Mundane, day-to-day life tasks are often the hardest in the aftermath of grief. How can you get out of bed, brush your teeth, put on clothes, feed yourself, go to work, act like a person, when someone you love no longer is?
Those tasks are also some of the most important for the grieving process.
Fishbowl, by two-person indie studio imissmyfriends, is a slice-of-life coming of age story about 21-year-old Alo, on her own in the big city with her first real job, living away from her family and friends for the first time ever. I played the demo at PAX Australia 2024 and came away in awe.
Told from a top-down perspective similar to Stardew Valley or To The Moon, Fishbowl takes place in Alo’s house over the period of a month, according to the developers. It is primarily a narrative experience in a small and intimate space, told through Alo’s reactions to her belongings and thought processes during day-to-day life.
It is Alo’s encounter with a mechanical talking fish – a present from her childhood, delivered via parcel from her mother – that serves as the crux of this healing experience.
The slice-of-life elements are front and center here, as you explore your apartment and take care of the daily necessities. Choosing to shower, what to eat, when to drink water, or simply reminiscing with your belongings. There are no food/hydration/sleep meters – just you deciding whether you want Alo to be a healthy, normal human being.
There are brief segments of more traditional gameplay on offer, like sliding block puzzles or Tetris-esque block-falling segments, and they feel obviously gamey. Nothing is too complex here, but they serve as a reminder that you are, in fact, playing a video game. I could take or leave these sections – they interrupt the narrative flow but in a benignly intrusive way that can feel like a short break.
More important are railroaded exploration sections. Dreams of hospital visits and childhood games are laid out as linear set pieces where you wander from point to point listening to Alo’s thoughts or memories of what happened. As Alo progresses, she also regresses, remembering childhood pillow forts and days spent in the park with her grandmother.
There is the clear sense that Alo wants to live in the past, back when days were simple and love was all-encompassing. It’s touching, but also melancholy and a little cynical in a way that only age and adulthood can be. Growing up is, after all, harsh.
Conversations with family, friends, and new colleagues at her video editing job – handled through visual novel-style video call segments – reveal details about Alo’s life and personality and those of the people closest to her. Her mother and her best friend check up on her, knowing of her grief and helping her through it, in the largely unspoken way only those closest to us know how to. Through these interactions, we get the sense of Alo’s deep feeling of loss and how she is doing her best to live with it. It plays out through her small hesitations when the topic is broached, in the way she insists that everything is fine. In the way they know she’s not but support her pretense anyway.
It has been a whole month since her beloved Jaja – grandmother – died, but for Alo the pain is still fresh.
The pastel palette pixel art and lo-fi 8-bit chiptune soundtrack lend a charming vibrancy and light to the experience, ensuring that Fishbowl’s themes of grief and loss are offset by the moments of cheer and happiness that nostalgia brings.
Fishbowl is a contemplative exploration of how we relate to people through objects and memory. The single day included in the demo is a bold promise of things to come, and, if the sharp writing and deft handling of theme are anything to go by, the final game is set to be something special.
Fishbowl has no official release date, but it will be coming to PlayStation 5 and PC. You can play the free demo on Steam right now.
Published: Oct 26, 2024 03:18 am