At the start of Fishbowl, we meet Alo at a pretty eventful time in her life. Not only did she just move to a different city to start a new job working as a junior video editor for one of her online heroes, and not only does this moment mark the start of the 2020 pandemic lockdown, but she is also still dealing with the fallout of losing her beloved Jaja – her grandmother – only a month prior. That would be a lot to deal with for anyone, let alone a young college graduate starting out her adult life.
Luckily, Alo is not alone. She still has her mum to fall back on and a cast of truly amazing friends that she has known basically all her life. These people will become increasingly important as time goes on, because Fishbowl sees Alo walk through grief, something we often do by ourselves, rather than reaching out for help. Alo is no different, with her not wanting to be a burden on her loved ones, but where writing poetry once helped her regulate her emotions, she has become unable – or unwilling – to write anything anymore. Since the loss of Jaja, no matter what she puts to paper, she just crosses everything out, feeling like it’s just not good enough anymore.
Early on in the game, we discover that Alo’s mom plans on giving away all of her mother’s things, which Alo objects to. She has everything sent to her apartment instead, feeling determined to go through all of it and give it a space in her new home. But going through all of these items brings back a ton of memories, something Alo might not be completely equipped to deal with. Despite the lockdown, she has a friend to help her out, though: Paplet, a toy fish she used to have as a child. Paplet wants to see Alo happy through digging up memories that will warm her heart. Sadly, it doesn’t always work that way…
Fishbowl sees us live a month in the life of Alo, as she unpacks all of Jaja’s things, all the while trying to keep her own mental health in check and continuing to do her job. A lot of your enjoyment will depend on how much you want to help Alo live a good life. The game doesn’t force you to do anything except performing at your job and unpacking all of Jaja’s items, but otherwise, you’re allowed to let Alo live as you please. This will have consequences, of course: don’t take care of her, and certain dialogue options will close themselves off from you.
There’s a certain rhythm to be found in Fishbowl. Get Alo her coffee in the mornings and make sure she takes a shower after work. All of these tiny habits will aid her in handling her mood, which is represented by this kind of health bar. Certain moments will drain the bar, while others will replenish it, and it’s up to you to find the right balance. Unless you want to go full depression mode, of course, which is probably an option as well. I didn’t play it that way, however, and chose to lock into that rhythm of taking care of ourselves.
It wasn’t always easy, though. As you dig through Jaja’s stuff and play through more and more memories, it becomes quite apparent that the idyllic life you remember with your mum and Jaja might not have been so beautiful after all. It would seem that Alo is repressing certain memories, but a darkness within stands at the ready to bring it all back. All it needs is time and a final push to get Alo to give in to the sadness.
So it’s a good thing that work is going great! As you work as a video editor, you meet a whole cast of characters who become new friends. You’re also working for a personal hero, someone you’ve looked up to since childhood, and when you finally get to meet them – albeit through a video call – it’s like a dream come true. However, they’re going through it too, wanting to branch out beyond the internet and into making a full TV series. So work quickly piles up, and you have to take all of this on while trying to keep yourself together.
I didn’t expect Fishbowl to resonate with me the way it did. I’ve played plenty of games dealing with death or the loss of someone dear to you, and while some of those have hit me quite hard, few of them have hit me so personally. Maybe it’s because of the game dealing with the loss of a grandparent – I lost my grandfather almost 20 years ago, and it still haunts me – or maybe it’s Alo’s love for – and losing connection with – writing, which is another issue I’ve been dealing with over the years, but this game felt personal to me.
It didn’t initially hit me that hard. In fact, at first I felt the game was maybe taking a little too long to get to the point. There were times when I felt like I knew what was coming, and there didn’t need to be such a drawn-out path towards that. But when it did finally come, it felt like a punch to the face. I’ve been sat here for hours now, letting the game resonate with me, allowing myself to feel the effect of having been confronted with a part of grief that I still run from to this day. It made me feel like there has to be a personal story being told here, that some of the developers have dealt with loss like this, maybe even during the same time as when the story is told.
In the end, this is a game about allowing yourself to feel. It reminds me a lot of an Andrew Garfield quote when the actor was asked about the loss of his mother. He spoke about grief being ‘unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her’. Garfield’s interview was incredibly touching, showing a vulnerability that many men are incapable of transmitting. And I feel it perfectly represents Alo’s journey throughout Fishbowl. There’s so much she still wants to tell her, Jaja; she wants to tell her mum and her friends but is incapable of it. It’s one of the most real depictions of grief I’ve seen in the videogame medium, and I’m grateful for it.
