Rise, Goldfish: Elden Ring's bosses are now being humiliated by a fish somehow hooked-up to the controls

A goldfish in water.
(Image credit: Jamie Gill via Getty.)

Streamer Pointcrow has won gold for conceiving of the daftest way to play Elden Ring. FromSoft's magnum opus is an open world of exceptional scale and grandeur, a majestic achievement in the fantasy genre and PCG's game of the year in 2022. Pointcrow has engineered a setup whereby this feat of human imagination and engineering can be played by a goldfish (first spotted by GamesRadar+).

It's Pointcrow's own pet goldfish, which goes by the name of Tortellini. To deal with the elephant in the room before we get onto the fish, it clearly cannot be said that Tortellini is 'playing' Elden Ring in any meaningful way. Sorry to say this but goldfish are not noted for their brains, personality, memory, or twitch reflexes.

Instead think of Tortellini as something of an accidental conductor. Pointcrow has, by temporarily emptying the tank of unnecessary visual distractions, linked up Tortellini's movements to a grid that maps them and, depending on the fish's position in the tank, triggers a control input or a sequence of control inputs. So Tortellini swims, and the Tarnished swings. 

Pah, what's a goldfish going to do against Malenia, I hear you scoff. Well better than a lot of us, it turns out. Pointcrow's done a couple of streams over recent days showcasing the fish's progress, the full VODs are on Twitch, and it has now somehow managed to beat Malenia's first phase.

I mean, the fish did better than I did. The big question here is how automated the whole setup is, and whether what we're seeing is really the fish's random movements translating into the on-screen action, or whether there's a whole other layer of automation stitching together the prompts into useful pre-defined sets of commands. Pointcrow's own explanation is a little fuzzy, though he does promise a video explaining the setup soon.

Beating Elden Ring in bizarre ways has almost become the metagame. The goldfish joins a long list of bonkers challenges, including the woman who beat Elden Ring with her mind, a dude whacking demigods via the medium of a Bop-It, someone strumming Margit to death with an acoustic guitar, and someone taking out Malenia at soul level 1 with a goddamn dance pad. What's next, fleas?

TOPICS
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

Read more
Elden Ring Malenia
'That's why they call me the Elden Ring sicko' proclaims streamer as he beats FromSoft's RPG at NG+1000 without taking a single hit
dinossindgeil celebrates a hard-earned victory over seven consecutive souls games without a single hit, at level 1.
Streamer achieves git gud godhood by beating all mainline Souls games at level 1, back to back, without getting hit—then explodes into tears of relief
Alma, the handler from Monster Hunter Wilds, closes her eyes and looks a little disappointed.
This impractical method of getting a 1-second capture time in Monster Hunter Wilds can make you the fastest hunter alive—on paper
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree trailer screencap of a red haired character holding fire in their hand
An Elden Ring player has promised to fight Messmer every day with a new weapon until FromSoftware releases Elden Ring: Nightreign
Pint, a lalafellin mage, looks towards the sunset sky and closes his eyes in gracious defeat in Final Fantasy 14.
FF14 streamer yields to the MMO's bounciest catgirl, after inspiring them to beat his new speedrunning record 3 times before he could finish making a video about it
An image of Hornet from Hollow Knight: Silksong standing amidst a verdant landscape.
1,465 consecutive days of (mostly) no Silksong news: I spoke to the Sisyphean internet hero that's kept folks informed, every 24 hours, for 4 whole years
Latest in RPG
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
A Viera looking confused in Final Fantasy 14.
Old armor continues to fall victim to Final Fantasy 14's bizarre two-channel dye system, unless you're super into changing the colour of teeny-tiny eyelets: 'Why even bother at this point?'
Starfield: Shattered Space
By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'
Sphene applauds in Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story.
I'm not yelling 'we're so back!' yet, but Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story could be the first sign the MMO is returning to what made it so critically-acclaimed
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event