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7.6 excellent
You know Halloween is just around the corner when scary casual games with ghosts and jack-o'-lanterns start popping up on the major game portals. This is my favorite time of the year. Except I always end up poor! It seems like everyone in my family has a birthday in October, November, or December. So birthdays combined with Christmas means I spend a ton on gifts (and shipping!) around the end of the year. I love buying presents, but it really tugs on the old purse strings... And then luckily, along comes a game where I can earn some money! (Note: not real money.)
Fishdom: Spooky Splash, from Playrix Entertainment, is a Halloween-themed Fishdom sequel. In case you missed it, Fishdom was a match-3 game heavily inspired by Reflexive's Big Kahuna Reef. Spooky Splash is very similar to the original Fishdom, so if you liked that game then get ready for more aquarium-building match-making fun. Only spookier.
Like all match-3 games, each level is a grid of different game pieces. These pieces are shells, ghosts, jack-o'-lanterns, witch's hats, squid, starfish, etc. Each turn you get to swap any two adjacent pieces on the game board, with the goal of making a row of three or more identical pieces. (If your move doesn't result in a match, you can't make it.) Create a match, and the pieces in the row you've made will be removed from the board. And new pieces will fall in from the top to fill the gaps they leave behind. Your goal in each level is to remove all the $1 gold plates from the board before the countdown timer reaches zero. Gold plates sit behind some pieces and are collected by making a match with the piece sitting in front of the plate. Once all plates are removed, the level is complete. You earn one dollar for each plate removed, plus bonus dollars based on your score and the amount of time remaining when you complete the level.
It's not real money, but you can still spend it.
Between levels you can pimp your aquarium at the in-game aquarium shop. (You only get one aquarium at first, but can unlock more by winning trophies.) There are three different categories of purchase you can make: Fish, Beauty, and Comfort. Each purchase results in a better and happier aquarium for your fish. There are more than a dozen fish to choose from, like the cute flighty Kaudern's Cardinal, a shy fish that often hides. In the Beauty section are little plants and trees to make your tank look better, like the Membranous Water Plant or Warty Coral. And Comfort items create a more cheerful and relaxing tank for your pets. These include water filters, lights, sand for fish to dig in, and even vitamins. Most items - fish included - that you place in your tank can be clicked on. You can reposition items or just click on them for simple animations. Fish also interact with them. Clicking on your fish is like petting them; they release little hearts into the tank. Luckily you don't have to scoop those out. I had a goldfish when I was a kid. I hated cleaning that tank. And that's the story of the goldfish I had as a kid.
Each of your aquariums is rated on Fish, Beauty, and Comfort. Max out your tank's score to win a trophy and unlock another aquarium. Perhaps most interesting of all, you can use any of your aquariums as the background screensaver on your computer. Pretty cool! This is the kind of feature that doesn't appeal to me at all, because I have my own favorite screensaver (Donald Duck accidentally blowing up himself with dynamite) and I don't want to change it. But I know I'm in the minority; there are players out there who would push their own mothers into traffic if it meant they could get a game that allowed them to use their personally-designed virtual aquarium as their computer's screensaver.
The match-3 gameplay isn't anything new. If you've played any match-3 games, ever, you know what to expect. Pieces falling in from the top landing as matches create chain reactions that are fun to watch and often helpful. Some pieces are locked with chains that have to be broken. There are the usual bombs and powerups to help you when the going gets tough. (As with all match-3 games, the going gets tough when you must make matches using pieces with few neighbors.) Match five or more pieces and you get a cannonball bomb that can take out quite a few pieces around it. Create an even bigger row of identical pieces and you get a nuclear bomb. Explode seven bombs on any level and you'll earn a lightning powerup that can remove all pieces of a certain type from the board. And so on.
The graphics are silky smooth and super colorful. Though Spooky Splash is a Halloween game, it's not a scary game. No one is going to run screaming out of the house. It's no scarier than a kitten wearing a witch's hat. The fish are cute, behave even cuter, and the pieces on the game board sometimes wiggle and stretch and do adorable twists. Occasionally when an avalanche of pieces fall into the game board, pieces seem to disappear. I couldn't decide if this is an optical illusion (the pieces bounce slightly when landing so it's hard to tell) or if there is some kind of bug. It doesn't affect gameplay in any way, it just looks odd. The gorgeous graphics are backed up with just the kind of mock eerie music you'd expect from looking at the game's screenshots. Overall, an excellent presentation all around.
I still think the Fishdom games (except for the second, which was a hidden object game) borrowed a little too much from Big Kahuna Reef, but they did it with style. And certainly Big Kahuna Reef wasn't exactly original, either. (These are match-3 games, for crying out loud!)
Download Fishdom: Spooky Splash