Aqua TV

Genre: Application

Players: 1

.

Review:

Aqua TV is an Application released on PlayStation 4 and Wii U in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018. This software lets players create their own fish tank, populate it with fish, and then… er, watch it. To be clear here, there are no Management Simulation elements here, no Life Simulation elements, no gameplay of any kind – you just choose the options you want to see… and then watch them.

Right off the bat, Aqua TV has a bit on an uphill climb to prove its utility. YouTube, which is both free and also on Nintendo Switch, has access to countless real-life videos of actual real fish, including some lengthy multi-hour videos designed to turn your TV into an aquarium. If Aquarium TV is going to be worth its $10 asking price, it needs to offer either some nice interactivity, or excellent customization.

Unfortunately, Aqua TV falls short of both of those tasks. In terms of interactivity… there isn’t much to speak of. You can zoom the camera in and out or switch its perspective to a few different viewpoints, but you cannot change its angle or move around at will. You can’t interact with the fish in any way, not even by “tapping the glass” (note: do not tap the glass on real fish tanks and aquariums, the fish hate that).

As for customization, you do get to choose one of three tank sizes (plus a pre-constructed reef), and can choose one of a set of backgrounds, a texture for the floor of the tank, one of a dozen or so pre-selected decorations (which you cannot place how you want), and you can of course choose which fish to place in the tank… within limits – some fish require bigger tanks, and each tank has a maximum capacity. There are a few dozen fish types to choose between, which is decent, but not fantastic. There are also three relaxed musical themes you can have playing in the background, or you can have silence, and you have the option of separately silencing the tank itself too.

Features I feel like this game should have that it doesn’t: The ability to place tank decorations where you want them and combine them how you want. The ability to change the lighting. The ability to change the layout of the reef. The ability to move the camera how you want. The ability to feed the fish. Underwater creatures that crawl on the floor (crabs, starfish, etc.).

At the very least, this game’s visuals look nice, and the lighting (unalterable as it is) is decent. Not photorealistic, but good. The music is okay, but not great, and there really should have been more variety here.

In short, if you want an Application to simulate a fish tank on your Nintendo Switch, Aqua TV does a serviceable job of doing that. But unless you don’t have access to an internet connection, I don’t know why you would use this program to do that when you could simply find something on YouTube and save yourself $10.

tl;dr – Aqua TV is an Application that allows you to create and populate a custom fish tank. There’s virtually zero interactivity here, and not nearly enough customizability. What’s here is decent enough, but I don’t know why you would use this instead of simply playing video of a fish tank via YouTube.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Johannes, u/RamboFox, Ilya Zverev, Connor Armstrong, Eli Goodman, K.H. Kristoffer Wulff, and Stov. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}