What drew me to Last Fish was its art. It looked sort of like what would happen if Osmos were redesigned by the team behind Limbo. Its muted palette of light and shadow, black and grey, grabbed my attention. Mobile games tend so often to be bright and colorful that seeing one exist deliberately in the dark was a surprise.
Last Fish isn't a terribly complicated game. There is exactly one fish. You are it. You use tilt mechanisms to float around your limited little sea, collecting food and items and avoiding things that reduce your health. But the world is dark: the last fish is also the light source, and avoiding shadows in a shadowy world can get surprisingly challenging.
Generally I find tilt-based games to be frustrating, either for being too sensitive to every motion, or not sensitive enough to the ones I want. Last Fish, though, manages to hit exactly that sweet spot, where my little fish moves exactly as I expect, weaving through obstacles like, well, a fish.
The game is not complex, and offers a small, simple set of challenges that merely get harder to complete with each repetition. And yet, I found it both soothing and satisfying. The higher your health, the brighter your glow—and the better your chance, therefore, of avoiding goo and shadow fish, and staying healthy. Stay in the light, avoid the dark, and collect whatever needs collecting along the way.
Last Fish [$0.99, Google Play]
Last Fish [$0.99, iTunes]