How Fish Is Made
Release Date: January 14, 2022
Developer: Wrong Organ, Johanna Kasurinen, Jeffrey Tomec, Martin Halldin
Publisher: Wrong Organ, CRITICAL REFLEX
Price: FREE
my playtime: 21 minutes
To say this is a game about choice is an understatement. In a world where “player choice” is touted as a selling point, a marketing term to be grouped with “meaningful impact” and “multiple endings”. How Fish Is Made isn’t just a game about choice it is “the” game about choice. That is pretty much all the game talks about, what do you choose? Up or Down?
This game also utilizes PSX style graphics, a trend of the mid-2020s that I hope does not stop anytime soon. It is nice to be to the point in the cultural nostalgia train where items from my childhood and early teens have become repopularized. Growing up in the 80s nostalgia, experiencing a 90s revival in the late 2010s, and now we seem to be late 90s-early 2000s, dying grunge and blossoming frutiger aero.
How Fish Is Made would be more of the dying grunge aesthetic. Grime soaked everything, frantic fish desperate to believe and choose “truth”. This is really a fascinating game that somehow breaches a ton of metaphysical questions, dark themes, and coats it in a layer of comedy, and in one case, musical-comedy. In the end you make your choice, and (whether a critique on choice in gaming or not) all of your decisions up til now are meaningless and this final binary choice dictates the ending you receive. After you play go watch, read, and listen to other interpretations. There are plenty out there and each seem to have a slightly, or not so slightly, different interpretation.
8/10
CM 3/30/25
Links:
