This review contains spoilers
Clocking in at around 20 minutes, How Fish is Made makes the smart decision and doesn’t muck about wasting it’s precious little time. True to its title, the game is about how fish is made. To expound, you’re a sardine newly entering a fish processing plant, encountering oily new friends as you explore further and further into the facility. Not solely a walking simulator (or would it be flopping simulator?), each fish you meet has an interesting question they all echo. That is, once you reach the end of the plant, which way are you going, up or down? Given it requires an answer each time they ask you, I took it seriously and thought of a few different reasonings that ultimately made my choice down.
To start with the weakest reasoning, the text for Up is red and Down is blue. And as we all learned at school, blue = good and red = bad. It’s mathematically proven at this point. Thesis ready as that was, for more support I took a look around the processing plant. As the start would suggest, you seem to be entering a downwards-built processing facility, which would suggest the natural sequence would be to go down, so I should go up right? We’re not finished. This is no ordinary facility, I hope. There’s mystery liquid stagnant ponds, eye-wall structure thingamabobs, too-large caverns that become more and more Cronenbergian in design as you go further in, and most disturbingly of all a general feeling that you’re not in a facility at all, but some sort of organic mass.
Now, with either interpretation of what you’re in it would seem sensible to go up. If it is a facility, maybe going up would take you out of the machine altogether, giving you another chance at oily freedom and all its worldly pleasures. And if it is a creature you’re in, then going up would surely seem more preferable than the alternative, in both cleanliness and general risk. Well, since that seems the obvious choice, it can’t possibly be the right one, so I decided to go the other way. Perhaps they used reverse psychology, and going down would end well for us after all. Besides, we already came from above, might as well see what they got in the other direction. Of course, meta-gaming can only get you so far, and while fun to ponder, these are all very flimsy theories.
Don’t worry though, remember those fish friends I was talking about? They’re more than happy to give their own input. I love these scaley friends of ours. Some are braggards, claiming with unfounded confidence they know which way to go, while others are less sure, themselves sweating over making the decision. Despite there seeming to be no obligation, every fish knew that they could only delay it so long. That no matter how long you put it off you must eventually face that million dollar choice. Finding the other indecisive fin-having fellows to be of little help, I stayed strong on my choice of down. I figured what upside could there be to changing my answer.
It’s here where the real bait and switch of the game is performed. That must be it, I thought. A test of conviction. That changing my answer, though seeming to have no consequence, could lead me to a “bad ending”, the consummate gamer’s archnemesis. So stand strong I did. Then I met the last two fish, each the most useful of all the waterfolk we met previously. The penultimate fish acted as the meta exposition, outright questioning what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Then gave two different explanation as to what the lesson is here. Is it a meaningless choice, or is it truly a test of conviction? Great, that’s another choice I have to make. Luckily the text for conviction was colored red, so we still have my rock-solid scientific method to fall back on.
Now normally I would call this clunky writing, to have them outright acknowledge the themes, but I think it works here. Throwing a wrench in the idea that there’s only message lends well to the over-analyzing this game thrives on, and it throws you off-kilter so effectively I just can’t muster the passion to deride it. Despite his later admission that he was just another lowly fish pretending to be of authority, his message still resonated. Still, I couldn’t falter at this point. So I stayed with my best friend Down.
The last fish, right before you make the decision for real this time, provides some stats like he’s some kind of Bill James. He tells you how many fish he’s seen go each way. He counted 199 fish that have gone down and 474 that have gone up. Interesting as it would appear, that little demographic does little to dissuade my love of down. Our final fish-bro’s not done yet though. He offers to go a direction we choose and yell at us what he sees as he goes through it. After sending him down he reports it’s “soft” before going silent. Alright, me and Tempur-Pedic are pretty tight, so make some room for me fish-bro. Steeling myself, I go down to the onyx abyss.
What splendors await me you ask? A yummy fish sandwich, with my sardine self providing the main protein. In other words, no bueno for me. A bad-ending perhaps, or maybe the only ending there is. The appetizer before our final form comes in the shape of some plain text on a black screen. A little send-off message. The author goes over how they hate the comfort given to people struggling that others are going through the same thing. They recognize this is unhealthy, before sending us off with the same message: “Don’t worry, a lot of people are going through the same thing.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure they’re likening the fish in the plant to those going through their own struggles. We might not be going at the same pace, but we all face trials and tribulations. Sometimes one’s we can’t avoid. Call me easy but I find this to be oddly endearing. I’m not familiar with the creator of the game but it feels startingly sincere and sobering.
Oh and to spoil the other ending, it’s just as unfortunate, with you becoming integrated into a huge mass of tormented fish flesh, unable to move or to exert agency. It’s here where the bait and switch I talked about is fully realized. It was never about conviction, except maybe for the benefit of your own self-respect. Changing your answer never amounted to any change. In fact, neither up nor down really mattered at all. Both were bad.
Which leads us to the main and largest theme of the game. That being the illusion of choice, the first theory posited and then dismissed by the penultimate fish. All that pondering, theorizing? All for nothing. You never had a chance to begin with. None of you and your fish friends did. Unbeknownst to you, you were all just helpless small fish in a scary world. Delay it as much as you want, you will have to face hardships, you might feel like a fish out of water, sometimes there will be no right answer. Certainly not one as simple as up or down. As the final text emphasized, sometimes all we can do is endure, It may not be romantic.
But that’s alright, just know,
a lot of people are going through the same thing.
To start with the weakest reasoning, the text for Up is red and Down is blue. And as we all learned at school, blue = good and red = bad. It’s mathematically proven at this point. Thesis ready as that was, for more support I took a look around the processing plant. As the start would suggest, you seem to be entering a downwards-built processing facility, which would suggest the natural sequence would be to go down, so I should go up right? We’re not finished. This is no ordinary facility, I hope. There’s mystery liquid stagnant ponds, eye-wall structure thingamabobs, too-large caverns that become more and more Cronenbergian in design as you go further in, and most disturbingly of all a general feeling that you’re not in a facility at all, but some sort of organic mass.
Now, with either interpretation of what you’re in it would seem sensible to go up. If it is a facility, maybe going up would take you out of the machine altogether, giving you another chance at oily freedom and all its worldly pleasures. And if it is a creature you’re in, then going up would surely seem more preferable than the alternative, in both cleanliness and general risk. Well, since that seems the obvious choice, it can’t possibly be the right one, so I decided to go the other way. Perhaps they used reverse psychology, and going down would end well for us after all. Besides, we already came from above, might as well see what they got in the other direction. Of course, meta-gaming can only get you so far, and while fun to ponder, these are all very flimsy theories.
Don’t worry though, remember those fish friends I was talking about? They’re more than happy to give their own input. I love these scaley friends of ours. Some are braggards, claiming with unfounded confidence they know which way to go, while others are less sure, themselves sweating over making the decision. Despite there seeming to be no obligation, every fish knew that they could only delay it so long. That no matter how long you put it off you must eventually face that million dollar choice. Finding the other indecisive fin-having fellows to be of little help, I stayed strong on my choice of down. I figured what upside could there be to changing my answer.
It’s here where the real bait and switch of the game is performed. That must be it, I thought. A test of conviction. That changing my answer, though seeming to have no consequence, could lead me to a “bad ending”, the consummate gamer’s archnemesis. So stand strong I did. Then I met the last two fish, each the most useful of all the waterfolk we met previously. The penultimate fish acted as the meta exposition, outright questioning what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Then gave two different explanation as to what the lesson is here. Is it a meaningless choice, or is it truly a test of conviction? Great, that’s another choice I have to make. Luckily the text for conviction was colored red, so we still have my rock-solid scientific method to fall back on.
Now normally I would call this clunky writing, to have them outright acknowledge the themes, but I think it works here. Throwing a wrench in the idea that there’s only message lends well to the over-analyzing this game thrives on, and it throws you off-kilter so effectively I just can’t muster the passion to deride it. Despite his later admission that he was just another lowly fish pretending to be of authority, his message still resonated. Still, I couldn’t falter at this point. So I stayed with my best friend Down.
The last fish, right before you make the decision for real this time, provides some stats like he’s some kind of Bill James. He tells you how many fish he’s seen go each way. He counted 199 fish that have gone down and 474 that have gone up. Interesting as it would appear, that little demographic does little to dissuade my love of down. Our final fish-bro’s not done yet though. He offers to go a direction we choose and yell at us what he sees as he goes through it. After sending him down he reports it’s “soft” before going silent. Alright, me and Tempur-Pedic are pretty tight, so make some room for me fish-bro. Steeling myself, I go down to the onyx abyss.
What splendors await me you ask? A yummy fish sandwich, with my sardine self providing the main protein. In other words, no bueno for me. A bad-ending perhaps, or maybe the only ending there is. The appetizer before our final form comes in the shape of some plain text on a black screen. A little send-off message. The author goes over how they hate the comfort given to people struggling that others are going through the same thing. They recognize this is unhealthy, before sending us off with the same message: “Don’t worry, a lot of people are going through the same thing.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure they’re likening the fish in the plant to those going through their own struggles. We might not be going at the same pace, but we all face trials and tribulations. Sometimes one’s we can’t avoid. Call me easy but I find this to be oddly endearing. I’m not familiar with the creator of the game but it feels startingly sincere and sobering.
Oh and to spoil the other ending, it’s just as unfortunate, with you becoming integrated into a huge mass of tormented fish flesh, unable to move or to exert agency. It’s here where the bait and switch I talked about is fully realized. It was never about conviction, except maybe for the benefit of your own self-respect. Changing your answer never amounted to any change. In fact, neither up nor down really mattered at all. Both were bad.
Which leads us to the main and largest theme of the game. That being the illusion of choice, the first theory posited and then dismissed by the penultimate fish. All that pondering, theorizing? All for nothing. You never had a chance to begin with. None of you and your fish friends did. Unbeknownst to you, you were all just helpless small fish in a scary world. Delay it as much as you want, you will have to face hardships, you might feel like a fish out of water, sometimes there will be no right answer. Certainly not one as simple as up or down. As the final text emphasized, sometimes all we can do is endure, It may not be romantic.
But that’s alright, just know,
a lot of people are going through the same thing.