Hello, I Am Mento, and I Am Reviewer for I Am Fish. It's a 3D platformer, sorta, wherein you help four superpowered fish escape from human bondage (not that kind) and reach the ocean so they can continue to, uh, bro out I guess. Fishbro out. Pretty much if someone turned that one aquarium part of Finding Nemo into a whole video game with a lot of dramatic twists and turns, albeit of the mostly action-based dialogue-free kind. Given all the protagonists are of the piscine persuasion there's certain limitations to their movement, especially outside of the water, and that creates a game that is sort of awkward and not even only sort of frustratingly challenging but also endearing in a way some of these physics-heavy action games can often be once you've finally mastered the obtuse foibles inherent to their systems. The other game that immediately came to mind while playing this, even though it's an entirely different class of chordate, is Sumo Digital's Snake Pass in that any unintuitiveness to the controls is mitigated by how the titular creature would necessarily have to get around the world in this fashion, and getting into that frame of mind makes it much easier to comprehend your options and far easier to approach the game as a whole.

The game's inventiveness is on display almost from the get go as you start off in a spherical fish bowl with a convenient airtight seal to keep the water inside as you're rolling around (forget how the fish are supposed to breathe). As you hamster-ball it around you need to keep in mind that the bowl is both fragile and beholden to momentum, as you'll quickly lose control over it after picking up speed or when going down slopes and other downward trajectories. However, much of the level design accounts for this to make sure you regularly hit a soft (or soft-ish) landing and it'll checkpoint frequently to ensure a minimum amount of annoyance. Other sequences have the fish outside the bowl (or another aquatic conveyance, like a mop bucket) and in its natural underwater environment, where it can freely swim around and has a limited-height hop to clear small barriers between bodies of water. You spend a lot of time in both variations and both offer different challenges and perils to overcome, though I'd perhaps argue the more physics-y ball mode is perhaps the tougher of the two. Leaping over barriers in the water is, however, something that might take a bit of practice to do right without just flopping onto the divider and slowly choking to death like an idiot.

Where the game starts to take off is after the first three courses, during which you're escorting the goldfish to the ocean. The goldfish has no special ability beyond being very reflective: it's this showy beacon that alerts the other three fish friends as to his location, and they all set off on a cross-country journey to join him. You can play these three other campaigns (swam-paigns?) in any order, or mix-and-match if you'd prefer the variety, and each is built around their specific fish's special ability. There's a pufferfish that can increase its size and turn spherical, a piranha that can use its jaws to munch parts of the environment, and a flying fish capable of gliding across small distances. These naturally provide even more difficulty and variation to the level design, especially the flying fish whose gliding ability is another that takes some time to master effectively—you also have to consider that you are as unable to breathe in mid-air as you are on the ground, and to maybe not try to glide across the whole level if that idea strikes you.

Naturally, a game like this has more to offer the would-be dedicated fish savior than the simple A-to-B-to-C level progression. Each stage has five bread collectibles—Bossa Studios are the same developers behind I Am Bread, in case you were wondering about the collectibles and/or the game's name; awkward 3D physics simulators are kinda their thing—for which you get a few hints pre-level. However, even for a collectible-sweeping freak like myself I can't say I Am Fish makes this part of the game as palatable as that sweet starchy dough: for one, you can't access the hints or find out which bread items you've already found while in-level and that's irksome if you wanted to confirm you hadn't missed one or needed a refresher on the clues. The collectibles also won't register unless you hit a checkpoint, so that sucks if you need to backtrack a little ways each time because you'll be resetting those checkpoints a lot on your first run through a level, and they also won't register unless you complete the level (which can be ten minutes or longer even when you're doing them right). It definitely disincentivizes popping back into previous levels for any baked goods you missed. There's also a star rating system that judges you based on the time taken and the number of deaths you've incurred: however, again, the game doesn't really surface the information on exactly what amount of time or fish corpse frequency is considered an acceptable amount for the full five stars—I imagine the criteria is different for the longer/harder levels, but I'll be darned if I'm allowed to know to what extent. Just some QoL disappointments that mar an admittedly optional set of bonus goals.

Visually and especially with the sound design the game's presentation is really slick. The developers have now made several of these 3D games with simplified, stylistic graphics (as well as I Am Bread, they also made the comically malpractical Surgeon Simulator series) and each one has looked sharper than the last; some of the environments of I Am Fish, even while embodying that simple and cartoonish style, look great and detailed. These detailed environments don't always lend themselves well to signposting your next destination, but the exploration is often how you find those sneaky breadcrumbs so it feels like an intentional decision not to put big arrows everywhere—the floating icons for the checkpoints often serve as an idea of where you ought to be swimming towards, at least, though they tend to be rather far apart. Might also be worth stating for the record that the game is very British: this doesn't necessarily come across in the story (though the dark humor of the exceptionally cute fish protagonists gulping their last as their eyes slowly close on a cruel and unfeeling world definitely feels like something we'd come up with, as averse as we Brits are to earnest pathos) but certainly does with the strongly-accented voiceovers of the oblivious humans you might find yourself avoiding as they stomp around and threaten your precarious em-balléd situation. I'm barely halfway through so far—the brainworms demand that I replay stages for those max score and collectible targets despite my stated reasons why both should probably be avoided unless you're a glutton for punishment—but the game's evoking a lot of both animosity and admiration from its many challenges and set-ups. Ambivalent but certainly not indifferent, is the way I'd say I'm feeling about this game so far. Definitely sticking with it though; I got through Snake Pass eventually and that became one of my more recent favorites of the genre despite a similarly rough start.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-playthrough Edit: This game is certainly one of highs and lows right up until the end, though I still respect its ideas even if its physics engine didn't appear to see eye-to-eye with the level designers much of the time. The frequency in which I'd just glitch into an early demise or fail to properly launch from one body of water to the next (the game is extremely finnicky about this) really compounds the frustration that the already challenging gameplay foments, and like most physics-y games that aren't just silly hanging-out sims like Goat Simulator it's the physics themselves that are often the game's biggest downfall. I think I also played the fish out of order: for those getting into the game, I think the ideal path is pufferfish, piranha, and flying fish. The last of those three definitely has the hardest time due to those awful flight controls, while the pufferfish can roll around on dry land which allows him to escape a lot of asphyxiation deaths. Still, between discovering the "next checkpoint" button (a godsend for return trips to sweep up achievements/collectibles) and not taking setbacks quite as seriously, there's much to enjoy here.