Aqua Panic ! Reviews

good game

Very Fun game

The idea of this game is good. It's a Lemmings type of puzzle game where you have to save a number of fish each level using a variety of tools. There are several modes of play: adventure, free and survival. In the adventure mode you play through each level in sequence, in the free mode you can replay any level you've already finished and use extra tools which you buy using coins you find in each level. In the survival mode perma death is introduced. You start with 100 fish, but any fish that get's killed means you'll have less fish at the start of the next level. I have a number of problems with this game. First of all it's not been optimized for mouse based play. Instead of giving you icons on screen to open up the menu or fastforward the game you have to use the keyboard. My second problem is that there are often things happening at several parts of a level, since water tends to collect whenever there is a bottle neck and many levels have several at different parts of the levels. And you can't keep track of what is happening because you cannot pause the game, nor can you divide the screen into several parts (like in commandos) and there is also no mini map. So I often have to frantically move the camera up and down, left and right in order to keep track of different parts of the level, opening and closing snails (which act like faucets) or waiting for the right moment to use a specific tool. In similar games like Lemmings you often get enough tools to try out different solutions. But in this game, you get the bare minimum of tools necessary to finish a level. And while I've sometimes managed to find a creative solution, most of the times it's clear that there is one specific solution you have to follow. Which strips many levels of any creativity that makes these type of games intereseting. You could argue that you can return to these levels in free mode and buy extra tools so you can try new solutions. But since the amount of money is limited, spending too much money on one level will make it impossible to experiment with other levels. My final problem is the wonky physics. The water doesn't always behave in a consistent way so a solution that works once might not work (the same way) the second time. All these little problems together make for a game that is fun in concept and looks pretty, but which is frustrating to play in practice.