Right off the bat, Fish Fun sounds like a grand old time. What could be better than trying to make your way up the aquatic food chain, eating smaller fish to grow your character until you are king of the under water world? Plus, the game title has the word “Fun” in it. So it has to be good, right? Not exactly. Fish Fun has some good qualities, but in the end, it fails to live up to an engaging application that you would want to keep playing or even keep on your iPhone for the long run. Where does it go wrong? Read on to find out.

Fish Fun let’s you play as one of a couple playable fish, thrown into a variety of settings where your task is to munch on smaller fish and avoid the bigger ones. To do so, you tilt and turn the device, controlling your little Nemo around the screen. To eat fish, you simply run into them. If you touch any of the larger fish, your life is over. It is a very simple concept, and at first, you find yourself enjoying the aquatic tunes and easy gameplay. But as you gradually grow, and are able to eat bigger and bigger foes, the game loses its appeal fairly quickly. As I would progress in each level, I found myself becoming very bored and would just want to die to end the level and see if there was any other value in the game. There are multiple settings and fish to choose from, as well as 3 different modes of play that are pretty straight forward (Classic, Timed, and Challenge). There are also 3 mini-games to play at your leisure, leader boards and some social aspects thrown in for good measure.

The problem with Fish Fun is just it’s lack of variety. Yes there are different environments to choose from, various characters, multiple modes of play, and even some “fishy” power-ups to utilize during gameplay, but it never adds up to a valuable playing game. As I mentioned before, many times while playing, I found myself just wanting the game to end, so I could move on with my day. There are plenty of apps available, that are very simple in design, and don’t have much variety to them (Bejeweled 2, Peggle, Skee-ball, Scramble). However, these games make you want to play more, and more, and more, thus their addictive nature. Fish Fun doesn’t ever come close to reaching that same plateau.

I have reviewed many iPhone games here on Loot Ninja, and if you have read any of them, you may understand my stance on apps. Since the cost of apps are significantly lower than a retail priced game, expectations need to be lowered. That isn’t to say crap games deserve 5 star ratings. But they definitely do not need to be a full fledged RPG’s, with multiple paths, and endings, and characters and all that jazz. As long as they are compelling and keep you coming back for more, then it is a great app. Look at Skee-Ball. That is the simplest app ever. Yet it holds a prime spot on my first page of apps on my iPhone, and won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon. Fish Fun on the other hand, never had me wanting to come back, thus it sat on the last page of my apps ( page 8 ) and now will be removed to the app graveyard. R.I.P.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]