Fishbowl Is a Touching Coming-of-Age Story

When I dived into the short, yet sweet demo for Fishbowl, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into, considering the fact that I’ve been following the game’s development for quite some time. Much like the game’s premise, I played it on a rainy evening after a long day of work. What I didn’t expect was a story that hit a little too close to home and left me teary-eyed by the end of my time with it. 

Developed by imissmyfriends.studio, Fishbowl is a coming-of-age story based in India about Alo, a twenty-one-year-old grappling with her new life and job in the big city while grieving the loss of her grandmother. 

Fishbowl’s beginning scene is one that struck a chord with me. Alo gets a call from her mom on her way back from work, wondering if she’s reached home yet. Alo mentions that her day at work was tiring and that she’s just about getting used to the city’s seemingly never-ending rain. It’s something that I’ve been through almost line-by-line, as I too felt the struggle of moving to a rainy new city and would get regular calls from a doting mother to ask if I arrived home safely. 

Once Alo reaches (her very spacious and totally decked out) home, she finds a package sent by her mom. It turns out to be a box of her grandmother’s belongings that she saved for Alo. I wasn’t quite ready for the game to hit me with such an emotional blow, as my grandmother passed away almost a year ago, and she meant a great deal to me as well. 

I could feel exactly what Alo felt about not having the heart to eat her grandmother’s last batch of mango pickles because I have a jar of my grandmother’s mango pickle that’s been unopened as well. The grief that Alo feels when looking through these items is very real, and you can see glimpses of that grief even while you go around Alo’s home and interact with objects. 

I really appreciated the options that were there to either take part in certain self-care tasks, such as showering or brushing or skip them altogether. It makes sense as no one’s really totally put together when dealing with the loss of a loved one. You can eat a piece of toast as Alo and go to bed, and that’s completely fine by the game.

I’m getting ahead of myself though, so back to the box of items from Grandma. We’re made to unpack the box in a puzzle-like manner by sliding the items across to uncover each one completely. It’s not a terribly tricky puzzle, but since Fishbowl is going to feature more of these unpacking puzzles it could definitely benefit from a reset button for when players get stumped, similar to A Little to the Left.

One of the items we find is an old toy fish in a bowl, and if the game’s name is anything to go by, it seems pretty important, but Alo doesn’t seem to quite remember what it is. After going to sleep that night, Alo dreams about her past, and we’re thrown into a haunting sequence involving several memories as well as a certain toy fish bowl. 

Alo wakes up and walks towards the fishbowl that she’s placed on a little table in her home, and the fish speaks to her. Initially unable to believe what she’s seeing, Alo talks to the fish, and eventually remembers the toy from her childhood. Thinking it’s not too bad to have something familiar around, Alo gets along with the fish, and soon enough, it transports Alo to her past. 

Alo revisits a memory from when she was a young girl, and in it she’s picking flowers for her grandmother. I shed more than a few tears at this part of the game. Alo recalls the warmth of her grandmother’s hugs, and her grandmother tells Alo to always call her even when she’s all grown up. It’s something my grandma would also tell me to do, but now I wish I called her even more.

The demo for Fishbowl ends on that touching scene, but waterworks aside, the time I had with it really left me longing for more. Visually, it has some really stunning top-down pixel art and the soundtrack is mellow and fits the rainy visuals quite well. The game isn’t all sorrow though, and has its moments where you can see more of who Alo is and what her job entails. There’s a fun little section where you have to “edit” a video with a colleague in a fun matching mini game. You even get to talk to Alo’s childhood friend, Zuri, and catch up with her about life. 

The writing could use a little more polish though, as there are a few grammatical errors here and there and far too many ellipses for my liking, but that’s just me. I did play the game through keyboard and mouse, and sometimes the game seems to have a bit of trouble with choosing which object to interact with and can glitch out a bit. Although, these are just minor nitpicks and are definitely things that can be fixed before the full game launches.

While the game’s release date is yet to be announced, Fishbowl’s demo is now out on Steam and PlayStation, and is roughly 20 minutes long.

TechRaptor previewed Fishbowl on PC using a code provided by the developers.