Reviews from

in the past


Surreal em todos os sentidos possíveis.

This review contains spoilers

Very fun, well made and entertaining! It's an allegory for something I didn't quite catch until I read some reviews.

The fish sounds and speeches are really funny, if not a bit sad. The parasite that sings a song is so nonsense and HILARIOUS!!

The fish you meet have their own opinions on whether you should choose to go up or down, when in reality nobody knows for sure). Some of them went literally crazy with their obsession of wich way to go. A fish trapped in some plastic calls it its 'throne'. Some of the fish are still undecided about which way to go, so you can influence their choice (or manipulate them, telling them the one you think it's wrong). When you get to the end, the final choice is up to you.

The wise fish at the end tells you that the choice in itself doesn't really matter, but what matters is the gift of having the choice and how you use it to manipulate others or not.

When you make the final choice, there's also a monologue that talks about how thinking your pain is greater than others is wrong. Everyone is going through the same thing, you're not alone.

This review contains spoilers

nooo dont access my steam info your so sexy aha

logging for the little dlc extra. it was cool!! not much of anything but ive been excited for mouthwashing and the trailer here made me more hype. it looks super sick and i cant wait for its release

Yeah I just... didn't get this one at all. I like the weird kind-of meta-philosophy around the Up or Down choice, and think I get what the devs are trying to say, but it feels like the game is more interested in just being gratuitously gross and weird.

You move horribly slowly (and the controls are even worse in the free DLC...), the lighting is all over the shop, and a massive part of the game is one single cutscene that really added nothing to the experience. So uhhh.... not for me this one, I'm afraid.


i do like me some vaguely ps1-like fishes and musical numbers

also this game made me feel ill. not at all because of the gorey fish stuff, it was something about the camera that made me motion sick, which usually only happens when i play first person view-games. but for some reason this and mario kart 64 invokes that motion sickness in me as well.
anyway i liked when you get to roll around in a popcorn in the expansion

real winners go UP

Игра - высказывание.

Не зацикливайся на себе и своих проблемах, ты не один таков.


Путь не важен, но и в то же время это основа всего.

Топ песенка, хоть и мерзкая.

CONSUME.

Игра предложила добавить тизерную игру в вишлист, обязательно сыграю в 2024.

Дыба гейминг.

truly captures the essence of being a fish

A short narrative revolving around sentient fish that questions your tenacity in decision-making, and contemplates the power that our choices can have, or lack thereof.

Excellent sound design, low-poly art direction allows your imagination to fill in the blanks. At some points, it genuinely made me feel sick to my stomach.

How Fish Is Made is disgusting, horrific and absolutely brilliant. I love it.

This review contains spoilers

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/

This game made me viscerally sick and never want to eat fish again. A great game if you feel like watching a musical starring a parasite or feel nauseas.

A really artful 15 minutes. It's cool.

for a game about fish it really made me think, and the musical number was great, I won't say more than that so I don't spoil you, go try it, it's free on steam.

Lovely little weird indie gem :) and gets an extra half star for the music video.

There are thousands of indie devs (if not more) that are well under the radar of the larger game industry and I'd imagine that a lot of them are making super-weird experiments like How Fish is Made. All the more reason to support them whenever you can.

O surrealismo consegue brincar com nossa realidade a ponto de quebrá-la?

“O Surrealismo é destrutivo, mas ele destrói apenas o que ele considera ser grilhões que limitam nossa visão.” - Salvador Dalí

Para mim, o surrealismo é, na verdade, nossa mais fiel janela à realidade.

Você enxerga seu pensamento? Essa voz em tua mente, sequer consegue ouvi-la, como ela se parece? Essa imagem que vê é a mesma que enxerga ao olhar no espelho ou uma imagem que tem de mim? Como você forma essa raiva que sente? Essa confusão, essa dúvida ou esse amor?

Nosso pensamento pode ter cheiro, gosto, cor e até textura, mas é completamente livre de forma. Enquanto a arte luta para formar pensamentos, o surrealismo abraça a liberdade e, portanto, se torna mais real ao imaginário, à própria expressão.

Uma arte, porém, consegue transmitir sensações tal qual pensamentos conseguem, por isso sentimos a arte. E também, tal qual pensamentos, não precisamos de intenções, personalidade e nem justificativa. A arte "é" sem um porquê. Apesar da crítica e artistas buscarem as formas que entregam respostas, alguns movimentos se livram disso e, portanto, para mim, conseguem de fato ser.

Uma arte viva é real, uma arte viva é fiel ao imaginário que a criou, sem forma, mesmo que contenha, em si, formas.

Vamos para o início do Renascimento e o que acreditamos ser a semente do movimento surrealista (que viria muitos anos depois): Vamos buscar Bosch em suas artes horrendas, nojentas e livres.

"Pouco se sabe da vida de Bosch" é o que vamos ler em qualquer livro e artigo falando dele, alguns com um tom lamentável sobre esse fato, outros, com os quais eu concordo, acreditam que não precisamos saber da vida dele, já que sua arte fala por si, então vou mostrar para vocês como eu ouço a vida de Bosch através de sua arte.

Bosch enxerga um mundo horrendamente brilhante. O cristianismo medieval parece tomar conta de tudo e é extremamente gráfico em seu terror. Se observamos obras como o Jardim de Delícias e a Tentação de Santo Antônio, vemos a forma mais próxima do religioso, mas que ainda assim distorcem a realidade com criaturas grotescas e o uso dos planos e perspectivas que causam uma confusão imediata. A mente de Bosch parece ser livre dos pregos religiosos, mesmo que dentro do contexto cristão, e isso pode ser visto (até como um toque pagão) em suas obras ainda mais surreais como a Visão de Tondal. Enquanto artistas buscavam os grilhões da realidade, as artes de Bosch conseguem quebrar os limites físicos que tomamos como canônicos e incorporam a mitologia e a criatividade, ou melhor, realidade, de um imaginário único e pessoal. Bosch se entendia? Talvez a falta de entendimento tenha trazido esses conflitos que deram vida a essas obras e as libertaram, enfim. Mas, essas obras responderam aos seus conflitos ou os ampliaram? A expressão e o imaginário em papel conseguem acalentar Bosch?

Para mim, não existe arte mais viva do que a livre de forma. Somente a arte tem a capacidade de tornar vivo o plano imaginário. Se este não tem grilhões, por que insistimos em colocá-los (seja em autoria ou consumo)?

Quando joguei How Fish Are Made, eu vivi uma obra surrealista livre de forma, mas que formou sensações extremamente reais em mim. Como a arte é poderosa, não?

A priori, vivi o dilema das decisões, essas que constantemente nos fazem sentir o ambiente grotesco, o cheiro de peixe morto se confunde com a ferrugem, e estamos então nas entranhas de um organismo horrendamente vivo. O mundo é horrível, mas podemos escolher não ser. Podemos escolher ser melhores do que tudo isso. Eu estava convicto desde o começo da minha escolha e a abracei até o fim.

A filosofia de design do museu aqui funciona perfeitamente. Jogar esse jogo é como um passeio no museu ou até mesmo em um parque temático, em que cada sala temos um encontro e nos vemos cada vez mais livres de forma.

Ao final do capítulo um, tomei minha decisão.

No capítulo seguinte, eu fazia parte do ambiente. De uma forma visceral, eu era a gordura residual da podridão daquele ambiente. Meu papel agora não era apenas tomar a decisão, já a tinha tomado, mas agora estava no momento de levar minha decisão a outras pessoas.

Eu me vi perdido. Minhas decisões, minhas escolhas, elas muitas vezes são só minhas, mas suas consequências não são. Elas transbordam. Eu queria que essas decisões tivessem formas. Ter a confiança, medo e esperança uma imagem e forma limitada, eu conseguiria lê-las, entendê-las e resolvê-las. Mas não têm forma alguma. Vou levando um a um em minhas decisões, planos e, no final, o que vai restar de mim? É esse sabor que eu passo? Esse cheiro, essa sensação de metal com sangue?

"É temporário, até que eu consiga resolver tudo."

Como colocar isso em uma forma? Como colocar o tempo que perdi, que fiz outros perderem, como colocar a esperança e o medo que a acompanha em 4 arestas? Ou em 16 botões?

O surrealismo responde com forma alguma. Eu quero abraçar isso como esse jogo abraçou. Obrigado, How Fish Is Made, por ser minha resposta agora. Obrigado, Bosch, por não se entender e obrigado ao surrealismo e à arte por serem livres, tal qual nosso imaginário que deve ser para sempre.

I don't really get this game. I guess you can find some philosophical and theological meaning in it, but really didn't mean much to me. I just think it's hilarious that they have a musical about despair with imagery of rotting fish a gross stuff in the middle of the game.

To quote my famous Koi DX review "Fish game Fish game it's got a fish in it"

This review contains spoilers

I'm not sure I understood what I just played but definitely memorable/short enough for a fair shake (and it's free). I think I'm vegetarian/even more existential now? Also a katamari damacy expansion?? crazy


This is one of those dark-artsy visual projects you download on itch.io for 20 minutes of entertainment.

It's rather good, some people may even call it deep. I don't.
but it was neat.

It's like a demon looked into all of the screwed-up parts of my brain, insecurities, and made a video game. I had to sit down for a bit, then played some more Pikmin 4.