Recent reviews by AlgoRythm

Worth the money. More of a grind than it makes itself out to be.

This game is fun, and you will probably like it - especially for the price (I purchased this game on sale for about 4USD). The bones of this game are solid.


The main gameplay consists of purchasing baby fish at one price, and then raising them to sell for a higher price. Adult fish also earn a sort of "salary", with rarer fish producing more money per day. The main gameplay loop is actually the best part of the game, as it feels well thought out and has lots of quality of life features, such as a rich filtering system where you can mass-sell all adult fish, but also can lock your favorites so that they are not accidentally sold. You can also sort and filter by the important metrics - value, income, etc. to easily make strategic moves with your collection of fish.

There's a ton to collect - each series of fish includes lots of variety and EACH fish has three different visual variations (regular, painted (AKA "shiny"), and golden). These visual variations are also worth more in-game money, so you feel validated for wanting to collect the rarer ones, which makes the hunt even more satisfying. Collecting all the basic fish in a set doesn't take all that long, even the most rare category of fish (mythical) can be found by filling and emptying your aquarium just a handful of times. The other variations of fish are significantly more elusive, so getting them can be very exciting and keeps it fresh even if you've opened a hundred of the same fish pack.

Though simple, I think the graphics and animations are sufficient. This game will work as a pleasant screensaver, and having up to 100 fish in a tank at once gives a lot to look at. The huge variety of fish and the ease of narrowing down your collection to just your favorites really plays a role in how well it works as a visual background-running program.


I have a lot to say in this category, but that's because I think everything can be fixed with time. To reiterate, the bones of this game are very solid and I recommend the game, especially at this price point. That being said, the good experience is clearly marred by a number of avoidable issues.

For whatever reason, the economy scaling is absolutely insane. The first decoration costs $250. The current final decoration costs $50,000,000,000,000,000 and that's not due to it being an in-game joke or whatever. Everything in the game, even completely useless items such as the color of your fish tank's floor scales up to these completely ridiculous numbers. Why does a light green pebble floor cost $12k whereas a slightly darker green one cost $1,000,000,000? There cannot be an explanation that justifies this strangeness. I don't even care that similar items are significantly harder to earn, the numbers are just goofy.

This brings up an even more important point. For something called "chillquarium", the grind is very real. You want me to save up 2,625,000,000,000,000 for a single pack of "Pelagic Dudes"? That's actually not very chill.

Unfortunately, since the game is so severely based on explosive economic progression, as soon as you are able to afford the next pack, all the fish you saved up from the previous pack are entirely useless. I think this is my main complaint of the progression system and the only reason I really hate it. You can spend a bunch of effort collecting painted and golden legendaries/mythicals but the second you unlock the next pack, those fish are basically decorations. This really doesn't make sense considering how difficult they are to get and how important progression is to the game.

I have very few complaints about the collection system - just a warning that if you plan to 100% the game with all variations of all fish, you're going to have a frustrating time. Like I mentioned, getting the base variety of every fish is very easy. Getting the other variations can be a ruthless grind with no way to speed it up or make it any more fun.

I'm very forgiving of the graphics due to the price of the game, but at any other price point, I think they would be unacceptable especially considering the game clearly intends to be an "idle screensaver"-type.

Each fish has exactly one sprite. They never blink, move their fins, open their mouth, or do anything at all. The sprite is mirrored, "squeezed", and rotated in order to bring it to life. This actually is very forgivable for most fish. However, this is unacceptable when it comes to fish that clearly need some sort of swimming animations - particularly animals with legs like the axolotl. They just look paralyzed and make the whole effect seem cheap. Clearly, quantity was prioritized over quality when it comes to the actual fish in your aquarium.

The art style is subjective, but I would say it's lukewarm. The colors are nice, the patterns are well done and the shapes and scale (one fish relative to another) all work very well. However, it's clearly pixel art scaled up using some sort of post processing and frankly I wish it was just left as pixel art as the wiggly lines just look bad. This is especially noticeable on things like the decorations where you expect clear, sharp lines. The pirate ship does not look good. The submarine does not look good. The lighthouse does not look good. And so on. Which is extremely disappointing as decorating your tank is probably the most obvious activity I can think of besides collecting different fish. (Some decorations do work well with this system, such as the Bonsai, which might be my favorite, The Pagoda is also a great choice as the roof tiles are already supposed to be very bumpy)

The decoration system is as basic as it gets. They seem to be locked to being placed on the bottom of the tank - all on the exact same horizontal line. Plus, they're all HUGE. You can't intricately decorate your tank with little bits of kelp, small and medium size rocks, etc. Just enormous props that don't really look great to begin with. To make matters worse, your fish don't really interact with them very well. Bottom-dwelling creatures like snails and slugs just sort of phase through any decoration, completely ruining the effect the game intended to achieve.

While the game suffers from superficial issues, and might need a progression system overhaul (I would greatly, greatly prefer a leveling system where "Only level 3 or above aquariums have a license for these types of fish"), the main gameplay loop is clearly thought out very carefully for what it is and the price is extremely reasonable. The game still serves its purpose as an enjoyable ambient graphic on an extra screen etc. and collecting the different fish is fun and exciting.