It makes sense for an aquarium-maintenance simulation to walk the line between screensaver and interactive game. Unfortunately, Pocket Aquarium hardly features any gameplay at all, so it therefore falls directly into the former category. The game lets you place fish of four types into your tank, alone with chests or sea anemones. At this point, your job is to watch your pets swim around...very slowly. Unless you're planning to let your phone sit open on your desk as you work--so you can periodically gaze adoringly at it, as one would a sleeping lover--you're not going to get too much hands-on enjoyment out of Pocket Aquarium.
You start the game with an empty tank and a song in your heart. It's not tough to get going. You just throw some fish in there, and maybe an undersea cave or two. There's a very limited amount of space, and the objects and fish are enormous. Consequently, adding three items and four fish effectively exhausts your options.
At this point, there's really nothing to do, apart from feeding fish. That said, there's no feeding animation and no way to tell how much the little critters are eating. Also, choosing not to feed the fish seems to be acceptable as well. They don't seem to be very high-maintenance. Your fish also won't do anything interesting, like breed or eat one another. In a game that offers so little control, that would at least be interesting to watch.
Pocket Aquarium's sprite-based visuals look fairly realistic, but they don't move very well. Each fish has about four frames of animation in its repertoire. This quickly grows tiresome to watch. The sound is similarly repetitive, as a single system of harp music plays incessantly. This is simultaneously soothing and annoying--not a winning combination.
Pocket Aquarium probably shouldn't be in Verizon's games section, but it is. Even as a screensaver, though, this would be a poor offering. If you're looking for a fish-care simulation, try Centerscore's Aquarium Pets, which is a superior product in every conceivable way.
