The digital delights of Sony’s scrumptious PlayStation Network service know no bounds. Aside from letting punters compete in online gaming, stream films, browse the Internet and more, its premier attraction rests in the copious supply of downloadable games ripe for the picking. From PSN exclusives to PSOne Classics, minis and plain old add-on content, Sony’s online space is chock full of goodies battling it out for your hard-earned digital dollars.
Welcome back to another installment of Inside PlayStation Network, where every Monday – Friday we’ll pluck a PSN release—be it new or old—and put it in the spotlight for a thorough dissection. Fancy getting a new PSN game but don’t know what one to plump for? Perhaps this feature will help. Didn’t realize that a game was available in your region until now? We’ve got you covered. Or, perhaps you were musing over what those lucky Japanese folk were tucking into over in the Land of the Rising Sun? You can be sure our coverage will extend to those rare regional exclusives as much as those firmly embedded on the public consciousness.
Today, we take a look at the PS Mini Fish Tank.
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Developer: iFun4all
Region(s) available: Europe
Players: 1
Fish Tank has been championed as a “revolutionary” outing in the Match-3 puzzle mould (see Bust-A-Move, Critter Crunch), and if you’re curious as to how exactly it achieves that, then it all comes down one simple thing – you can move left to right. Whereas its contemporaries offer columns, Fish Tank presents you with rows, in which our aquatic friends travel from the left of the screen in order to fit into them.
Players control the fish as they manoeuvre from left field, all of which come in a variety of colours as you’d expect from a Match-3 offering. Your overall objective is to line-up the same coloured fish side-by-side; get four of the creatures touching each other, and you’ll have them assigned to their own face button. Up to four groups can be assigned at any one time, accessible via either triangle, square, circle or cross. The bigger the group, the more points you ultimately receive, while popping groups in a quick flurry results in additional bonuses.
You’ll be competing against the clock however, and running out of time is just one of two ways you can kick the bucket – the second being if you “miss” too many of our fishy friends by directing any stranglers into a full row. Fish Tank offers three difficulty settings – Easy, Medium & Difficult – with the default game mode being ‘Play,’ where you’ll keep on trucking until you meet one of the failure parameters detailed above. Interestingly, it’s actually possible for the game to cease registering your score if you max it out at 999.
Other modes on offer include Challenge, which offers 24 tasks to tackle, where you’ll have to achieve a pre-determined score. Speaking of challenge, the aforementioned harder difficulty setting ups the ante considerably, offering less rows and extra fish for your troubles. Nonetheless, as with the other two modes, there’s still an abundance of power-ups at your disposal, which float across the screen begging to be nabbed. These offer anything from restoring your time limit to clearing rows and columns.
Tune in again same time tomorrow for another peak Inside PlayStation Network.