How Fish is Made is a "surrealist philosophical fish flopping” simulator developed by Johanna Kasurinen, Jeffrey Tomec, and Martin Halldin as part of the FutureGames education” in Sweden according to the game itself. The only other thing I know about this game is that it’s picked up steam (no pun intended) within the last year and that Hideo Kojima himself gave this game a thumbs up and a recommendation on Twitter. I originally picked it up after seeing AlphaBetaGamer had played through it a year ago, but I decided I didn’t want to try it just yet because of a growing backlog. However, I said screw it and tried it out after beating Blue Stinger on Dreamcast while streaming for a friend of mine, and truth be told after completing that game I NEEDED something more chill. I wouldn’t say this game is exactly “chill” but it is a simple game, only in gameplay design however as the narrative this game has gone for is strange but in a fascinating way.

The Story is a bit of a confusing one, but there sort of is one nonetheless. You play as a random fish that fell down a hole, in which another fish asks whether or not you're going to go UP or DOWN. The gameplay aspect sets in as it mostly consists of flopping towards your inevitable choice and the consequences thereof while also talking to the fish around you for their input and feelings. However, the game really excels at questioning decision making: Do you follow what everyone else thinks? Do you go with what your mind is telling you is the right call? Does it even matter to begin with? What is the right decision? There are no enemies in this game, the only enemy being the potential future that you choose for yourself. It's something that I feel like I'd have to ponder over for a while, but what I am going to do is link a review that I think is a better in depth explanation on themes that makes sense to me, as I more so don't know how to discuss what I feel has already been discussed before by multiple people smarter than me. I also enjoy how each fish that you encounter has their own unique personality, especially the fish with the parasite tongue (an actual scientific thing that happens, where the parasite removes the tongue so they can claim the nutrients the fish eats) which goes into this hilarious yet strange peppy ragtime-esque music video with absolutely no voices or singing and just subtitles in the background. I’m going to link a review that I think makes a lot of plausible sense and I encourage ya’ll to check it out, but to finish off with the parasite thing from earlier, there does seem to be a small theme tying into the larger one: the ability of people to follow what others say and their aggressive behavior at taking away the ability for someone to make decisions for themselves.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/Rachlol209/recommended/1854430/

If I were to mention one thing about the game technically is that for the most part it runs well and you can play it with a controller, though it may not be 100 percent flawless in terms of clicking certain dialogue options. That and this game is a one playthrough game, there’s no saving of any kind and if you quit, you start at the beginning. Considering the game could be completed between 10-20 minutes I’m not really surprised.

The audio design from Martin Halldin is ominous; when you talk to the fish it sounds like deep simlish language that a lot of indie studios use to an unsettling effect. The background sounds consist of a sort of droning, and the sounds made by certain environments sound pretty real from the flop of the fish moving forward, to moving through puddles sounding like a straight up recording from an IPhone. There’s even this bit later in the game with muddled dialogue between a deeper voiced individual and someone who sounds like they’re about to cook a recipe in one part of the game that while I didn’t really catch when I was playing it, fit in kind of perfectly. The only thing I could really point out that’s kind of strange is the ragtime music number, which clashes with the rest of the depressing vibes but is actually a pretty catchy tune.

The graphical/visual design by Johanna Kasurinen (aka KASURAGA, who also did the narrative stuff) is a low poly freaky f u c k fest that I thoroughly enjoy; you end up going from metallic factory like conveyor belts to walls of flesh to Silent Hill Otherworld styled vibes that seamlessly blend into each other really well. The fishes that you encounter look pretty solid as well, somehow feeling like they express emotion yet at the same time not because…well they’re fish.

So what's the general consensus of this game? I genuinely feel that if you're into short narrative games that this might be one that could tickle your fancy, and it's not a really big game either. I had played the game three times, one I played a bit then accidentally closed and the other two are for the main two endings that you'll go through. Regardless, I think it’s a pretty solid title that makes you think on choices and your destination in life and that if anyone is into these sorts of games that genuinely you should check it out. I also wanna throw out that it’s pretty cool how passionate the community is about this game because I’ve seen forum posts where they jokingly argue about whether UP or DOWN is the correct choice and I don’t know, there’s something respectful and wholesome about it that I really like.


Links:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P7KMtJhyhI&ab_channel=JeffreyTomec

https://kasuraga.itch.io/how-fish-is-made

https://twitter.com/wrong_organ

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Tomec

https://twitter.com/byKASURAGA

https://twitter.com/siarate

UPDATE: A new free update just got released, and it's an interesting one. Thematically I'm not sure what's going on yet but it's a weird Katamari Damacy vibe. I'm kind of struggling to figure out whether it's about staying in a dead end job\situation (fitting into the whole theme of choices) of sorts or if it's just a strange tie-in to their next game. Speaking of, wishlist the devs new game: Mouthwashing.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/