudoku game I’ve ever played!
Part sudoku game, part fish torturing simulator this game is definitely red pilled.
STORY CAMPAIGN: The underlying premise of this game seems to be, what if Doctor Evil had grandchildren he could manipulate into doing his evil bidding? The humor is sometimes a bit off, but the game mechanics are solid and there is definitely an underlying theme of life/death, light/dark, good/evil.
While there are two different campaigns you can play through, they are the same group of puzzles. Just the story flavor stuff gets swapped out; yet I found both playthroughs to be pretty damn entertaining. If you choose to play as “Aenea” you will help Emperor Billy the squid rescue his 1000 children. You do this by completing the various puzzles where you can rescue 5 baby squids in each puzzle. In the other campaign you play as “Nick” and help the evil Dr. Spyloctopus abduct the 1000 baby squids, also through solving the puzzles.
Each campaign has a little area where you can go visit the baby squids you have saved. For Emperor Billy, each time you go visit he will tell you a terrible joke. As for Dr. Spylocotopus, well, no comment. I’m pretty sure all his lines are ripped off from that old movie Airplane.
All the story stuff seems to peter out after the first hour or so, but it’s sufficient to set the location and teach you about all the stuff you are collecting. Yes, it’s also kind of a collecting game. Each time you correctly place a fish an item will spawn which you will need to collect. Your final score in each level is based on how many items you collect.
GAME MECHANICS: It’s Sudoku, but with fish. There are 9 different fish species on each board and you have to place each fish species on the board using Sudoku rules: Only one fish species will slot in each row, column, or 3x3 grid. It’s very cute and can become quite challenging as the different fish continually swim around, constantly changing positions and blocking your view of different areas of the board.
To help out with the confusion, each time you select a fish the game board lights up and shows you where each fish could still potentially be placed. The default colors for Aenea are blue, for where a fish cannot be placed; and green for it can; however, hidden on the UI in the bottom right are four little buttons where you can choose whatever colors you want. One of my initial gripes of this game is there are no tutorials, but really once you start clicking around everything seems to make perfect sense.
Each game board holds five squid eggs. As you fill in the board you rescue and “hatch” the five eggs into baby squids. If you make a mistake a death skull spawns, and seems to randomly choose one of the eggs to go after. Once it reaches its target the egg is destroyed and the baby squid is killed.
But fear not! There is a graveyard, guarded by a grumpy piranha, where you can go rescue any baby squids previously killed. Really this just lets you replay the level, but it’s a clever dynamic.
Once you make a mistake the game gives you a counter to the skull in the form of a shield and a missile attack. The missile attack is by far the most effective but once you use it you need to refill its ammo before you can use it again. The shield is often frustrating, but mostly because you only get one and have to pick a single egg to protect, and I seem to always be fooled by the damn little skull.
The shield and missiles are launched by clicking on either a red heart (for the shield) or a black heart (for the missiles) on the left of the UI. If there isn’t a skull on the map, clicking the black heart will still spawn a bunch of missiles but they will target and kill your fish. This is actually useful if you ever just want to get rid of the fish and look at the board. Don’t worry, the fish soon respawn.
Clicking the red heart spawns potions or something which also attack your fish, but instead of killing them the potions just change the fish sizes and makes them swim around super fast. I haven’t found any real purpose for this and seems just for entertainment.
There are both day and night maps, and for me this is where the game really stands out. The music and atmosphere of the day maps is airy and lighthearted while the night maps have darker, Halloween-themed music. It works well and if you’re a fan of horror music, it more than makes up for the added challenge of the night maps.
As you move through the campaign there are 3 different kinds of fish puzzle pieces that get unlocked; fish, seahorses and plankton. Each is pretty different in how they swim around and stuff, but the premise is always the same, put the right fish/seahorse/plankton in the right slot.
The levels are timed, but after keeping an eye on the wrap up screens, the timers are a big nothingburger. If you don’t meet the expected time there is a very minor penalty, but if you beat the expected time there is a more significant reward.
WRAPUP: Overall I’ve been having a blast with this game. It clearly was made for mobile devices and according to the dev’s website those are on the way. On the PC it plays in a little window, and is a low-stress game you can play in the background while you watch TV or listen to tunes.
