We will start accepting playtesters as of next week, please join the discord already for updates and earlier access!

New: online shop — the second sales channel. The PC gets a new "Online shop" app: instead of waiting for requests, you list fish yourself and set the price. Cheap listings sell fast, ambitious prices take patience — and your reputation matters. It also works as a relief valve: surplus from breeding (the app marks it) turns into money here. The app presents itself as your own storefront "AquaMarkt": product cards with fish logos and price tags (click a card to select it), a discount readout on the price slider, status chips and a tracking bar for parcels in transit.

New: packing & shipping. Catch ordered fish into the tub as usual and bring them to the new packing station: dock the tub, the fish jumps into the transport bag, pump in oxygen (hold, hit the target zone), seal it, into the box. Then pick standard or express shipping — and hope the durability holds: oxygen, box quality, fasting and condition decide whether the fish arrives alive. The customer replies by mail, with the likely cause if something went wrong; the outcome affects money and reputation. Packing material (bags, boxes, oxygen) is bought in the orders app — it arrives as a parcel in the delivery zone and has to be carried to the station, where your stock sits visibly (bag roll, box stacks, bottle).

New: koi product photos. In the inspection bowl you can photograph every koi ("Take photo"). The photo becomes the product picture on its tile in the online shop — and listings with a photo get ordered noticeably more often. Without a photo the photo slot shows a placeholder.

New: trout fry. Tiny ~4 cm fry for €0.30 instead of €1 — they grow into full-size trout. The cheap way in when time is not the problem.

New: graphics settings for weaker machines. "Graphics quality" Low/Medium/High in the settings, switchable mid-game. Low turns off the expensive lighting, reflection and fog effects and lowers shadow resolution — more than twice as fast in our measurements. Together with the fullscreen resolution option the game now runs on much weaker hardware.

Steam. Aquaculture Simulator has a Steam page and a playtest build! The main menu has a "Wishlist on Steam" button (with the official Steam logo); in the Steam build it opens the store page right in the overlay. The game also starts in borderless fullscreen by default now.

Tutorial reworked. Every main step now has a sub-step checklist and only completes when everything is done; you can browse back without losing progress. PC app icons and sliders pulse when they need attention. A new early step explains the two sales channels (direct sales vs. online shop), and at the end a hands-on chain walks you through your first online sale — including the fasting trick before shipping.

On first launch a short welcome message greets you with a Discord link — playtest feedback helps enormously.

Balancing & quality of life

• Koi prices reworked: value now grows with quality AND size — a mid-grade koi at 40 cm fetches ~€15, a perfect show jumbo up to €300. Size (cm) is now shown everywhere in the online shop.

• Stocking orders now come with 3–5 days lead time (1–2 days were impossible to fulfil).

• Taking a fish out at the station is now visible — with a splash instead of a silent swap.

• Orders app tidied up: consumables first, new "Expansions" section; the whole app scrolls cleanly instead of running over the taskbar.

• Settings pages scroll — lower sliders could be unreachable depending on resolution.

• The banking forecast counts shipments arriving before rent day; deadline warnings for orders left lying around.

• English is complete again, including all new shop texts.