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0 Step into the vibrant world of sealife in Aquatic Store Simulator from Freemind. Making moves away from your standard shopping simulator, you can now start your own aquatic store. Choose what sort of plant life, decorations and fish you can sell to your customers as well as make the space your own in true shopping sim fashion.
You can check out Aquatic Store Simulator on Steam – it’s currently available for £7.49 (at time of writing)
Out of all the fish in the tank, I chose you
Gameplay
Your first day in your brand-new aquatic store starts with a mess. To introduce you to the basic controls, Aquatic Store Simulator helps you tidy up your shop space. The controls, whilst pretty similar to other simulation games, felt a little awkward at times mainly because you had to hold down the mouse button to carry things and I’m used to just clicking to carry. It doesn’t take long to get used to the controls and soon it’s up to you to start buying products and stocking shelves for your customers.
Aquatic Store Simulator does give you a lot of choices to begin with. There are multiple purchase options for plants, decorations and equipment for both saltwater and freshwater fish. In all honesty, it felt like there was a lot for you to choose from and not enough money to stock your store with everything and buy fish. I found that just choosing one item from each section meant that all my customers were happy even if there was a lack of choice.
Surprisingly, this game does have some educational elements regarding fish and fish care. It goes into some depth about pH levels, the amount of fish that can live together happily and much more. Again, it felt slightly overwhelming at times because there was so much to keep in mind. There’s so much to do that I kept forgetting to add salt to the water for my Clownfish and often found myself with some upside-down fish in my tank.
Multiplayer
Aquatic Store Simulator is a single-player game. I think a multiplayer mode would extend the playtime. There is so much going on all the time that having a multiplayer option would make the game easier to relax. With single-player, you just have to keep an eye on what people are complaining about or leave the register so the queue gets really long and spend a few minutes getting it down.
Bugs & Glitches
The game as a whole ran smoothly. However, I did experience a small issue where the fish wasn’t visible when I fished it out of the tank. As you’ll see in the photo below, I had tried to catch a fish for a customer and the game registered there was something in the net when there wasn’t. If you are smarter than me, you won’t spend five minutes accidentally taking the fish in and out of the water. That being said, it isn’t clear whether there is something in the net if you’re not paying attention and you’re moving quickly.
Graphics & Audio
There’s a nice mix of semi-realistic graphics throughout Aquatic Store Simulator. Whilst some of the products aren’t super detailed, the fish that you can buy and sell have very high-quality models and look cute swimming around in the different tanks. They’re the level of graphics that you see in many other shop simulator games, if not better. Sometimes the customers can look a little bit funky but for the most part, this game has some very solid graphics.
Longevity
To level up and get your five-star store, you have to constantly expand your store and your stock. For the most part, to increase your rank you need to have more fish on display. As you play the game you get more opportunities to install interesting tanks and displays. For fans of simulation games, Aquatic Store Simulator is an amazing addition to a Steam library. You can sink hours into the creation of your perfect aquatic store. I keep dipping in and out of this game between other games on my list which I think will be what many players will find themselves doing. There’s plenty to go back to and always store areas to develop so there’s plenty of playtime hours available!
Final Thoughts
With plenty of fish and plenty of stock to invest in, Aquatic Store Simulator ensures hours of playtime for anyone who decides to add it to their library. I prefer simulator games when there is a multiplayer element, especially when there is so much that needs to be done. That being said, you can see that there’s a lot of care that has gone into creating this game which is both enjoyable and educational – I didn’t know how much went into taking care of goldfish! Its approach to a simulator game feels much more in-depth in comparison to those that are also available. It’s the perfect next install for any simulator game fan!
Overall, I have to give Aquatic Store Simulator the Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received to write this review.
Check out our other PC reviews here to see what else there is to add to your library!
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