Fishkeeping game I always wanted to dev.

I always wanted to create an educational and relaxing PC game about keeping fish. I created concept art here and there sometimes to hopefully work with someone some day. Here is the concept: You are in a first person perspective in a completely customizable aquarium room with no space limit. You start with 1,000 "fin coins" to start purchasing tanks, 3 fish and a few supplies for the tank of your choosing as a start. The better you take care of your fish, the more coins you earn to buy more things for your multiple aquariums. For example: If you earn 1000,000,000 coins after taking care of enough fish you can buy a giant octopus as one of the main "ultimate" fish you can take care of. In the in-game store you can get everything imaginable for your aquariums. Types of fish, themed tank decor, plants, different filters, tanks with fancy desks; absolutely anything! There are achievements and challenges I would add too. Like a "grow 3 goldfish within X timeframe" or "earn X amount of coins with a pet puffer" type of things. I think it would be awesome to add background music choices and a "lights off" mode where the lights in the giant room are turned off so the aquariums glow at night. I would love to add name tags for the fish too so players could feel more connected. Maybe add some features such as taking pictures of your fish, close up feeding animations, having the pictures be downloadable and a few more things.

There is a lot I could put down in this post about the game ideas I have about fish keeping but I don't wanna bore anyone to death. lol I would love to talk about everyone else's fish keeping game ideas if you have any!

 

I haven't really seen much of anything for decent aquarium games on any platform, might be on to something here!

 

My suggestion would be not to make it all educational. People don’t play completely educational games unless they have to so maybe incorporate some way of being able to upgrade your equipment or fish. Maybe take some ideas from clash of clans for upgrading stuff

 

The ultimate fish could be the red tail catfish of arapaima. Any ideas of what the rarest and most expensive fish should be?

An idea for lighting is an automatic light that has a set cycle, turning on during the day, changing colour and fading away for the night, similar to the Fluval Aquasky I run on my 60 gallon.

The “fishpedia” is a cool concept. You can access the fishpedia to read about all of the fish and learn about their care requirements, statistics etc.

 

Ultimate fish? Arowana!

 

YES. PLEASE.

... ahem. I mean, an aquarium-keeping simulator honestly sounds like an amazing idea. There are SO many critters I want to keep and scapes I want to build, but there's just not enough time, space, or money. Having a game that could, to some degree, show what it's like to keep certain species or maintain certain setups would be both a very practical tool and a way to scratch that multi-tank syndrome itch.

There're plenty of "aquarium" games out there, but they're not made with education or realism in mind. I don't exactly blame them for that, because simulating all the intricacies of an aquarium to a realistic degree sounds very complicated and labor-intensive.