Game Reviews

Fishbowl Racer

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iOS
| Fishbowl Racer
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Fishbowl Racer
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iOS
| Fishbowl Racer

Games are all about hand-eye coordination. You need to get your fingers to do what your brain thinks they should in as quick a time as possible.

Experimenting with this relationship between on-screen action and physical manipulation can often produce some interesting results.

Fishbowl Racer likes to brag that it's the ultimate test of dexterity because it tasks you with controlling two things at once. Unfortunately, it falls well short of that particular claim.

Not bowled over

Your two objects of attention are a tea trolley and the fish swimming in a bowl atop it. They pelt forwards automatically, and it's your job to guide the trolley over a variety of household objects while flinging the fish upwards to scavenge for fish food.

Tapping on the left of the screen makes the trolley hop into the air, and tapping on the right of the screen catapults the fish out of the damp confines of its glass prison. Success is measured in the distance you travel and the amount of food you can collect.

Food is always arranged on shelves along the top of the screen, meaning you'll have to coordinate dodging the furniture that runs along the bottom with tossing out your fish if you want to reach the higher morsels.

Chairs act as launch pads, letting you bounce a little bit higher, but if you hit them wrong your trolley will shatter and your fish will flop to an untimely, parched death.

Let's get trolleyed

You can chain together shelf combos by making sure your fish collects everything it can on consecutive shelves, although more often than not the randomly generated levels make this a herculean task.

Holding your finger down on the screen for longer makes your fish or your trolley leap further into the air, and a double-jump system allows you to negotiate some of the more nefarious obstacles with a little more ease.

The difficulty doesn't stem from the dual controls, though, but rather from shoddy collision detection, and levels that just aren't that well constructed. Too often you'll clear a dresser only to plough into a chair that you had no possible chance of avoiding.

Bowl movement

Having to do two things at once is hardly a new concept, and all Fishbowl Racer manages to show is how the idea shouldn't be implemented. Even when things are going well, you're not really having that much fun.

Repetitive scenery and some poor presentation combine to create a rather unappealing package. Occasionally, the game does manage to spark some highscore-chasing desire, but all too often the infant flames are quenched by frustration or, worse, boredom. Fishbowl Racer isn't the ultimate test of anything. It takes a reasonably interesting idea, and then forgets to make a reasonably interesting game around it. Its rare moments of diversion are too brief, and what could have been an exercise in experimental fun becomes a household chore.

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Fishbowl Racer

While it might have sky-high aspirations, Fishbowl Racer is a mundane, frustrating experience at the best of times
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.