Freshwater Tank Review

Freshwater Tank is a clever way to gamify setting up a fish tank for your own use. In the game, you roll a die and move the spaces. If you land on a fish space, you take a fish card and if you land on an incident space you take an incident card and deal with the consequences. It's not that simple, though. Every type of fish cannot cohabitate with each other. Some are aggressive, some are docile and some are in between. If you pull a card that clashes with a specific type then you will not be able to add the fish to your tank. Some incident cards will also cause you to lose fish from disease or other unavoidable events. The first player that adds 10 fish to their tank wins the game.

The Good: The game advertises itself as an educational game and I think it did a really nice job of doing that. There is a massive deck of cards with different types of fish and some facts about all of them. The game also comes with a chart that compares who can live in harmony with each other and the manual also has a lot of specific examples.

The Okay: The artwork is nice for this game but I wish that it was a little bit more fleshed out. The board only has a couple of images and the cards eventually all start to look the same.

The Not So Good: I think my biggest complaint about this game is that it can essentially be accomplished with a Google search. That sounds much harsher than I intend it to sound. It's a really nice idea and it does some things really well but it does turn into a lot of luck and more management than I'd expect from a board game like this.

Overall: 5/10

I don't think that Freshwater Tank is a bad game. I just don't think it's my type of game. If you are a fish enthusiast or just looking for something to play with your kids (there's an easier variant) then this may be perfect for you. To me though, it was lighter and a lot more finicky than I was hoping. If the nature/water theme is what draws you in, maybe something like Parks or Meadow would be a better alternative.