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Megaquarium

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The Game

Megaquarium is an aquarium management and simulation game from Twice Circled. The game lets you take control of an aquarium and you must manage various aspects to grow it into a thriving attraction. This includes designing the layout of the aquarium, selecting and caring for a variety of aquatic animals, hiring and managing staff, and keeping the visitors happy.

The game features various aquatic species, each with its own specific needs in terms of water quality, food, and tank conditions. Ensure that the needs of the fish are met, which involves managing water quality, temperature, and other factors. There are also constraints of the available space and budget, making strategic decisions regarding expansion and investment.

As you progress through the game, you earn money from ticket sales and can use this to purchase new tanks, fish, and decorations. There are new technologies and equipment to be unlocked that allow for more complex and efficient aquarium setups. The game includes a campaign mode with 10 increasingly challenging scenarios as well as a sandbox mode where you can build the aquarium with fewer constraints.

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Worth it?

On Steam the game will set you back around £10 on sale (although it can be quite expensive if not), while on PS4 you can get it for as little as £4.49. The game is quite addictive and allows for a good deal of customisation of your aquarium setups. One thing it lacks (at least on the PS4 version) is a consistent autosave feature, which given there are some occasional crashes (on PS4) makes it very frustrating when you suddenly lose a huge amount of progress.

The simple low poly art style and vibrant colours do make it quite fun to look at and you can zoom in to view your aquarium as if you were one of the guests. Overall the game has the ability to keep you playing for hours despite it’s surface level simplicity. The decoration and customisation options will let you make the aquarium of your dreams (that you probably never had). If something can be done for PS4 crashes and autosaving at a regular interval it would be a must play.

Tips

  • Use zoning to efficiently distribute staff.
  • Staff’s traits will make them better at certain jobs – for example memory is good for cleaning and repair works, while empathy and precision is good for feeding and the gift shop.
  • Upgraded pumps can power multiple tanks, allowing you to have a big control room that supplies 2 or 3 tanks.
  • Place seating and bins throughout the aquarium.
  • Check the guest thoughts to monitor your prestige – if somethings is wrong in one of the tanks you will lose prestige whenever guests see it.
  • When choosing podium talks go for prestige ones as that’s the hardest to earn.
  • Keep fish and tank decorations varied to avoid guests getting bored.

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Big Pharma

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The Game

Big Pharma by Twice Circled is a simulation game available on virtually every platform (except mobile). The game is a conveyer belt manufacturing simulator in which you combine various ingredients to create new and wonderful medicines to help people with their illnesses. Overall the concept is fairly simple, however the initial learning curve can be quite steep. There are quite a few tutorial missions and they can be quite daunting, but once you get to grips with the mechanics you’ll also realise that the game does quite a good job of telling you exactly what to do with each ingredient to achieve the desired effect. Note that I played the PS4 version, so some comments may be specific to that, the obvious benefit (as usual) of having a PC version is mods – although these aren’t available through the Steam Workshop as with other games, so may be a bit of a hassle.

The game features research trees and various exploration missions that you need to undertake in order to discover new ingredients and improve your machinery. At it’s most basic level the game is based around increasing or decreasing the concentration of various ingredients in order to achieve desired effects (these can be seen in the info panel of each ingredient). When at a certain concentration some ingredients can be combined with others or run through a specific machine in order to change or upgrade their effect completely. This is where the game gets interesting and a lot more complex. Combining various ingredients and increasing/decreasing their concentration until you achieve the perfect cure can be quite a complex process and if you don’t do it efficiently enough, you won’t be making much of a profit.

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Worth it?

Generally speaking the game will set you back between £20-30. Honestly I find that a bit on the expensive side, so look out for any offers. It does offer a lot of scenarios to play through and a lot of depth and there’s a free build mode too. On PS4 the controls can be a bit of a challenge to get used to and don’t always feel very intuitive to use, it sort of goes without saying that it’s a game made for a PC.

Overall other than some control issues and the slightly elevated price, the game is quite addictive and can be really satisfying once you get that supply chain up and running properly, it has some really satisfying sound effects and will keep you coming back for more. There’s plenty of scenarios to keep you playing for a while and if you’re playing on PC you can even have a go with modding the game.

Tips

  • Keep an eye on each ingredient’s info card – it will tell you what concentration you have to get it to and what device you then need to use to get the desired effect
  • The info card will also tell you the total manufacturing cost and medicine value – don’t overextend for really good drugs early on as you won’t have the machinery to make the production line efficient enough and you’ll end up losing money
  • Hire researchers as soon as you can afford to so that you can begin researching better machinery – focus on the agglomerator and ioniser
  • If you can’t get rid of a negative side-effect, turn that medicine into a cream – it will reduce the negative score from the bad side-effect by 50%

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