Aisven Fish

Aisven Fish is an arcade game about being the small thing in cold water. You swim, you eat, you grow, and you keep away from everything that is hunting you or waiting for you. Swim. Movement is a virtual joystick and nothing else. Push and the fish goes: up, down, left, right, or any diagonal you hold. The arena is open water, so there are no tracks to follow and no turns to wait for. Every second of a round is you choosing where to be. Eat. Small fish are what you are here for. Each one raises your score and moves your level forward, and the loop of a good run is built on them: spot a cluster, cross to it, clear it, get back out before something arrives in the gap you left behind. Grow. Level rises from eating small fish, and from that alone. A higher level makes the rest of the round count for more, which is why the opening seconds matter more than they look like they do. The fastest way to a big score and the safest way through the water almost never point the same way. Collect. Coins are the second thing you reach for. They add nothing to the score on screen. They are what the round leaves you with afterwards, so even a run that is clearly about to end is worth finishing properly. Dodge. Hooks drop into the water, drag at your movement when you touch them and can pull you out of the lake for good. Predator fish are bigger than you and are looking for you. There is no trick to them. There is only space. Mines do nothing whatsoever until you make contact. That is what makes them dangerous. Your eyes follow the things that move, and a mine is the one object on screen that does not. Grab what drifts past. A shield absorbs a single collision and then it is spent. A magnet pulls coins and small fish toward you, which is the difference between chasing a scattered patch of water and taking one clean line through it. A growth boost speeds up your leveling while it is active, and the time to use it is the moment you find a crowd with nothing hunting nearby. Spend. Coins are spent in the shop. Buy a shield, a magnet or a growth boost so you start a round already holding something, or put the coins into upgrades instead: a stronger shield, a wider magnet radius, faster growth. Upgrades stay, so nothing you collected is wasted even if the run it came from went badly. Last. There is no ending to reach and no level to beat. A round continues until something catches you, and the score at the end is a record of two things at once: how long you survived and how much you were willing to risk while you did.