This game kind of misses the mark..... I am the perfect target audience for this kind of game. I have spent hours in Rusty's Retirement, and will return to it a few more times for sure. I already fell in love with the Tiny Pasture demo and anxiously await its release. And I'm hoping for many more such 'bottom screen idle games' to come out.

I've gotten this one as a present by a friend, because it is so very much in my wheelhouse, and yet... it is kind of a disappointment.

tl;dr: The early game until you unlock automation is a painful drag. Fish die too fast and leave the screen empty and sad. The graphics are a bit of a mess, and industrial objects kind of ruin the cutesy ocean aesthetic. This could be a great game with some more tweaks, but as of right now, it falls flat. Go play Rusty's Retirement instead.

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In detail:

+ The pixel art on the mermaid, house and background is lovely. Mermaids aren't necessarly my favorite setting, but the art style feels very nostalgic in the best ways.
+ The DJ Octa for changing the background music is a neat idea. I have the music muted, as I generally have something else playing, but I like the idea.
+ The reef, when filled with fish, is a lovely ambience. The depth simulating is great. Their little bobbing animations are adorable.
+ Pearlina the clam is absolutely adorable and I will die for her.
+ Some fish have great unique animations. The Flying Fish jumping out from the water is a great touch.
+ Once the corals are unlocked, which automatically lure in new fish, the game immediately became so much more enjoyable.

- The menu is so shamelessly just copied off Rusty's Retirement.
There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from one of the pioneers of this genre, but to just copy the homework without any significant innovations... From the 'machines' and 'buildings' in the same tab, to the limited sound settings and the 'always on top' checkbox. Two currencies, one of which you can convert into the other. Having to 'plant' x amount of fish to unlock the next type. Using three different 'crops' to produce the biofuel- I mean Aqua. I actually had to doublecheck if it's the same or a different dev. (It's not.)

- The mermaid is adorable, but the rest of the design and graphics is a bit of a mess.
I don't know if they had different pixel artists, bought some premade assets, or what. Some of the assets have vastly different styles and lack proper pixel consistency. The shrimp 'building' has an ugly pink bubble that is way too big and looks off, and the shrimp is way too tiny. The Aqua Generators look needlessly modern and really blocky next to the beautiful shell house. The net is lacking any depth. The UI shows a mouse indicator for how to scroll that won't go away, with an ugly thick black border. The text in the menus is showing some weird irregularly thick lines that are an indicator of an incorrectly scaled pixel font. Also, the water animation and shrimp bubble animation are a bit too busy and distracting for an on-screen idle game.
The second mermaid's home fits the aesthetic somewhat better, but has notably darker pixel linework than the main shell house.
The jellyfish bubble is needlessly big compared to the shrimp bubble, and for no apparent reason - it's not like the jellyfish has to return to it to refuel, from the looks of it. And all the buildings unfortunately clutter up the screen and make it hard to enjoy the peaceful ocean and fish ambience.
And why does Corals look like a nude Patrick Star??

- The clams are horribly balanced. 26 Aqua after 20 minutes? After I paid effectively 500 Aqua for one??? Don't waste your breath on the clams. (Note: I believe the payout increases with the amount of fish you have active.... but the corals and crabs are a better passive 'income' than the clams.)

- Voltech, while adorable, is kind of pointless. The only 'buildings' you can upgrade are the crabs and jellyfish. The jellyfish do their job just fine if placed near the nets. The crabs barely do anything. Genuinely, the mermaids do a better job at filling the Aqua Generators. You can't upgrade the second mermaid to be as fast as the first one, and you can't upgrade the clams or corals for higher production. He doesn't even come with a cute house.

- In general, the gameplay loop lacks the satisfaction of other such games as Rusty's Retirement. In Rusty, the satisfaction comes from getting to add more stuff to your farm, watching your crops grow up and making your screen increasingly busy.
I expected the game to work in a way where, with time, you unlock more fish swarms and fill your reef with more and more fish. That the swarms are a permanent fixture, like the farms or robots in Rusty. Instead, the fish are just there, no type of growth indicator to be seen, until they suddenly drop dead and disappear, leaving the screen empty. At that point, you manually have to add fish back in (until you unlock the character that automatically repopulates your fish, which is the most expensive of all). It doesn't even have the 'multiple harvests' benefit of the higher level crops in Rusty, so you're just constantly manually repopulating the ocean with fish. Whether you do that every 2 minutes or 5 minutes hardly matters - this defeats the purpose of this being an idle game.

The game became much more enjoyable when I actually unlocked and bought the first coral. That is more what I expected - buying corals that lure in swarms of fish. Resource management, rather than constantly buying new fish only to watch them die. Just getting there is such a drag because the corals (and the Coral character) are ridiculously expensive.

You also barely even need the crab, jellyfish or helper characters, as the main mermaid is fast enough to handle all the tasks herself.

It's unclear what you're even doing.... producing 'fish byproducts' and 'aqua'. In Rusty, it is clear that you sell your crops to earn money, and convert crops into biofuel for the robots. Here I'm... harvesting fish and shrimp? I was looking for a more wholesome game where you just populate your ocean with more life. The elements with the net and all are too industrial and exploitative for the cutesy vibe.

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For this game, I'd want the devs to go back to the drawing board, improve on some of the graphics and rethink some of the gameplay elements. Like just buying the fish and having to wait until they grow up and can produce the currency. Do something satisfying with little bubbles you have to pop. Skip the entire buying fish and nets portion, and just have the game start with purchasing corals and clams.

Just make this game stand on its own, rather than a worse clone of Rusty's Retirement.

My immediate suggestions for improvements would be:
- Change or remove the nets. Just combine the shrimp house and nets. Make them more visually coherent with the rest of the buildings.
- Change how the Aqua Generators look to be more visually coherent with the rest of the buildings.
- Make fish last longer and give more rewards. If the gold bard lasts for 1 minute, the herring should last for 5 minutes, and the gold fish should last for 30 minutes. Have them give more rewards/require less fish to unlock the next fish.
- Make the corals cheaper and easier to unlock early - or better: have them unlocked by default.
- Change the wave texture on the top to be less busy.
- Make the menu UI more unique, and remove the ugly mouse scroll indicator on the bottom right of the UI.

Under the sea! I'm having fun raising fish while I work on stuff. Nice and chill game however I wish it didn't take so long to turn it into an idle game. I have to spawn fish constantly or I'll never unlock anything.