Fish wrangling management sim Megaquarium is getting a major free update alongside its upcoming DLC: 'I've learned a lot over the years about what makes a good Megaquarium campaign'

An image showing one of the large new vista tanks in Megaquarium. Viewed from an isometric perspective, bobble-headed people wander around its exterior as white fish with blue patterning swin around inside. — (Image credit: Twice Circled)

If you're looking for a management sim that's a bit on the lighter side, you could certainly do worse than Megaquarium. Twice Circled's aquarium construction sim is all about building oceanic attractions and filling them with weird and wonderful sea life.

The base game released eight years ago, but Twice Circled has updated it consistently since then. Indeed, its next update is one of the biggest yet, built to splash down alongside a new expansion that's all about underwater invertebrates.

Improvements to the campaign include smoother progression that requires less repeated researching of animals and equipment, greater animal availability inside objectives, and tweaked research costs and prestige requirements for better pacing. "In summary: it's the same campaign—only better!" Wicksteed writes.

Alongside this, the update will add improved priority options for staff to help you streamline your aquarium's workflow, better backpacks to help staff restock tanks, gift shop shelves and other resources, and the ability to place lights on any tank. It also specifically overhauls the calcium resource, transforming it from essentially a buff into "a hard requirement for animals that need it."

This latter change ties into the new stuff coming in Megaquarium's Invertebrilliant Collection DLC, which adds a host of spineless lifeforms to your collection such as a wide array of new corals. It also greatly expands the kinds of fishtank you can place in your oceanic zoo, adding underfoot floor tanks, bulbous magnifying tanks, and w i d e vista tanks.

Both the update and the DLC will arrive on February 25. How successful the changes will be remains to be seen, but Megaquarium was already a cracking management sim when it released, as Philippa Warr explained in her Megaquarium review. "Megaquarium is a game of wonderful tinkering. Hours drifted by as I expanded my floorplan, placed new tanks, fiddled with pumps and filters, tweaked temperatures, and generally tried to keep both fish and visitors happy."

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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