# FathomVerse — user reviews > 49 indexed App Store user reviews of FathomVerse by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, rated 4.64/5 from 88 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fathomverse/id6469854247/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fathomverse/id6469854247.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 73 · 4★ 3 · 3★ 3 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 4 ## What do users think of FathomVerse? **Pros** - 🌊 Relaxing and peaceful experience - 🔍 Opportunity to contribute to ocean research - 🌟 Stunning visuals and immersive environment - 🧠 Educational content on marine life - 🤝 Responsive and helpful development team - 🕹️ Simple and intuitive gameplay - 🎨 Customizable audio and visuals - 🤓 Interesting citizen science adventure **Cons** - 🐛 Buggy and inconsistent user interface - 🤔 Unclear instructions and onboarding process - ⏱️ Slow and tedious core gameplay loop - 🔍 Lack of ability to re-examine animal images - 🧭 Inconsistent controls between different sections - 🔍 Incomplete or lacking identification guides - 🚫 Inability to progress or save progress ## Newest reviews (14 of 49) ### 5/5 — Now Even Better!! *2025-03-28* So the new update just came out and it's really awesome!! Now you can earn badges, play a new game mode called "Bound," and the library of organisms has been expanded to include more organisms (like Hermit Crabs!!) in a more organized fashion. If you like animals, the ocean, science, sorting, and/or collecting, or anything related, I highly recommend downloading this fun marine citizen science game!! :))) ### 5/5 — Love the video rewards *2025-03-25* This game is amazing and I love unlocking the little movies about different deep sea critters they are so beautiful and funny ### 5/5 — Fun and Science *2025-03-24, version 1.2.0* An amazing game to get started in community science (especially for those who struggle/ cannot do much field work)! Hyped the bound mini game has finally released!!! ### 5/5 — My favorite way to contribute to ocean science *2025-03-24* I love how this game has evolved over time and especially how it makes deep sea images accessible that are otherwise only seen by scientist. It’s amazing to be able to contribute to ocean science in this way, especially if otherwise I’d be mindlessly scrolling social media. ### 5/5 — Nice *2025-03-06* Really cool game. It’s awesome that it helps scientists collect information about sea life. Pretty relaxing to play as well, I like to zone out while I’m on expeditions and listen to music. ### 5/5 — Amazing, accessible, educational and overall entertaining *2025-02-22, version 1.0.4* I feel like a pro science guy when I play this but for the love of god… PLEASE DONT CALL THE POINTS SYSTEM CP 😭 I love this game and what it stands for so much but I cringed when I saw “You earn CP by…” Just call it XP please 🫠 ### 5/5 — This app needs way more participants *2025-02-21, version 1.0.4* I got recommended this app on Instagram and decided to check it out and I love it! Very soothing music and I love learning about all these different sea creatures. The world is amazing and I’m glad to make a tiny little contribution. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Also: No commercial breaks, no ads, no store! Yay! A little note: Maybe make it possible to look up the sea creature‘s details while diving and/or assigning. It‘s easy to forget certain aspects and adding the feature would make it easier for users to make informed decisions. ### 5/5 — fun and educational *2025-02-21, version 1.0.4* the app starts of with a tutorial and you will be able to learn about different kinds of animals and what to look for to identify them correctly. the app tells you what to do and is easy to follow so you can basically dive right in. so far, i’ve played the game for about half an hour and i already love it and the fact that you can learn and contribute to an important cause is amazing! ### 5/5 — Environmentally intriguing type shi. *2025-02-12, version 1.0.4* Ts game is sick. Please make it so that in the flag/answer review screen, you can zoom in on the images. I would also maybe like for a ‘super-favorite’ button for your favorites, so you can choose amongst your favorite images a select few that always appear at the top of your favorites. Very chill nd tuff game conceptually. ### 5/5 — Love it *2025-02-08, version 1.0.4* Brilliant, calming, informative. Just genius, it makes me so happy. I love the ocean ### 4/5 — Logging ? *2025-02-06* I love this game! The one thing i’m confused about is why you can’t access the little lesson telling you about each animal as you are sorting and naming them in the training section. It feels like if I could refresh what each animal looks like before finalizing my log I would make fewer mistakes. **Developer response:** We fixed this in the new update so you can access the mission briefings while you're labeling. Check it out and let us know what you think! I hope this improves your experience. ### 5/5 — Really great game *2024-08-08, version 1.0.3* I’m loving playing this game. I’ve always been fascinated by the deep sea and its inhabitants. I’ve definitely learned about quite a few new creatures through this game. And being able to contribute to developing AI used in actual research is a really cool interesting idea. I do have one main suggestion in that after the missions on the final summary screen where it shows you what you correctly or incorrectly identified, I wish it would show you what you incorrectly identified as “none of these.” For example, if you had crabs as a target species and you incorrectly tagged a picture of a crab as “none of these,” that currently doesn’t show as incorrect in the final summary. ### 5/5 — Excellent game and educational experience! *2024-05-29* I really love this app! It's really fun to look at all the images of sea creatures and expand upon my ability to identify all of them thanks to the educational training the app gives you. You get to help science and have fun. And some of the images are really cute and funny! **Developer response:** So glad you're enjoying FathomVerse! Thanks for playing! ### 5/5 — Fantastic Citizen Science Game *2024-05-29, version 1.0.2* This is such an interesting, rewarding game to play. I love getting to see all the deep sea creatures and help the project to improve the AI in identifying them! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Would love to contribute, but terrible UI *2024-05-12* Directions are incomplete and confusing, and now, after I played one training game, it’s not letting me do anything at all. All I can do is shuffle endlessly between three introduction screens. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for playing and I'm sorry to hear that you ran into issues with the app. We recently published some updates to the training tutorial that should have addressed the bug you encountered. If you're willing to try again, we would love to hear if everything is working better for you now! ### 2/5 — wondering if they have given up on making this app *2024-05-24* A beginning attempt but certainly not playable by a long shot but I wish you all the best if you are still planning to make an app that works. The California Academy of Science makes an outstanding app called Seek for plant and insect ID's which also (I believe)has a partnership with another app called iNaturalist. Neither one of these is a game, but I use Seek daily. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for trying FathomVerse! It's great to hear that you're an avid fan of Seek - we were inspired by iNaturalist and strive to foster a similarly enthusiastic community around ocean imagery. Since we're just getting started, we'd really like to hear more about the issues you encountered so that we can ensure that FathomVerse is functional and fun. Please email us at fathomverse@mbari.org so we can connect! ### 2/5 — Missed opportunity *2024-05-03, version 1.0* Interesting idea but incredibly boring and buggy ### 3/5 — Great idea, needs work and better photos *2025-07-28* This is an awesome idea sort of similar citizen scientist activity as iNaturalist but ocean focused. The photo resolution is pretty bad on most photos so far (just started using it a few hours ago). Looks like thumbnails that have been blown up causing bad pixelation instead of high quality photos. I’m using an 11’ iPad for reference. Also there is a large info box over the top portion of the image that you can’t get rid of. Oddly I don’t see that box on the sample images here. If those issues could get resolved this would be pretty cool app. **Developer response:** Thanks for downloading FathomVerse! The image resolution problem you mention is less of an issue on a phone than iPad for sure, but it's something we're trying to improve upon. With regards to the info box, that sounds odd. If you can email us at fathomverse@mbari.org and provide more detail, we will take a look. It's worth mentioning that we've released an update to the app today that's worth checking out. Thanks for your support! Onwards and downwards!! ### 3/5 — awesome but weird mechs *2025-03-15* I love this game idea so much! My only issue is that the game mechanics are kind of strange. I tried skipping the training but if you skipped the training for any animal, you could not properly identify it which is really frustrating because I already know how to ID most of these animals (3rd year bio student lol) so if you could just be able to change the settings to accept one’s own IDs I would rate this 5 stars :) **Developer response:** Thanks for downloading FathomVerse! While we totally understand your desire to skip training, by going through training in the app you're providing us with sufficient data to evaluate your precision and accuracy. These numbers are important for us when weighing votes from all players with different backgrounds and expertise to reach consensus. It's worth mentioning that we've released an update to the app today that's worth checking out. Thanks for your support! Onwards and downwards!! ### 3/5 — It's a neat idea but the UI is really bad and frustrating. *2024-05-13, version 1.0* Core gameplay loop is very slow and tedious, made worse by the "go faster" button, which gives you a short burst of speed but makes it far more likely you will overshoot the swirly dot and have to take a whole additional circuit around the loop to get back, since you can't reverse. Controls between different sections are inconsistent - for example, after an expedition you identify animals by dragging stickers over them. But when you drag an "other" sticker over an animal and get more options for which animal it is, suddenly you have to tap the option you want, dragging doesn't work. Sometimes you can drag an animal down to "collect" it for ID and it won't actually collect. If you're paying attention you'll notice it will only have a sparkly halo if you actually collected it, but if you're sleepy and not paying attention to the halos, you can apparently wash a whole run without collecting anything. It should not have a magic invisible zone that works for the drag and the rest of the screen doesn't; honestly it should just be a tap. There's no way to get a second close look at a photo if you find that the community disagrees with you, which is frustrating. I have yet to see metamorphosis mentioned in an identification guide for an animal that changes throughout its life. The common look alikes section could be fleshed out a lot. It often doesn't even tell you how to tell the difference. You can't access the identification guide while you're actually making your identification, only while you're deciding whether to collect the image. The controls on the illumination mode were really bad. I don't even know how I was supposed to be controlling it. Tap and hold maybe? If I tried swiping to move it seemed really hit or miss if I'd go fast or slow. Trying to line up over an image was very awkward. A lot of the images had weird artifacting that looked like maybe the image was vertically tiling in a slightly too big space. This app could be really cool if you get the UI ironed out and like I said at the beginning, it's a really interesting idea. Please hire a UX professional to at least give you a complete review and recommendations. ### 3/5 — Not ready for prime time *2024-05-03* I was super excited to play but found the experience unintuitive and frustrating. After playing a couple rounds I got stuck in a feedback loop and was unable to pick a new species to train on. It didn’t save my previous game either. I’m only leaving this feedback because I know it’ll help you improve what’s sure to be an awesome game and valuable science tool eventually! **Developer response:** Thank you so much for playing! I'm sorry to hear that you had a frustrating experience. It sounds like you may have encountered a bug with saving your progress and I'd love to get more details so we can make sure everything is working properly. Please share your experience with us at https://www.fathomverse.game/support and we'll be in touch! ### 4/5 — Bug fixes please! *2025-06-15* App is a little buggy, it’s not letting me identify all the creatures I collected (after I finish there are so many that didn’t come up in the selection) and sometimes I’m not able to collect things on the dive. **Developer response:** Thanks for downloading FathomVerse! This sounds odd. If you can email us at fathomverse@mbari.org, we'd like to learn more about the problem and see if we can resolve it for you. It's worth mentioning that we've released an update to the app today that's worth checking out. Thanks for your support! Onwards and downwards!! ### 4/5 — A great way of making citizen science fun! *2025-02-19, version 1.0.4* I think this app is a really original idea and obviously a lot of care has gone into designing its UI and gameplay. It’s a great app for encouraging learning about the ocean and helping science advance. One minor complaint I have as a biology nut, the mini games can get a bit tedious after playing them again and again. I would love an option to just see photos and identify them without needing to do the mini game every time. ### 4/5 — Many beautiful sights *2025-02-07, version 1.0.4* Only in englisch no other languages available, very chill gaming experience, the rewarding system is not rewarding (it is hidden and doesn’t seam to give a regarding feeling of progress) the music is confusing to me. A category for trash ore plastic should be included. All in all pretty good for relaxing and without ads (very nice) I have to say though it’s more for marine biology needs (like me) ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Wow *2025-09-15, version 1.2.2* Found this through a DougDoug stream and it’s amazing! It’s fun and it makes a genuine impact in research and development! ### 5/5 — Cool app *2025-09-14, version 1.2.2* DougDoug brought me here. This is a very interesting concept and I would like to see this app develop further ### 5/5 — love it! *2025-07-19, version 1.2.2* it’s relaxing and very beautiful. you can learn about sea creatures with such ease too! i love it ### 5/5 — Love this game *2025-06-19* I love this game sm i played it a while ago on my other phone and i decided to redownload it again! ### 5/5 — Best. Game. Ever *2025-06-01, version 1.2.2* This game is so good, it’s my first ever game where I’m sooo invested! I highly recommend it to people who love the ocean, especially the deep sea! ### 5/5 — 😍😍😍 *2025-04-16, version 1.2.2* 🥹🦑🐋🪼🪸🌊 ### 5/5 — amazing *2025-04-09, version 1.2.1* this game is amazing - it is difficult in a fun way. There are so many creatures to discover, no ads, etc etc. ### 5/5 — Very good game *2025-04-06, version 1.2.1* The team is doing great. Very informative about the various sea animals and their different species. A small adventurish type game for everyone. Im kind of curious though, there are no way of saving your progress (as far as im aware) so I wish that there was a way to save your progress + or a way to transfer your account to a different device. Apart of that I do not have any further questions and no complaints about this game. ### 5/5 — Educational and fun! *2025-04-05, version 1.2.1* As an aspiring marine biologist this has been amazing to help expand my knowledge of animals i have wanted to know more about for years! It helps teach you how to identify animals and which animals are related to one another! My favourite animal ive seen so far has been the anemone that looks like a furry blob lol. And its free with no ads! I highly recommend trying this out instead of your usual brain rotting activities it will help you feel more accomplished and smarter for it! c: ### 5/5 — curiosity *2025-03-29, version 1.2.1* if you like the ocean you will like this --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-19.*