''Aquia'', known as ''Aquite'' in Europe and ''Aquario'' in Japan, is a puzzle video game developed by

Skip Ltd. Skip Ltd. (stylized as skip Ltd.) is a Japanese video game developer that has a close relationship with Nintendo. Nintendo has published all of their Japanese releases; with the only notable exception being ''LOL'' (''Archime DS''), which skip ...

and published by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

for the Nintendo DSi's

DSiWare This is a list of games and applications, collectively known as DSiWare, for the Nintendo DSi handheld game console, available for download via the DSi Shop and unplayable on earlier DS models. An update released for the Nintendo 3DS in June 2011 ...

digital distribution service. It was released at the launch of the Nintendo DSi and DSiWare service on April 5, 2009 in North America.

Gameplay

The game requires players to line up blocks in rows of three or more in order to allow their diver to delve deeper into the ocean. This occurs as they move blocks of various sizes (1 x 2, 2 x 1, or 2 x 2) horizontally into a column of coloured blocks. As players move blocks in from one side, they push blocks out of the other side. They can move these blocks up and down the column, as well as rotating their colours configuration, in order to create matches of coloured blocks within the column.Pocket Gamer: Art Style: AQUITE (DSiWare)
/ref> As the diver progresses he will slowly begin to lose his air supply. The player has to refill the diver's air supply by clearing rows of blocks quicker or finding and clearing a row of three special blocks that will appear randomly as the game progresses. Darkness falls from the top of the screen as time goes on too, which makes it more difficult to make matches. There are two modes to select from in the game, Timed Dive and Free Dive. Timed Dive requires players to clear blocks until the diver reaches a certain depth before he runs out of air, at which point the level ends and the diver descends to the next stage. Free Dive is a never-ending puzzle mode that tests how deep the player's diver can go before he runs out of air. There is a relaxing Aquarium mode that when unlocked displays a virtual aquarium on the top screen.

Development

''Aquario'' was announced for the

service on October 2, 2008 at a Nintendo conference alongside the reveal of the service. It was eventually released on December 24, 2008 on the DSiWare's launch. It was announced for an English release in both

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

alongside several other DSiWare games on February 18, 2009. It was developed by

and published by

Reception

''Aquia'' received mixed reviews from critics upon release. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the game holds a score of 70/100 based on 16 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". On

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

, the game holds a score of 69.64% based on 14 reviews.

References

{{Skip Ltd. games 2008 video games DSiWare games Nintendo DS-only games Nintendo DS games Puzzle video games Skip Ltd. games Video games developed in Japan Nintendo games Single-player video games