Subtitle (30): Fish-Flinging Fun

Short Description (10-12 concentrated words): Fling fishy friends and skip them across the sea to score big.

Push Notification (107): Take a break and fling some friendly fish in Fish Out of Water!

Email Spotlight (150): Impress crabby judges with fish-flinging finesse in this sea-skipping sensation.

Medium Description (2-3 sentences): You will believe fish can fly in this sea-skipping sensation. Pick one of six friendly fish, each with their own abilities, and fling them with all your might! Try to impress the judges, but be warned: they’re a little crabby.

Long Description (2-3 paragraphs, 5-10 bullet points): Ever wonder what fish do for fun? Play Fish Out of Water and you’ll get some fins-on experience with the most spectacular sea-skipping sport this side of the Atlantic! Six denizens of the deep are waiting for you to fling them as far as you can, each with their own abilities to use to your advantage. It’s up to you to choose the best one for the conditions, but don’t forget to take the taste of the judges into account. They’re a bunch of crabs, but you might be able to crack their shells.

Playing Fish Out of Water is as simple as grabbing your fish of choice and flicking your finger. Fling them as far as you can, or aim for the most skips along the water. Both are important for getting the highest grades possible from the panel of crabby judges. You get three shots each round, so give it your best. Varying weather conditions and times of day mix things up, and cool gear and power-ups can boost your bounces to greater heights.

• Easy to Play: Grab a fish and give it a flick! They’ll fly through the air and skip across the sea, just like that.
• 6 Friendly Fish: You’ve got a full roster of seafaring skippers to choose your team from. Each one moves differently, so pick carefully!
• Wild Weather: Massive tsunamis! Chilly icebergs! Powerful geysers! You’ll have to figure out a strategy for all of those and more.
• Gather Loot: Complete the missions to earn valuable crystals that you can use to craft costumes and charms to boost your bounces beyond belief!
• Online Leaderboards: Show off your fish-flinging finesse and see how high you can rank against the rest of the world. There might even be some secret leaderboards for the best of the best.
• Experience the Story: Each level-up will add to the storybook, spinning an aquatic tale of friendship and triumph.

Short Developer History (2-3 sentences): Halfbrick Studios was founded in 2001 in Toowong, Australia. After working on games for a variety of consoles and handhelds, it made a huge splash in mobile gaming with hit original titles like Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, and Dan the Man.

Game History: Fish Out of Water first released on iOS in April of 2013, with an Android release arriving a year later in July of 2014. With its easy-to-understand gameplay and charming presentation, Fish Out of Water quickly found an eager audience. After heading into the sunset in 2020, the game made a fin-tastic comeback as part of Halfbrick+ in 2023, complete with spiffy remastered graphics and audio. You can’t keep these high-fliers down!

In-Depth Game Description:

Different situations call for different kinds of games, and there are some occasions where you need something you can get into and out of in a matter of a minute or two. Halfbrick has quite a few games aimed at satisfying that particular need. Indeed, it could be said to be one of its specialities. When you really only have a short time to play, Fish Out of Water is a great choice. No matter how you play, each round will only ever consist of three fish flings. The length of those tosses will vary somewhat, but they’ll never be very long. Each throw works like a turn, too. If your attention is split, there’s no big issue with playing the game.

All of that sometimes makes people think there isn’t a whole lot to Fish Out of Water. Just throw the fish, get your score, and do it again. Since you’re judged out of just ten points by each member of the crabby panel, it feels like there isn’t even a lot of room for score attacking. If that’s all you want it to be, then Fish Out of Water can be that. There is, however, a lot more to the game if you really dig into its various facets.

The core of all of this comes in the selection of fish. There are six different ones to choose from, and you’ll always need to pick three of them. No fish can be used twice, and you need to balance things carefully if you want to properly impress the judges. Broadly speaking, you want to maximize distance and number of skips. Each fish has to be tossed at the right angle to get the best out of it, and figuring out the best arc for each is the first battle you need to fight.

Next, boosting. You have a limited supply of boost power, and knowing when to trigger it to give yourself the greatest possible advantage is key. The gauge is shared across all three of your tosses, and while you can recover some of it by picking up the boosties strewn about, you can never truly count on that. For some fish, you’ll want to boost on their initial ascent. Others might benefit most from a bit of speed near the end. For some, you’ll want to use careful timing to make their skips go farther. Again, practice with it for a while and you’ll get a sense for who to spend your boost on and how.

You also have to take the weather and time of day into account. It changes with every passing hour, and it can make a major difference in the efficacy of each fish. Chilly weather creates ice patches that greatly benefit surface skippers like Rocket or the Brothers and hinder bouncier fish like Olympus and Finlay. Waves, on the other hand, can generate some great opportunities for the fish with bigger bounces. Leaderboard scores always note the weather condition, and you’ll easily spot who learns to work with it rather than against it.

Finally, costumes and charms. You’ll earn crystals as you play, and you can use those in two different ways. You can craft costumes that will change the parameters of the fish who wears them, giving you even more options to work with. You can also create charms, single-use items that can significantly improve your results. You’re not going to be so flush with crystals as to toss them away easily, so you’ll probably want to focus on unlocking all the costumes before you spend them on charms. Still, the costumes aren’t full-on improvements. They give and take, so you’ll have to consider whether or not using one meets the needs of the situation.

As you can see, this simple game of lobbing fish into the air has quite a lot to its mechanics. Learning the ins and outs of them is very satisfying, and while the leaderboard competition is rarely intense, it adds some incentive to make the most of each situation. Others might enjoy checking off the list of achievements, or unlocking the storybook pages through leveling up. Speaking of leveling up, it can also be a lot of fun just trying to complete all of the missions. They’ll often ask you to do things that aren’t necessarily conducive to getting a high score, which forces you to mix up your strategies.

Fish Out of Water is a fascinating game because it hides so much depth behind an incredibly accessible front. Like a lantern fish, it dangles its shining lamp of simple fish-flicking in front of the player, only to reveal the powerful jaws of complex systems should they venture too close. You don’t have to engage with any of that stuff, of course. If you want to treat it as a simple affair to waste a couple of minutes on here and there, you can happily enjoy it as such. Like many of Halfbrick’s games, it’s a size that fits many needs. Give it a swing, and see for yourself!

Brief Tips and Tricks:

• Each of the six fish has an optimal angle you should toss them at. For example, Finlay the Dolphin prefers a low angle, while Errol the Puffer Fish likes a bit more airtime.
• Know when to boost. Some fish need that boost more than others, and it’s also important to time it right. There’s only so much to go around!
• Score some costumes as soon as possible. While it might be tempting to spend your crystals on charms, keep in mind that those are only good once. Costumes are forever!
• Each judge has their own personality. You won’t get far if you only appeal to one of them. Pick your team with balance in mind if you want to score big.
• Learn the weather. Here too your choice of fish is critical. Some fish do better in certain conditions than others. Experiment and you’ll find the weather will help more than hinder.