Aquatopia Is More Fun Than Interactive Art
You wouldn’t be completely wrong to call the Aquatopia for the PlayStation 3′s PlayStation Eye a glorified screen saver. After a number of, well, sessions running it with separately with my wife and my two kids I’ve been surprised at how the two-dollar download has charmed each of us. When I opened up the PlayStation Store receipt in my email inbox I noticed that it is in a category I’ve never seen before: Interactive Art.
Aquatopia isn’t really a screen saver and it’s not really a tech demo either because it’s definitely a finished product. When my daughter first spent a few minutes with it after finishing her breakfast this morning she declared “Daddy, this isn’t fun. Can we play something else?” I was too busy getting ready for work to give her a hand, so I asked her how many different fish there were and kept shaving.
A few minutes later I noticed she was grinning and running past the screen, causing the fish to scatter. Not long after that she was sitting still to let the fish swim back over and investigate her faint shape captured by the Eye. She would then move slowly along and the fish would follow her. So much for being bored. Even my two-and-a-half-year old son enjoys watching the fish and making them scatter.
It’s a very relaxing and beautiful high-definition rendition of a fish tank and it’s the first thing I’ve got for the PS3 that I’m happy to leave running on the screen while doing other things around the house. The eye will detect motion and switch on, superimposing a light image into the tank that looks extraordinarily like a reflection on a real tank. I would love to see this merged with the Folding@Home project so I could have a really pretty contribution to that effort running on my PS3, and I would buy more fish types and tank backgrounds to change things up.
So what’s the most surprising part of the title? Seeing the Havok physics engine logo when it loads up. Lock and load, fish, lock and load.
I give Aquatopia a 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
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Wow, that sounds pretty brilliant! I did a double-take on the scattering fish bit. I must have missed the mention of the PS3 eye at first. What a remarkable piece of software.