Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The PSP Mini marketplace is a part of the PlayStation store that I normally have stayed away from.  Call it snobbery, or a lack of patience for smaller bite-sized games, but I have tried as of late to get into these experiences, as they are finding a larger place in the gaming landscape.  One such game that I had a chance to check out is Fish Tank, a PSP Mini  from iFun4All that takes the gameplay mechanics of Tetris and a Match 3 game and blends them into one cohesive gaming experience.  While it was a bit confusing at first, Fish Tank starts to grow on you after you put some time into learning the mechanics.  It is by no means perfect, but it can be a fun diversion when you are on the go.

Fish Tank submerges you into the aquatic world of fish that have decided that they need to stack themselves horizontally on a grid on the right side of your PSP screen.  I am sure this is probably not normal fish behavior, but who am I to judge the migratory habits of the fish kingdom.  As the fish come from the left side of the screen, you align them to the grid on the right, with the goal of trying to match four or more fish of the same color.  It sounds pretty simple, but a couple of things made the game surprisingly baffling at first.

You see, with most Match 3 type games, you only need to match the correct colors and then the gems or whatever you are matching automatically disappear.  That was not the case with Fish Tank and I ended up losing my first two or three games trying to figure out why the matched fishes were not moving from the grid when matched accordingly.  Instead, when you match up four or more fish, a corresponding button will show up on the fish, which you press to remove the fish from the board.

Once I got past my button pressing snafu, I began to enjoy Fish Tank, but over time, it does become a little repetitive and I never found myself catching the, “One More Round” feel that you get from other games in this genre.  There are 24 built-in achievements that you can unlock through gameplay, which adds some replay value to the game, but I kept looking for that hook which never materialized.

Fish Tank is coming to the iPhone and it is probably a better platform for a game of this type, but on the PSP, it never had lasting appeal.  Sure it was fun for a short period of time, but I doubt Fish Tank will ever earn a permanent rotation on anyone’s PSP.  Fish Tank gets a 3 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Fish Tank and other Sony PSP Mini reviews at Test Freaks.