Have you ever played those popular fish games back when smartphones weren’t yet a thing? I remember those PC games where you would have a virtual aquarium that you could raise fish in, and then leave them every few hours to see them grow and mate, or feed them and clean the tank. One of the memorable games of my childhood was Freddi Fish and the Missing Kelp, though that was a lot earlier than the virtual aquarium.
With the coming of FB and smart phones with their high-tech games that can play RPGs, battle simulations, and whatnot, one of the things I’ve missed are simple leisure games that don’t get you too stressed out trying to win something. Majority of games nowadays feel like comptitions; and while games like that are fun, sometimes it’s fun to find games that aren’t. Which is why a few years ago, I was thrilled when I found the Zen Koi app. Actually, I deleted it a few weeks/months into playing and only recently got back into it with Zen Koi 2 when it came out again on the app store.
So, the app is by LandShark Games (as you can see above). It’s a little like having an aquarium and raising/breeding a lot of fish, except that in this game – you ARE the FISH. You start out with a common-design koi, and you make your way up to “enlightenment” by eating algae, worms, and fish. The variety of things you are able to eat increase as you mature your fish and expand your pond.
As you ascend your levels, you gain skill points that you can use to increase three things – SPEED, AGILITY, and RARITY. Speed speaks for itself – how fast can your fish move. Agility is more on mobility and flexibility – how well can your fish make those turns or move in a different direction than the one it’s currently on. And rarity is more of what are the likelier chances that your fish, when it mates, will produce a more uncommon design.
To reach enlightenment, your koi needs to complete 8 mission levels. Each mission level requires you to eat a certain number of a certain type of fish food/prey. Every prey you eat contributes a certain number of experience points that helps you get to a higher level. Every completed mission level expands your pond and allows your koi to eat bigger and harder to catch prey. It’s actually harder than just eating prey, though it does sound easy at first. Your koi needs to actually travel within your virtual pond, scouring for prey to eat. At the same, you will encounter bushes that slow you down and hurt you, or you will encounter prey that latch on to you and slow you down, other prey are actually faster than you or are able to hide in bushes from you, so it’s really a challenge as to what skill sets you want to award your koi so catching preyis much easier.
While the goal of the game is to level up your fish and your pond so your koi can attain enlightenment, one of the things to keep in mind is unlocking more and rarer koi patterns. At the beginning, most of the koi you own, and will be able to breed with, are common designs. But eventually during the duration of the game, you will be able to buy or unlock rarer designs. Sometimes, uncommon breeds also come up as potential mates during the game, and these in turn result in possible uncommon or rare eggs.
Just like that thing they taught in biology where a combination of parents will produce a likely result based on genes, a combination of two koi will produce a certain kind of koi offspring carrying such a design. Eventually, the more koi you breed together, the chances of getting a rare one increases. Some of them unlock new collections, where different colored varieties bearing a distinct trait are grouped together.
During the duration of your prey-finding and catching, you will encounter boost items like increased speed or increased agility, but they are not very common. Pearls are also something you can find. Use pearls to increase the number of eggs or fish you can carry at any one time. Pearls can also be used to buy fish with rarer designs. Once you’ve purchased a fish, they come out in the inbox and can be added to the Current Fish list. Pearls are also available when you watch advertisement videos, and this game actually has quite a lot of them embedded into the app.
As you can see, I haven’t (yet) given up on the game. It was a little frustrating at first to keep mating koi and ending up with common ones, or ones I’ve already unlocked before, but then eventually you get a few more uncommon ones and they breed more uncommon ones. While the game is not entirely not competitive, the soothing music and overall take your time attitude is somewhat soothing; a good break once in a while in the day.