THE FISH TANK

You are the smallest fish in a pet shop tank. Eat anything smaller than you. Stay away from everything bigger. Grow — and when you no longer fit, a net lifts you out and puts you somewhere larger.

Six times.

THE FISH TANK is a one-thumb arcade game built on the oldest rule in the water: bigger eats smaller. Drag to swim, close on a fish that fits, and keep clear of the ones you would fit inside. Every meal makes you longer, and a fish that could have swallowed you a minute ago becomes lunch.

SIX PLACES, ONE JOURNEY A pet shop tank on a shelf. Someone's living room aquarium. A display tank in a dim room. The big curved window at a public aquarium, with visitors watching you through it. A sea pen of netting and posts, with boats overhead. And then the ocean, which has no walls at all.

You do not beat a container. You outgrow it — the glass is visibly closer every time you look, because you are bigger, not because the tank shrank.

ONE UNBROKEN ATTEMPT The whole campaign is a single run of about fifteen minutes, and being eaten sends you back to the pet shop tank. You can buy your way out of one mistake with coins you have earned — but the price doubles each time, so a good run can be rescued and a bad one cannot be bought through.

TWENTY-FOUR FISH TO UNLOCK Every one of them a trade rather than an upgrade. The guppy is fast and starts smaller than you do, which means more of the sea can eat you for longer. The whale starts half-grown and turns like a bus. The cheap fish are the hard ones, and that is deliberate.

EIGHT UPGRADES Speed, growth, coin magnet, extra lives, fortune, luck, radar and a head start — bought with coins you earn by playing. There is nothing to buy with real money.

AND SOMETHING THAT DOES NOT CARE HOW BIG YOU GOT Reach the ocean and you will have eaten everything that ever frightened you. Then a megalodon turns up. It cannot be eaten at any size. It can be outswum, and that is the whole of the last two minutes.

AND WHEN IT IS OVER, IT NEED NOT BE Survive the ocean and the campaign is finished and saved — and then you are asked whether you would like to stay. Thirty levels of open water, no walls, ending the only way open water can.

NO ACCOUNT. NO ADVERTS. NO IN-APP PURCHASES. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to buy. Your coins, your fish and how far you got are stored on your device and nowhere else — the game collects no data at all and sends nothing anywhere.

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