Fish Lab

You don't actually get money for the fish you catch. The game just gives you whatever amount is needed for an upgrade at the end of a round. It doesn't matter what you do in the game, you could just do nothing and the progress would be the same. That completely ruins the game for me.

The draw for me in the initial demo was the vibe. Floating in the ocean scanning colorful fish and listening to the music. This was an instant buy for me because of that experience.

This release iteration tramples the vibe by mid game when the drones turn into non-stop explosion electricity crackle sound laser orb machines.

Maybe if the explosions and effects were quantized to the backing track, or somehow blended better texturally(Explosions under water?) it would faire better for me, but as it stands it's just an off beat noise generator with flashy lights.

I like it, I'm keeping it, but not sure I'll come back to it.
(Spoiler I came back to it, as is tradition with incrementals, it only compounded in that everything that was changing for progress only got more noisy. The game looks beautiful, feels just okay, sounds like a non-stop car wreck. Late game is just juggling flashing exploding balls, the vibe remains trampled.)

I will preface this review with the fact that this game is very visually pleasing. I don't want to undermine the work that went into that aspect of this game. Anything visual done for this game was very well made, and I can tell a lot of work went into that aspect.

The problem is, that's it. This considers itself an incremental game, with upgrades that act like they impact how your interact with the game changes how much money you make throughout your own progress.

The issue? It's a complete lie. You can go an entire round not collecting a single fish and come out making more money than the round before where you had caught the most fish you ever had in a single dive.

This makes zero sense. Why consider yourself an incremental game if the entire experience is automated? This is just a glorified sandbox experience where you catch random fish species and tack on an upgrade system that's practically guaranteed every round because the game just gives you an arbitrary amount of money based on the upgrades you have available and what they cost.

You spend all this time designing an entire game to being an incremental, and don't bother with the actual incremental part of the game. Makes no sense to me.

If they ever change this aspect, I may come back to this game and give it a second chance, potentially changing my review, but as it stands now, this is only half the experience I came for.