''Odell Down Under'' is a 1995 game for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

that takes place in the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

. It is the sequel to '' Odell Lake''.

Gameplay

The player takes on the role of a

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

who in turn must eat, stay clean and avoid being eaten by

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s to survive. There are several modes of gameplay. In Tournament mode, the player plays every fish in the game, starting as the tiny silver sprat and eventually reaching the

great white shark The great white shark (''Carcharodon carcharias''), also known as the white shark, white pointer, or simply great white, is a species of large mackerel shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major oceans. It is nota ...

. A shorter Challenge mode picks four random fish (from smallest to largest) instead. The player can choose to play any fish in Practice Mode. Finally, in Create-A-Fish the player creates their own species based on various parameters such as size and agility, which also affect the appearance of the fish. The color, special ability, and nocturnal or diurnal habits are also selected. Special moves, also present for some 'real' fish, include the

stingray Stingrays are a group of sea rays, which are cartilaginous fish related to sharks. They are classified in the suborder Myliobatoidei of the order Myliobatiformes and consist of eight families: Hexatrygonidae (sixgill stingray), Plesiobatidae ( ...

's sting and the

cuttlefish Cuttlefish or cuttles are marine molluscs of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique internal shell, the cuttlebone, which is used for control of ...

's ink squirt. Each fish has different preferences for food, as described in the educational summary before the game starts. The game consists of nine screens, arranged in three levels from the sandy bottom to the reef's top, that various fish, including the player, move through looking for food. To survive, or to gain enough points to reach the next fish, the player's fish has to find enough food (which can include plants, crustaceans or coral as well as fish) to prevent its constantly decreasing energy bar from reaching 0 and death. The other main concern, besides avoiding predators, is health, which can only be repaired by finding a

bluestreak cleaner wrasse The bluestreak cleaner wrasse, ''Labroides dimidiatus'', is one of several species of cleaner wrasses found on coral reefs from Eastern Africa and the Red Sea to French Polynesia. Like other cleaner wrasses, it eats parasites and dead tissue o ...

while playing as a diurnal fish, or a

banded coral shrimp ''Stenopus hispidus'' is a Caridea, shrimp-like Decapoda, decapod crustacean belonging to the infraorder Stenopodidea. Common names include coral banded shrimp and banded cleaner shrimp. Distribution ''Stenopus hispidus'' has a pan-tropical dis ...

while playing as a nocturnal fish, and moving next to it. Health takes a serious drop if the fish eats something poisonous to it, often a

sea slug Sea slug is a common name for some marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary t ...

sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t ...

External links

*{{moby game, id=/odell-down-under, name=''Odell Down Under'' 1995 video games Classic Mac OS games Windows games Science educational video games Life simulation games Biological simulation video games Video games set in Australia Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games Video game sequels Video games with underwater settings