In the landscape of indie gaming, where personal narratives often find their most poignant expression, a new title emerges that encapsulates a specific moment in modern history while exploring universal human experiences. Fishbowl, developed by imissmyfriends.studio, is not merely a life simulation or a visual novel; it is a meticulous examination of concurrent trauma, the weight of early adulthood, and the quiet power of daily rituals. Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the game follows Alo, a 21-year-old woman navigating a triad of life-altering events: a new job in a new city, the loss of her grandmother, and the isolating realities of a global health crisis.
The Protagonist’s Overwhelming Reality
Alo’s situation is deliberately constructed to feel overwhelming, a narrative choice that mirrors the compounded stressors many faced during the pandemic’s peak. She has recently moved for her first major job, a significant step into adulthood, yet finds herself physically and emotionally isolated. The pandemic mandates remote work and social distancing, cutting off nascent connections. Concurrently, her grandmother, referred to as Jaja, has passed away, and Alo was unable to see her before her death. This personal grief intertwines with a professional worry: her family’s tea shop, a cultural and emotional anchor, faces potential closure. The result is a character plagued by uncertainty, homesickness, creative blockage, and nightly nightmares.
The game’s inciting moment is both magical and melancholic. A shipment from Alo’s mother arrives, containing items left by Jaja. Among them is a small goldfish toy named Paplet, a cherished object from her past. This toy inexplicably comes to life. Over the course of 30 virtual days, Paplet becomes a catalyst. Alo’s interactions with this animated memento, her remote job, virtual connections with friends and family, and the objects within her apartment collectively shape her path forward. The game posits that healing and direction are found not in grand gestures, but in the accumulation of small, daily actions and choices.
A Structure of Scripted and Unscripted Days
Fishbowl structures each day around a blend of predetermined events and player-directed activities. Scripted events often involve Paplet, offering glimpses into memories with Jaja and other key figures, serving as emotional touchpoints. The primary minigame revolves around Alo’s job: an editing task where players sort constantly moving items into correct positions and delete errors. This activity is brief, lasting only a few minutes, and concludes with positive, reinforcing interactions with coworkers, simulating professional accomplishment and social validation.
The Influence of Routine Activities
Beyond the core narrative events, players guide Alo through a suite of optional routine activities. These include eating meals, cleaning, binge-watching shows, doomscrolling on social media, attempting to write, and bathing. Each action directly influences Alo’s mental state, a system represented visually through status bars and environmental cues. A clear sky and a growing plant symbolize optimism and stability, while clouds overhead indicate depression and low morale. This visual feedback loop creates an immediate connection between player choice and character well-being.
This system introduces a compelling, sometimes anxious, layer of gameplay. Early on, players learn that Alo’s responses during conversations are tied to her current mood. If she is too upset, certain dialogue options become unavailable. Conversely, if her spirits are too high, opportunities for more negative or raw emotional expressions might be walled off. This mechanic forces players to consider the consequences of even mundane actions, fostering a protective or experimental approach to Alo’s daily life. Notably, the game seems to weight the system towards easier decline, reflecting the fragility of mental health under stress.
Minigames and Mechanical Repetition
The two main minigames—video editing and unpacking Jaja’s boxes—are designed as pleasant, non-tedious sorting activities. The unpacking game resembles a sliding tile puzzle, where players rearrange items in a box to clear a path to a specific object. Smaller actions, like preparing food or washing dishes, are presented through a series of images with brief instructional text, requiring simple button inputs. These sequences lack explicit tutorials, which generally works intuitively, though one instance involving a trigger hold rather than a button press can cause momentary confusion. The game offers accessibility options for the two primary minigames but does not provide alternatives for the quicker routine interactions.
This deliberate inclusion of repetitive tasks serves a dual purpose. Mechanically, it establishes a routine that players must maintain over the in-game month. Narratively, it comments on the nature of healing and growth. The potential tedium mirrors the real-life experience of recovery, where progress often feels slow and tangible results require consistent, sometimes boring, effort. The game suggests that forward motion is built on these small, repeated foundations.
Artistic Detail in a Confined Space
Despite being set primarily within a single apartment, Fishbowl achieves a remarkable sense of detail and beauty through its artistic direction. The spritework for Alo’s living space and the items from Jaja’s home is delicate and intricate, inviting close observation. Character designs for Alo and her friends are gorgeous, rich with cultural details and personality-defining elements. A particularly effective touch is the inclusion of a small video feed showing Alo’s reactions during her virtual calls with others, adding a layer of self-awareness and vulnerability to these interactions. The overall aesthetic is pretty and purposeful, with each setpiece and layout feeling meaningful to the story’s emotional core.
The Central Themes of Trauma and Choice
While grief over Jaja’s death and the family tea shop is a focal point, Fishbowl does not isolate this trauma. The 30-day narrative diligently allocates time to all three major stressors: grief, pandemic isolation, and adult transition. It examines how these elements combine and weigh upon an individual, creating a holistic portrait of compounded anxiety. The game’s thesis is that navigating such a period depends profoundly on choices. These choices are not limited to conversational responses but extend to how Alo chooses to live her life each day—what she eats, how she cleans, whether she engages with art or distraction. Player agency is defined by cultivating a lifestyle amid chaos.
The experience can feel cathartic. Helping Alo move forward, even through repetitive positive actions, simulates the supportive role one might take in another’s life. It underscores how small interactions and decisions can accumulate into significant change. After a few hours of play, the importance of these actions becomes deeply apparent, reinforcing the game’s core message about incremental progress.
Available on PS5 and PC, with a demo offered for prospective players, Fishbowl stands as a heartfelt narrative project. It captures a specific historical moment—the COVID-19 pandemic—but uses that setting to explore timeless themes of loss, isolation, and the journey into adulthood. The game argues that forward momentum is possible even under immense pressure, and that the path is paved not by dramatic leaps, but by the quiet, consistent choices made each day. In its blend of routine and revelation, it offers a mirror to our own strategies for coping and growth, reminding us that healing is often a daily practice, built within the confines of our own fishbowls.
