Fish Tycoon from Majesco is a fish-breeding sim. Flush Tycoon would be a better name for it...
When they say "Simulated real-time experience yields potential surprises every time you turn the game on" the surprise is most often dead fish. While having a tank that evolves in real time sounds like it would be interesting, the pressure is on. The baby fish have only a half full health bar, and it is a race against time to save the babies from dying by buying medicine, a bubble filter and temperature regulator. That is about as far as you can get before you run out of the starter cash. Then all the babies die when they get to be about 6 in fish age.
There isn't a way to grow enough baby fish and sell them in time to buy the supplies that you need. It is a vicious cycle. You can only keep up to 20 fish in the tank, Which isn't enough. To obtain a second tank you would have to sell about a hundred fish to afford it. You can only sell adult fish that attain an age of '20'. The healing plants and other chemicals to help the baby fish live longer, are priced in the $1200 range, so trying to raise healthy salable fish is nearly impossible.
You'll need to go slowly, only add one pellet of food at a time, and use the vitamins to stimulate wellness. The cheapo medicine doesn't help much. It is glitchy, the audio is unbalanced, and there are random pixel blocks. The baby fish just look like speeding pixels. The more I play this game the more that seems to go wrong. It even crashed to a black screen which was a first for a DS game.
In many pet sim games the complaint is that it is too easy, and that there isn't enough to do. The same is true with this game. You can sit for an hour while you wait for people to come in your shop and buy the fish. The store doesn't operate without you monitoring it. There isn't anything for you to do with the fish store while you wait for customers. There is a very quick text tutorial that repeats the same info as in the Help screen. If you tap one of the tanks it says "You have cured one fish." And when you breathlessly go back to your tanks to see if any of the suffering baby fish are well, there is a disappointment again. The announcement "You have cured one fish." is apparently pointless. Even though there are the 4 speed options to control how time passes in game it is no help. It is a good idea to stop time when you turn the DS off so that you don't return to a disaster in a few hours. You can set your own prices for the adult fish, but if you exceed the 'suggested price' then no one buys them. This is a shame because if you could get the customers to buy the fish at your own prices then your tank might have a chance of survival. The additional fish tanks, decorations, plants, fish eggs, fish food, and medicines to enhance the aesthetic of your tank would be a nice touch if you could actually use them. The game has too harsh of a business model to be fun for kids, and the frustration level is most likely too frustrating to entertain adults who enjoy their fish screen saver on the PC. The PC demo of this game wasn't nearly as hard.
Fish Tycoon for the Nintendo DS is rated E for Everyone and it seems as though it is part of trend of flash games for "casual gamers" being slapped on tho the DS without much thought to the game play. Considerable amount of hours, and attention is needed to raise the fish, and instead of being a satisfying and fun experience where you acquire cash and decorate your tank, it leaves you hanging out to dry. Animal Crossing is an example of a game the continues on in real time where the game play is rewarding instead of the way that in Fish Tycoon you find yourself having anxiety. I give Fish Tycoon a sad 2 dead fish out of 10.